Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Center of Group Behavior and Social Psychological Service, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Br J Psychol. 2023 Aug;114(3):662-677. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12643. Epub 2023 Mar 7.
People expect group members to act consistently. However, because actions are organized hierarchically, incorporating deep-level goals and shallow-level movements, it remains unclear what level of action is expected to be consistent among group members. We determined that these two levels of action representations can be dissociated in object-directed actions and measured the late positive potential (LPP), which indicates expectation. We found that participants identified a new agent's actions more quickly when this agent pursued a consistent goal while moving in a manner inconsistent with group members than when this agent pursued an inconsistent goal while moving in the same manner as group members. Moreover, this facilitation effect disappeared when the new agent was from a different group, revealing goal-based expectations for consistent actions among group members. The LPP amplitude during the action-expectation phase was greater for agents from the same group than for agents from a different group, suggesting that people implicitly generate clearer action expectations for group members than for other individuals. Additionally, the behavioural facilitation effect was observed when the goal of actions was clearly identifiable (i.e. performing rational actions to reach an external target) rather than when there was no clear association between actions and external targets (i.e. performing irrational actions). The LPP amplitude during the action-expectation phase was greater after observing rational actions than after observing irrational actions performed by two agents from the same group, and the expectation-related increase in LPP predicted the behavioural measurements of the facilitation effect. Hence, the behavioural and event-related potential evidence suggest that people implicitly expect group members to behave consistently according to goals rather than movements per se.
人们期望群体成员的行为保持一致。然而，由于行为是按照层次组织的，包含深层次的目标和浅层次的动作，因此尚不清楚成员之间期望的行为是哪一个层次的。我们确定这两种行为表示可以在物体指向的动作中分离出来，并测量晚期正电位（LPP），这表明了期望。我们发现，当新的代理追求一致的目标而以与群体成员不一致的方式移动时，参与者比当新的代理追求不一致的目标而以与群体成员相同的方式移动时更快地识别出新代理的动作。此外，当新代理来自不同的群体时，这种促进效应消失了，这揭示了群体成员之间对一致行为的基于目标的期望。在动作期望阶段，来自同一群体的代理的 LPP 振幅大于来自不同群体的代理的 LPP 振幅，这表明人们会对群体成员产生比其他个体更清晰的动作期望。此外，当动作的目标可以清晰识别（即执行理性的动作以达到外部目标）而不是动作与外部目标之间没有明确关联（即执行非理性的动作）时，就会观察到行为促进效应。在观察到来自同一群体的两个代理执行理性动作后，LPP 在动作期望阶段的振幅大于观察到执行非理性动作后，并且与动作相关的 LPP 增加预测了促进效应的行为测量。因此，行为和事件相关电位的证据表明，人们会根据目标而不是动作本身，潜意识地期望群体成员保持一致的行为。
