Electrophysiological evidence for executive control and efficient categorization involved in implicit self-evaluation

Abstract

Self-esteem affects human life. A thorough examination of the cognitive processes and neural activations of implicit self-evaluation should aid our understanding of self-esteem. The current study examined electrophysiological correlates of implicit self-evaluation among 19 healthy participants using event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during an Implicit Association Test (IAT). Behavioral results showed that participants responded faster in the compatible condition (compared to the incompatible condition) in which “self” was paired with “positive” traits and “others” was paired with “negative” traits, reflecting positive nature of implicit self-evaluation. ERP results showed that the incompatible condition elicited a larger N200 and a smaller P3 compared to the compatible condition. These findings indicated that both executive control and stimulus categorization were involved in implicit self-evaluation, reflected by N200 and P3, respectively. We accordingly suggested that implicit self-evaluation manifests in multiple cognitive processes.

Keywords:

• Self-evaluation
• Implicit Association Test
• Event-Related Potentials
• N200
• P3

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants No. 31200789] and the Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Grant Nos. Y0CX363S01 and Y2CQ013005].