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

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...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bengtsson, S, Dolan, R, Passingham, R
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2011
_version_ 1826294535909539840
author Bengtsson, S
Dolan, R
Passingham, R
author_facet Bengtsson, S
Dolan, R
Passingham, R
author_sort Bengtsson, S
collection OXFORD
description 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.
first_indexed 2024-03-07T03:47:10Z
format Journal article
id oxford-uuid:bfe0a23c-f71a-4f85-acb9-a955f858d1d9
institution University of Oxford
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-07T03:47:10Z
publishDate 2011
record_format dspace
spelling oxford-uuid:bfe0a23c-f71a-4f85-acb9-a955f858d1d92022-03-27T05:50:43ZPriming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:bfe0a23c-f71a-4f85-acb9-a955f858d1d9EnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2011Bengtsson, SDolan, RPassingham, RSocial 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.
spellingShingle Bengtsson, S
Dolan, R
Passingham, R
Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title_full Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title_fullStr Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title_full_unstemmed Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title_short Priming for self-esteem influences the monitoring of one's own performance.
title_sort priming for self esteem influences the monitoring of one s own performance
work_keys_str_mv AT bengtssons primingforselfesteeminfluencesthemonitoringofonesownperformance
AT dolanr primingforselfesteeminfluencesthemonitoringofonesownperformance
AT passinghamr primingforselfesteeminfluencesthemonitoringofonesownperformance