Collectivism is associated with enhanced neural response to socially salient errors among adolescents

The perceived salience of errors can be influenced by individual-level motivational factors. Specifically, those who endorse a high degree of collectivism, a cultural value that emphasizes prioritization of interpersonal relationships, may find errors occurring in a social context to be more aversive than individuals who endorse collectivism to a lesser degree, resulting in upregulation of a neural correlate of error-monitoring, the error-related negativity (ERN). This study aimed to identify cultural variation in neural response to errors occurring in a social context in a sample of diverse adolescents. It was predicted that greater collectivism would be associated with enhanced neural response to errors occurring as part of a team. Participants were 95 Latinx (n = 35), Asian American (n = 20) and non-Latinx White (n = 40) adolescents (ages 13–17) who completed a go/no-go task while continuous electroencephalogram was recorded. The task included social (team) and non-social (individual) conditions. ERN was quantified using mean amplitude measures. Regression models demonstrated that collectivism modulated neural response to errors occurring in a social context, an effect that was most robust for Latinx adolescents. Understanding cultural variation in neural sensitivity to social context could inform understanding of both normative and maladaptive processes associated with self-regulation.