The Impact of Negative Social Feedback on Behavioral Inhibition in Smokers: A Series of Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Evidence

Since smoking behavior has social implications, negative social feedback targeting smoking behavior may be an important pathway for enhancing behavioral inhibition in smokers. However, no study has yet explored this possibility. To this end, the present study manipulated the type of negative social feedback (smoking feedback vs. general feedback) and employed a smoking-related Go/Nogo paradigm to investigate the effects of negative social feedback from different sources on smokers' smoking craving and behavioral inhibition, as well as the temporal dynamics of these effects in the brain. The results showed that: (1) after the induction of negative social feedback, behavioral inhibition performance declined in the general feedback group, but behavioral inhibition performance improved significantly in the smoking feedback group, and this...