Preserving Integrity in the Face of Performance Threat: Self-Affirmation Enhances Neurophysiological Responsiveness to Errors
Preserving Integrity in the Face of Performance Threat: Self-Affirmation Enhances Neurophysiological Responsiveness to Errors
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DOI：
10.1177/0956797612448483
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发表时间：
2012-12-01
影响因子：
8.2
通讯作者：
Inzlicht, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Legault, Lisa;Al-Khindi, Timour;Inzlicht, Michael
自我肯定会产生巨大的影响：即使是简单地提醒一个人的核心价值观，也会降低对威胁信息的防御能力。但是，自我肯定究竟是如何起作用的呢？我们通过研究自我肯定对威胁事件的神经生理反应的影响来探讨这个问题。我们假设，由于自我肯定增加了对威胁的开放性和对不利反馈的可接近性，它应该增加对表现错误的注意力和情感接受度。我们进一步假设，这种增强可以直接评估，在大脑的水平。我们测量了自我肯定和非自我肯定参与者在任务中犯错时的电生理反应。正如我们所预料的那样，自我肯定比不肯定引发了更大的错误反应，这是由错误相关的消极性（一种错误监测的神经信号）所指示的。自我肯定的参与者在任务中的表现也比不自我肯定的参与者好。我们提供了新的大脑证据，证明自我肯定会增加对威胁的开放性，并讨论了错误检测在自我肯定和表现之间的联系中的作用。
Self-affirmation produces large effects: Even a simple reminder of one's core values reduces defensiveness against threatening information. But how, exactly, does self-affirmation work? We explored this question by examining the impact of self-affirmation on neurophysiological responses to threatening events. We hypothesized that because self-affirmation increases openness to threat and enhances approachability of unfavorable feedback, it should augment attention and emotional receptivity to performance errors. We further hypothesized that this augmentation could be assessed directly, at the level of the brain. We measured self-affirmed and nonaffirmed participants' electrophysiological responses to making errors on a task. As we anticipated, self-affirmation elicited greater error responsiveness than did nonaffirmation, as indexed by the error-related negativity, a neural signal of error monitoring. Self-affirmed participants also performed better on the task than did nonaffirmed participants. We offer novel brain evidence that self-affirmation increases openness to threat and discuss the role of error detection in the link between self-affirmation and performance.