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. 2020 Jul 29;10(1):12677.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-69507-9.

Stronger resting-state neural oscillations associated with wiser advising from the 2nd- but not the 3rd-person perspective

Chengli Huang  1   2   3 , Haotian Zhang  1   2   3 , Jinhao Huang  1   2   3 , Cuiwen Duan  4 , Juensung J Kim  5 , Michel Ferrari  5 , Chao S Hu  6   7   8
Affiliations

Stronger resting-state neural oscillations associated with wiser advising from the 2nd- but not the 3rd-person perspective

Chengli Huang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

This is the first electroencephalogram study exploring the personal perspective effect on wise advising. Participants advised hypothetical protagonists in life dilemmas from both the 2nd- and 3rd-person perspective. Their advice for each dilemma was rated by two independent raters on wisdom criteria, i.e., metacognitive humility, metacognitive flexibility, and perspective taking. The results revealed that participants felt a significantly shorter psychological distance from protagonists when advising from the 2nd- (vs. the 3rd-) person perspective, p < 0.001. However, there was no significant effect of perspective condition on the wisdom score. Nevertheless, stronger resting-state absolute EEG powers in the frontal lobe were associated with wiser advising from the 2nd-, but not the 3rd-person perspective. Moreover, Z tests revealed that the correlations between the resting-state absolute EEG powers and wisdom scores were significantly stronger during advising from the 2nd- than the 3rd-person perspective. These results suggest that advising from the 2nd-person perspective was more self-related, and mental activities during rest contributed to advising from the 2nd- but not the 3rd-person perspective.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The electrocap layout and the focused area. F stands for the focused frontal lobe.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Across-participant correlations between wisdom scores from the 2nd-person perspective and resting-state absolute EEG powers in the frontal lobe. †p < 0.1, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Across-participant correlations between wisdom scores from the 3rd-person perspective and resting-state absolute EEG powers in the frontal lobe. †p < 0.1, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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