Frontal negativity: An electrophysiological index of interpersonal guilt

ABSTRACT

The present study aimed to reveal the temporal course and electrophysiological correlates of interpersonal guilt. Human participants were asked to perform multiple rounds of a dot-estimation task with their partners, while event-related potential being recorded. The paired participants were informed that they would win money if both responded correctly; otherwise, both of them would lose money. The feeling of guilt in Self-Wrong condition (SW) was significantly higher than that in Both-Wrong and Partner-Wrong conditions. At approximately 350 ms after the onset of feedback presentation, greater negativities were observed in the frontal regions in the guilt condition (i.e., SW) than those in the non-guilt condition. The guilt-modulated frontal negativity might reflect the interactions of self-reflection, condemnation, and negative emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal guilt
• frontal negativity
• self-reflection

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Gao Heming for his help in analyzing data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [NSFC, 31300844, 31571118].