Self-Other Differences In Affective Forecasting:Evidence From Behavior And ERP

Affective forecasting is an individual’s prediction of emotional response to future events,and the predicted result is anticipated emotion.In the past 30 years,previous studies mainly focused on self emotional forecasting.Interpersonal emotional forecasting has also begun to attract attention in recent years.However,it is rare to investigate the differences between self emotional forecasting and interpersonal emotional forecasting at the same time.In fact,the differences between self and others in moral judgment and risk decision-making caused by social distance have been widely found,so does the same phenomenon exist in affective forecasting? Based on mental simulation,episodic future thinking and construction level theory,this study exploreed the self-other difference and its cognitive and neural mechanism of affective forecasting through three experiments with the intensity and duration of anticipated emotion as indicators.In study 1,103 college students were recruited to adapt future emotional scenario statements focusing on academic and interpersonal themes.A mixed experimental design of 2(social distance: self,stranger)×2(event valence: positive,negative)×2(theme: academic,interpersonal)was adopted to explore the influence of social distance on affective forecasting.The results showed that the main effect of social distance was significant,the intensity and duration of self emotional forecasting were significantly greater than that of interpersonal emotional forecasting.The main effect of event valence was significant in the intensity of anticipated emotion,and the intensity of positive anticipated emotion was greater than that of negative anticipated emotion.The interaction between social distance and event valence was not significant.On the basis of study 1,Study 2 recruited 96 college students with future emotional situation statements of academic topics as experimental materials,and adopted 2(social distance: self,stranger)×2(event valence: positive,negative)twofactor mixed experimental design to further explored the cognitive mechanism of selfother difference in affective forecasting.The results again verified the self-other difference in affective forecasting,and found that the level of mental simulation and coping resources played different mediating roles.In Study 3,ERP technology was adopted to explore the influence of social distance on affective forecasting and its EEG characteristics.31 college students were recruited and the two factors of 2(event titer: positive,negative)×2(social distance:self,stranger)were adopted in the experiment design.The results again verified the findings of study 1 and Study 2,that is,the main effect of social distance was significant,and it was found that the interaction between social distance and event valence was significant in response time.In the positive situation,self emotional forecasting was significantly faster than interpersonal emotional forecasting,while in the negative situation,there was no significant difference between the two.ERP results show that negative future events capture more attention resources and induce larger N1 and P2 amplitude than positive future events in self emotional forecasting.In the TP450(400-500ms)time window,the positive waves induced by interpersonal emotional forecasting were larger,suggesting that the temporoparietal association area may be responsible for the self-other differentiation and the representation of others’ information.In the LFC(500-600ms)time window,predicting the emotions of others for future negative events elicited larger amplitude,suggesting that late frontal positive waves may be related to the processing of inhibition of egocentric bias in predicting others.In conclusion,from the behavioral level,this study reveals the existence of selfothers differences in affective forecasting,and mental simulation level and coping resources played different mediating roles in intensity and duration.Moreover,from the cognitive neural level,this study preliminarily exploreed the processing process and relative time process of self-interpersonal emotional forecasting.This study showed the universality of self-other differences in social cognition,including affective forecasting,and provides new evidence for the construction-level theory from the perspective of mental simulation of future events.