Social value orientation modulates the processing of outcome evaluation involving others

Social value orientation (SVO) is a stable personality trait that reflects how people evaluate interdependent outcomes for themselves and others in social environments. Generally, people can be classified into two types: proselfs and prosocials. The present study examined how SVO affects the processing of outcome evaluation temporally using the event-related potential (ERP). Young adults with two different SVO types participated in a simple gambling task in which they received outcome distributions for themselves and others. The results showed that for the self outcomes, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was more negative for self-loss than self-gain, and the P3 and late positive component (LPC) was larger for self-gain than self-loss in both prosocial and proself groups. For the other outcomes, however, the FRN, P3 and LPC were sensitive to other’s gain and loss only in the prosocial group but not in the proself group. These findings suggest that outcomes for oneself and others are processed differently at different stages of evaluation processing in the brains of individuals with distinct SVOs.