Experimental Research On The Influence Of Self-other Overlap On The Processing Of Emotional Events

In the interaction of self and others,people include other in the self unceasingly,making the degree of overlapping of self and others increased.The self-other overlap is not only the evaluating indicator of the relationship between self and other,but also the important evidence of understanding bilateral information processing and the key factor of empathy.In this paper,we regarded the actual overlap between self and other as the breakthrough point,and investigated the impact of the self-other overlap on emotion events processing.In the pilot study,we produced the emotion events phrases,which lengthens were the same,based on the daily life experiences.And participants were required to rate the pleasure,arousal,dominance,familiarity and the frequency of occurrence of these events.The results show that the consistency of the rating scores is high in the same dimension.The rating scores of the pleasure and arousal distribute as the "U",and which of the pleasure and dominance distribute as a straight line.And there is a high correlation between the familiarity and frequency of occurrence.Study1(experiment 1)utilized the positive and negative events in the same arousal as the experimental materials,and the names of self,close friend and the acquaintance as the priming materials.And the aim of this study is to investigate the influences of the self-other overlap on different types of emotion events.The results show that participants respond to positive events faster than negative events.In the positive events,there is a significant main effect of priming stimuli in judgment response times,specially,compared with priming materials of acquaintance's name,participants respond faster to positive events in the condition of self and close friend priming.In the negative events,there is no main effect of priming stimuli in judgment response times.The amplitudes of P2 elicited by emotion events in the acquaintance priming condition are larger than which in the self and close friend priming condition.The amplitudes of N400 elicited by negative events are larger than which elicited by positive events.And compared with acquaintance priming,the amplitudes of N400 elicited by emotion events in the self and close priming condition are larger.The finding suggests that the self-other overlap has an influence on positive/negative emotion events processing to a certain extent,but in experiment 1,we didn't consider the valence strength of the emotion events.The study 2 comprises 2 experiments,and we adopted the same paradigm as experiment 1,utilizing the positive and negative events of different valence strength as the experimental materials.The aim of this study is to investigate the influences of the self-other overlap on emotion events processing of different valence strength.The results of experiment 2 show that participants respond to emotion events in self and close friend priming condition faster than which in the acquaintance priming condition.Specially,in the highly and moderately positive events,the more intensive valence strength is,the faster judgment response is.There is only a significant main effect of priming stimuli in the mean amplitudes of P2,and there is not only a significant main effect of priming types,but also a significant main effect of valence strength in the mean amplitudes of N400.The amplitudes of N400 elicited by the emotion events in the self and close friend priming condition are larger than which in the acquaintance priming condition.Compared with highly positive emotion events,the amplitudes elicited by moderately positive and neutral events are larger.The results of experiment 3 show that there is a significant main effect of valence strength in emotion events.Compared with the highly negative events,participants' responses to moderately negative and neutral events are slower.There are significant main effects of priming types and valence strength in the mean amplitudes of P2.The amplitudes of P2 elicited by the emotion events in the acquaintance priming condition are larger than which in the self-priming condition,and the amplitudes of P2 elicited by highly negative events are larger than which elicited by neutral events.There are significant main effects of priming types and valence strength in the mean amplitudes of N400.The amplitudes of N400 elicited by the emotion events in the self-priming condition are larger than which in the close friend and acquaintance priming condition.Compared with highly negative emotion events,the amplitudes of N400 elicited by moderately negative and neutral events are larger.It suggests that the more intensive valence strength of the negative and positive events is,the faster response times are.And the amplitudes of N400 are significantly influenced by emotion valence and its strength.Meanwhile,the self-other overlap's impact on emotion events processing is regardless of the valence strength of emotion events.We investigate the influence of the self-other overlap on emotion processing in the non-threat situations in study 1 and study 2.The study 3 comprises 2 experiments,adopting the other-concept threat paradigm.The aim of this study is to investigate the influences of the-self-other overlap on self-related emotion events in the situation of threat information.The results of experiment 4 suggest that in the situation of mother-concept threat and acquaintance-concept threat,there is no significant main effect of valence.However,in the situation of non-threat,there is a marginally significant main effect of valence in response times.Participants respond to positive events faster than neutral events.There is a significant main effect of valence in the mean amplitude of P2,specially,compared with neutral events,negative events elicit larger amplitudes of P2.There are significant main effects of threat degree and valence in the mean amplitude of N400.Compared with the situation of mother-concept threat,in the condition of acquaintance-concept threat and non-threat,the self-related emotion events elicit smaller amplitudes of N400.Compared with neutral events,positive events elicit smaller amplitudes of N400.The results of experiment 5 show that there are significant main effects of threat degree and valence in response times.And the further analysis suggest that compared with the non-threat condition,participants response faster to self-related emotion events in the condition of mother-concept threat,and participants response slower to negative events than neutral events.There is a significant main effect of valence in the mean amplitudes of P2,and compared with neutral events,the negative events elicit larger amplitudes of P2.There are significant main effects of threat degree and valence in the mean amplitudes of N400.And the further analysis suggest that compared with the non-threat condition,the condition of mother-concept threat elicits the larger amplitudes of N400,and amplitudes of N400 elicited by neutral events are larger than which elicited by negative events.In negative events,there is a significant main effect of threat degree.In the negative events,there is a significant main effect of threat degree.And the amplitudes of N400 elicited by negative events in mother-threat condition are significantly larger than which elicited by the negative events in the acquaintance-concept threat and non-threat condition.These findings suggest that in the same threat information condition,compared with subjects of low overlap,the subjects of high overlap will suppress the processing of the self-related emotion events.In this paper,we summarize conclusions below based on these studies and analysis above.(1)The rating scores of the pleasure and arousal distribute as the "U",and which of the pleasure and dominance distribute as a straight line.The findings are consistent with the inherent features of positive,negative and neutral.These daily events can be regarded as the experimental materials to induce emotions,and they have social meanings.(2)The valence and its strength play important roles in processing emotion events.Individuals respond faster to positive events than negative events,and the more intensive the strength is,the faster the response times are.And the amplitudes of N400,which reflects the semantic integration,are influenced by the emotion valence and its strength.(3)The self-other overlap influences the processing of emotion events.When the overlap between priming subjects and self is high,individuals respond faster to subsequent positive events,and it will exert an influence on the early stage processing(amplitudes of P2)and late stage processing(amplitudes of N400)of emotion events.There is a similar neural response between the semantic integration of emotion events of self and subjects of high overlap.(4)In the same threat information condition,compared with subjects of low overlap,the self-related events in the subjects of high overlap condition elicit larger amplitudes of N400,and negative information of the subjects of high overlap will suppress the processing of the self-related emotion events.