How Does Social Responsibility Affect Performance Monitoring in People with Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies?

What you need to know

• People with high obsessive-compulsive traits showed enhanced brain responses to errors when responsible for others’ outcomes compared to their own.
• Those with low obsessive-compulsive traits did not show this difference between self and other responsibility.
• The high obsessive-compulsive group reported more fear of making mistakes, especially when responsible for others.
• The findings suggest social contexts can amplify error monitoring in those prone to obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

How the brain responds to errors

Our brains have systems for detecting when we make mistakes and adjusting our behavior accordingly. This error monitoring process helps us learn and adapt our actions. Researchers can measure brain activity related to error monitoring using EEG (electroencephalography), which records electrical signals from the scalp.

A key brain signal related to error detection is called the error-related negativity (ERN). The ERN appears as a negative spike in electrical activity very quickly after someone makes an error on a task. A larger ERN generally indicates enhanced error monitoring.

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and heightened error monitoring

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often show an exaggerated ERN response. This suggests they may have overactive error monitoring systems in their brains. Even people with subclinical obsessive-compulsive traits tend to show larger ERNs.

However, most studies on this topic have looked at error monitoring in individual contexts only. The researchers wanted to examine how social situations might impact error monitoring, especially in people prone to obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

The social responsibility experiment

The researchers recruited two groups of healthy participants:

1. Those scoring low on a measure of obsessive-compulsive symptoms
2. Those scoring high on obsessive-compulsive symptoms

Participants completed a simple computer task while their brain activity was recorded with EEG. They had to quickly respond to arrow stimuli on the screen. The task was designed to cause participants to make some errors.

The key manipulation was that participants completed the task under three different conditions:

1. No responsibility - Errors had no consequences
2. Responsibility for self - Errors reduced the participant’s own monetary bonus
3. Responsibility for other - Errors reduced a confederate’s (fake participant’s) monetary bonus

Enhanced error signals when responsible for others

The key finding was that participants with high obsessive-compulsive traits showed larger ERNs (stronger error signals) when they were responsible for the other person’s outcomes compared to their own outcomes.

In contrast, those low in obsessive-compulsive traits did not show this difference between the self and other conditions. They actually showed slightly enhanced ERNs when responsible for themselves compared to the no responsibility condition.

Increased fear of mistakes

Participants also filled out questionnaires about their emotional reactions during the task. Those high in obsessive-compulsive traits reported:

• Feeling more responsible for their mistakes overall
• Greater fear of making mistakes, especially when responsible for the other person
• Disliking errors more in general

The increase in ERN amplitude when responsible for others correlated with increased fear of making mistakes in that condition.

Conclusions

• Social contexts where one’s mistakes can harm others may amplify error monitoring processes in people prone to obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
• This fits with the tendency for OCD to involve excessive concern about harming others and inflated sense of responsibility.
• Considering social factors may help better understand altered performance monitoring in OCD.
• Future research should examine if similar effects occur in diagnosed OCD patients and how this relates to symptoms.

This study provides new insights into how social responsibility contexts can modulate the brain’s error detection systems, particularly in those with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. The findings highlight the importance of considering social factors when studying cognitive processes related to OCD and similar conditions.