On stopping yourself: Self-relevance facilitates response inhibition

It is well documented that stimuli associated with the self are easier to process than identical material paired with other people (i.e., self-prioritization effect). Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about how self-relevance impacts core aspects of executive functioning, notably res...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Attention, perception & psychophysics perception & psychophysics, 2021-05, Vol.83 (4), p.1416-1423
Main Authors: Golubickis, Marius, Persson, Linn M., Falbén, Johanna K., Macrae, C. Neil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Executive Function
Experiments
Failure
Feedback (Response)
Humans
Inhibition
Laboratories
Ownership
Psychology
Reaction Time
Short Report
Software
Stimuli
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Summary:It is well documented that stimuli associated with the self are easier to process than identical material paired with other people (i.e., self-prioritization effect). Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about how self-relevance impacts core aspects of executive functioning, notably response inhibition. Accordingly, here we used a stop-signal task to establish how effectively responses toward self-relevant (vs. other-relevant) stimuli can intentionally be inhibited. In the context of personal possession, participants were required to classify stimuli (i.e., pens and pencils) based on ownership (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend/stranger), unless an occasional auditory tone indicated that the response should be withheld. The results revealed the benefits of self-relevance on response inhibition. Compared with items owned by a friend or stranger, responses to self-owned objects were inhibited more efficiently. These findings confirm that self-relevance facilitates executive control.
ISSN:1943-3921
1943-393X
DOI:10.3758/s13414-021-02248-7