Moral concerns increase attention and response monitoring during IAT performance: ERP evidence

Félice van Nunspeet; Naomi Ellemers; Belle Derks; Sander Nieuwenhuis

doi:10.1093/scan/nss118

Moral concerns increase attention and response monitoring during IAT performance: ERP evidence

Félice van Nunspeet, Naomi Ellemers, Belle Derks, Sander Nieuwenhuis

Leiden University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Previous research has revealed that people value morality as a more important person characteristic than competence. In this study, we tested whether people adjust their less explicit behavior more to moral than competence values. Participants performed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that was either framed as a test of their morality or as a test of their competence. The behavioral results revealed a smaller IAT effect (i.e. a weaker negative implicit bias toward Muslims) in the morality condition than in the competence condition. Moreover, event-related potentials indicated increased social categorization of faces (as indexed by the N1 and P150) and enhanced conflict-and error monitoring (N450 and error-related negativity) in the morality condition compared to the competence condition. These findings indicate that an emphasis on morality can increase attentional and motivational processes that help to improve people's task performance.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	141-149
Number of pages	9
Journal	Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Volume	9
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss118
Publication status	Published - Feb 2014
Externally published	Yes

Funding

We thank Ilona Domen, Suzanne Cederhout, Reinier Lagerwerf, Piarella Rodriguez, Lenny van den Beukel, Jelle van Hasselt and Bart van Wingerde for their help with the data collection, and David Amodio, Guido Band, Stephen Brown, Eveline Crone and Henk van Steenbergen for their advice. This work was supported by the SNS-REAAL KNAW-Merian prize and the NWO Spinoza prize awarded to N.E. by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and a NWO VENI grant (451-08-022) awarded to B.D.

Keywords

morality
social categorization
conflict monitoring
error-related negativity
IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION TEST
INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES
BRAIN POTENTIALS
COMPETENCE
PREJUDICE
RACE
PERCEPTION
MALLEABILITY
MOTIVATION
COGNITION

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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci-2014-van Nunspeet-141-9
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title = "Moral concerns increase attention and response monitoring during IAT performance: ERP evidence",

abstract = "Previous research has revealed that people value morality as a more important person characteristic than competence. In this study, we tested whether people adjust their less explicit behavior more to moral than competence values. Participants performed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that was either framed as a test of their morality or as a test of their competence. The behavioral results revealed a smaller IAT effect (i.e. a weaker negative implicit bias toward Muslims) in the morality condition than in the competence condition. Moreover, event-related potentials indicated increased social categorization of faces (as indexed by the N1 and P150) and enhanced conflict-and error monitoring (N450 and error-related negativity) in the morality condition compared to the competence condition. These findings indicate that an emphasis on morality can increase attentional and motivational processes that help to improve people's task performance.",

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AU - Ellemers, Naomi

AU - Derks, Belle

AU - Nieuwenhuis, Sander

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Moral concerns increase attention and response monitoring during IAT performance: ERP evidence

Abstract

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Keywords

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