Social status modulates cooperative feedback processing: Electrophysiological evidence from an event-related potential study

Collaboration is essential, as both one's own and others' performance impact outcomes. However, little is known about how social status affects performance and reward processing during cooperation. This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate neural responses during cooperative tasks with high- and low-status partners, where participants were assigned middle status after a math competition. ERP signals were recorded as they observed self-performance, partner performance, and cooperative outcomes. Results revealed asymmetric processing: participants referenced their performance when evaluating others', while self-performance processing was less influenced by others'. In the self-other performance order, participants showed more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) following others' incorrect performance after their own correct performance, and larger P2 to others' correct performance after their own incorrect performance. In the other-self order, smaller P2 and more negative FRN were found for self-incorrect performance regardless of partners' performance, with only the P2 effect larger when partners were incorrect. Moreover, high-status partners elicited more negative FRN than low-status partners when others performed correctly; this difference disappeared when others performed incorrectly. For order-independent cooperative outcomes, with high-status partners, the FRN was more negative and the P3a was smaller for self-loss than self-gain when partners gained, reversing when partners lost. With low-status partners, only the P3a difference persisted when partners gained, while both components mirrored the high-status pattern when partners lost. These findings suggest that social status shapes sequential cooperative feedback processing, particularly during the later integrative stage in which cooperative outcomes are evaluated under prior knowledge of self and partner performance.