The influence of pride emotion on executive function: Evidence from ERP

BACKGROUND: The current study examined the influence of positive “basic” emotions on executive function; there is limited evidence about the influence of positive “self‐conscious”emotions, such as pride, on executive functions processes. METHODS: Pride is a status‐related self‐conscious emotion and the present research explored the influence of pride on the subcomponents of executive function, using three experiments that adopted the digit size‐parity switching, N‐back, and dual choice oddball paradigms. RESULTS: The behavioral results suggested that cognitive load and behavior inhibition effects in the pride emotion were significantly higher than the neutral emotion. The ERP results showed that the pride emotion elicited smaller P3 difference wave for the switching task and dual choice oddball task. In the N‐back task, the pride emotion elicited larger N1 amplitude and smaller P2 difference wave compared to the neutral emotion. A comparison among results from the three experiments indicated that pride emotion restrains all subcomponents of executive function, though with different manifestations of the impact. CONCLUSION: Experiencing positive emotions is typically viewed as desirable and adaptive in educational settings; however, pride as a unique positive emotion may damage people's cognitive performance, indicating that we need to be cautious when performing cognitive operations in a pride mood.