Exposure to money modulates neural responses to outcome evaluations involving social reward

Recent research suggests that exposure to monetary cues strengthens an individual’s motivation to pursue monetary rewards by inducing the ‘market mode’ (i.e. thinking and behaving in accordance with market principles). Here, we examined the effect of market mode on social reward processes by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants primed with monetary images or neutral images acted as advisors who selected one of two options for a putative advisee. Subsequently, all participants passively observed the advisee accepting or rejecting their advice and receiving a gain or loss outcome. After money priming, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) to the advisee’s gain/loss outcome was larger following incorrect as compared to correct advice irrespective of whether the advice had been accepted or rejected. A smaller P3 following incorrect advice showed only when the advice was rejected. After neutral priming, the FRN was larger for incorrect relative to correct advice only when the advice had been rejected. However, the P3 was larger for correct relative to incorrect advice irrespective of the advisee’s final choice. These findings suggest that the market mode facilitates early and automatic feedback processing but reduces later and controlled responding to outcomes that had been accepted.