'If you are good, I get better': the role of social hierarchy in perceptual decision-making

So far, it was unclear if social hierarchy could influence sensory or perceptual cognitive processes. We evaluated the effects of social hierarchy on these processes using a basic visual perceptual decision task. We constructed a social hierarchy where participants performed the perceptual task sepa...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Santamaría-García, Hernando 1981-, Pannunzi, Mario, Ayneto Gimeno, Alba, Deco, Gustavo, Sebastián Gallés, Núria
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2014
Country:España
Institution:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repository:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/69070
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/69070
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst133
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Perceptual process
Decision-making
Social hierarchy
Description
Summary:So far, it was unclear if social hierarchy could influence sensory or perceptual cognitive processes. We evaluated the effects of social hierarchy on these processes using a basic visual perceptual decision task. We constructed a social hierarchy where participants performed the perceptual task separately with two covertly simulated players (superior, inferior). Participants were faster (better) when performing the discrimination task with the superior player. We studied the time course when social hierarchy was processed using event-related potentials and observed hierarchical effects even in early stages of sensory-perceptual processing, suggesting early top–down modulation by social hierarchy. Moreover, in a parallel analysis, we fitted a drift-diffusion model (DDM) to the results to evaluate the decision making process of this perceptual task in the context of a social hierarchy. Consistently, the DDM pointed to nondecision time (probably perceptual encoding) as the principal period influenced by social hierarchy.