Interpersonal Relationship Modulates Outcome Evaluation In A Social Comparison Context

Previous research has revealed that interpersonal relationships and social comparisons play important roles in evaluating outcomes.To our knowledge,the interaction between these two factors remains largely unclear,that is how interpersonal relationships influence the process of outcome evaluations in a social comparison context.Interpersonal relationships are very important in daily life,including natural interpersonal relationships and priming interpersonal relationships.Previous studies have explored the interpersonal relationship modulates outcome evaluation in the cooperation or competition context,but few have studied the interpersonal relationship modulates outcome evaluation in the social comparison context.Therefore,exploring the influence of interpersonal relationship on outcome evaluation in the social comparison context can fill the gap in this aspect and enrich related research.Experiment 1 explored the natural interpersonal relationship modulates outcome evaluation in social comparison context and revealed its time process characteristics.Participants played a simple gambling task with an acquaintance or a stranger and received outcome feedback.On the behavioral level,satisfaction scores were sensitive to the other player's outcomes only when participants themselves received a gain.Furthermore,the satisfaction score was sensitive to the other's outcome only when participants compared themselves to a friend as opposed to a stranger.Event-related potential(ERP)results showed that when participants gained,the feedback-related negativity(FRN)was larger for the other's loss than the other's gain.Moreover,the FRN was also larger for a friend's gain than a stranger's gain.The FRN patterns were reversed in the self-loss condition: the FRN was larger for the other's gain than the other's loss regardless of the kind of interpersonal relationship.However,the P300 registered participants' attention resource allocation towards monetary gains for themselves and for others,unaffected by the nature of the interpersonal relationship.The results showed that expectations of other's outcomes are different between participant's own gain and loss.Meanwhile,the influence of the interpersonal relationship type manifested only when both oneself and others received monetary gains(indexed by the FRN).Experiment 2 explored the priming interpersonal relationship modulates outcome evaluation in social comparison context and revealed its time process characteristics.First,Participants completed a trust game task with two other fake players so as to manipulate the interpersonal relationship between participants and the other two fake players.Then,participants played a simple gambling task with a like or dislike player and received outcome feedback.On the behavioral level,for the dislike player,no matter participants themselves lose or win,the satisfaction score of others' losing is greater than others' winning.But for the like player,only when participants win,the satisfaction score of others' winning is greater than others' losing.The ERP results showed that the FRN induced by other people winning money was more negative than that caused by losing money,only when the participants were faced with the dislike player and lost money themselves.The P300 fluctuation is not affected by interpersonal relationship,only reflecting the participants' allocation of attention resources to the monetary benefits for themselves.The research results showed that the participants only show interpersonal effect when they lose money,and they are more concerned about the dislike player winning money(indexed by the FRN).This study drawed the following conclusions:1)The behavior results found that interpersonal relationship modulates others' outcome evaluation in social comparison context depend on the self winning or losing state;2)FRN results showed that the result assessment in the social comparison context is sensitive to interpersonal relationship differences in the early stage;3)P300 results showed that there was no interpersonal relationship difference in the later processing of the evaluation results,but only reflected the attention resource allocation of participants to the positive results.4)The patterns of natural interpersonal relationship and priming interpersonal relationship were both similar and different,and interpersonal relationship differences were found in the early stage of result evaluation,but the specific difference patterns were different.In summary,the current results extended the information of social comparison time processing in different types of interpersonal relationships.