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Present‐self, past‐self and the close‐other: neural correlates of assigning trait adjectives to oneself and others
Author(s) -
Kotlewska Ilona,
Nowicka Anna
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.13293
Subject(s) - trait , psychology , neural correlates of consciousness , event related potential , self , self reflection , late positive component , cognitive psychology , social psychology , self enhancement , information processing , task (project management) , developmental psychology , electroencephalography , cognition , computer science , neuroscience , management , psychoanalysis , economics , programming language
Information regarding the past‐self may be viewed as information referring to other people. However, evidence supporting this notion at the neural level is rather sparse and it remains unclear whether the past‐self is processed like any ‘other’ or like the close‐other only. The aim of this event‐related potential study was to investigate this issue. A reflection task requiring evaluation of positive and negative trait adjectives with respect to present‐ and past‐self, a close‐other and a famous person was applied. We hypothesized that the past‐self and close‐other conditions would share their neural underpinnings. The process of reflection on the past‐self and close‐other was indeed associated with similar mean amplitudes of the late positive component (LPC), whereas in the case of the past‐self vs. famous person comparison LPC was significantly enhanced for the past‐self. Analogous effects were observed when LPC was calculated for trials with traits judged as either suitable or unsuitable to describe a person who was the target of reflection. Thus, these findings suggest that the processing of information related to the past‐self resembles processing of information related to a personally relevant other. Moreover, sex‐differences were observed in reaction times and LPC amplitudes for responses reflecting the positivity bias.