Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance

Abstract

Social cues have subtle effects on a person, often without them being aware. One explanation for this influence involves implicit priming of trait associations. To study this effect, we activated implicit associations in participants of 'being Clever' or 'being Stupid' that were task relevant, and studied its behavioural impact on an independent cognitive task (the n-back task). Activating a representation of 'Clever' caused participants to slow their reaction times after errors on the working memory task, while the reverse pattern was seen for associations to 'Stupid'. Critically, these behavioural effects were absent in control conditions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that the neural basis of this effect involves the anterior paracingulate cortex (area 32) where activity tracked the observed behavioural pattern, increasing its activity during error monitoring in the 'Clever' condition and decreasing in the 'Stupid' condition. The data provide a quantitative demonstration of how implicit cues, which specifically target a person's self-concept, influences the way we react to our own behaviour and point to the anterior paracingulate cortex as a critical cortical locus for mediating these self-concept related behavioural regulations.

Fig. 1

(A) We used the 2-back task for letters as the task of interest. For each letter that they saw, the participants made either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ response. If the current letter also appeared two letters back a yes response should be made. The memory task was preceded by the language task that served as the prime. (B) The conditions, as defined by the trait primed, fitted in a 2*2 factorial design with valence varying one axis, and task-relevance varying on the other.

Fig. 2

As an estimate of cognitive control, we measured the RTs for the subsequent correct response after an error, and compared this with the RT’s for other correct responses. We found a significant within-subject valence*task-relevance interaction for this measure (P < 0.05), as well as a within-subject simple effect between task-relevant primes (P < 0.004). There were no significant differences between the four conditions when investigating correct responses after correct responses.

Fig. 3

(A) The activation in the mid anterior cingulate cortex represents error detection on the n-back task. There was no significant difference in this area between the four conditions [P < 0.05 corrected conjunction analysis (Clever and Stupid and Happy and Sad)]. (B) The imaging data revealed a significant positive interaction in the anterior paracingulate cortex {P < 0.02 corrected [(Clever + Sad) vs (Stupid + Happy)]}. Note that the BOLD pattern resembles the pattern of post-error RT for the different conditions. (C) Prime sensitive activation in the anterior paracingulate cortex (shown in green) lay anterior to that of medial prefrontal activation generally seen for error detection (shown in red). The SPMs are thresholded at P < 0.05 uncorrected. (D) The time course of activation is plotted for the four conditions at the event of making errors on the n-back task. The time series of the BOLD signals is taken at the coordinate 10 50 30. The plot represents the average value for the whole group, as well as the standard error of the mean.

Fig. 4

The insula was active in response to errors for the two negative primes {P < 0.01 corrected [(Stupid + Sad) vs (Clever + Happy)]}.