Attenuated N400 indicates enhanced we – prioritization by depressive mood during integration of ingroup risk cues

Abstract The neural mechanisms through which depressive mood modulates we – prioritization in complex social contexts remain unclear. This study employed event – related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how depressive mood influences we – prioritization, the congruence between self and group in mental representations during socially risky tasks. Using the preference – based group induction, 59 participants completed a Willingness to Perform Social Tasks (WPST) paradigm involving creative (high – risk) and routine (low – risk) tasks for ingroup and outgroup. Behaviorally, participants showed greater willingness to perform tasks for the ingroup. Neurally, a reduced N400 amplitude was found for ingroup creative tasks (IGCT) compared to outgroup creative tasks (OGCT), indicating facilitated neural integration of ingroup cues under high risk. Crucially, higher scores on the Self – Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were associated with a greater reduction in N400 amplitude for IGCT relative to OGCT, indicating that individual differences in self – reported depressive mood correlate with the strength of this we – prioritization. No such correlation was found for routine tasks. These findings provide novel electrophysiological evidence that depressive mood adaptively modulates the cognitive prioritization of ingroup information specifically in socially risky contexts, providing preliminary evidence for the Social Risk Hypothesis of depressive mood and highlighting a context – sensitive mechanism in social cognition.