Dissociable individuals' neural responses to morality and competence evaluations during the anticipatory and consummatory stages.

Previous studies have shown that individuals assign differential weight to morality versus competence during feedback processing. However, these studies failed to disentangle the anticipatory and consummatory stages from feedback processing. Therefore, using event-related potentials, the current study adapted an effort-based prosocial task to explore individuals' neural response to morality and competence evaluations in both the anticipatory and consummatory stages. Behaviorally, an interaction effect between evaluation valence and evaluation dimension showed that competence evaluations were rated as more negative than morality evaluations when evaluations were negative, while competence evaluations were rated as more arousing than morality evaluations when evaluations were positive. The ERP results revealed that, during the anticipatory stage, the Cue-P3 was larger when participants received competence cues relative to morality cues in positive contexts. Conversely, the SPN was larger after receiving morality cues compared to competence cues in positive contexts. In the consummatory stages, the LPP was larger for morality evaluations compared to competence evaluations, regardless of positive or negative evaluations. In conclusion, these results provide evidence for a dissociable effect between morality and competence evaluations during both anticipatory and consummatory stages.