You do you: susceptibility of temporal binding to self-relevance

Abstract

The self-prioritization effect suggests that self-relevant information has a processing advantage over information that is not directly associated with the self. In consequence, reaction times are faster and accuracy rates higher when reacting to self-associated stimuli rather than to other-related stimuli (Sui et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 38:1105–1117, 2012). This spurs the assumption that self-associated action–effects should also be perceived earlier than other-related outcomes. One way to measure this is temporal binding. Previous research indeed showed that the perceived temporal interval between actions and self-associated outcomes was reduced compared to friend- and other-associated outcomes. However, the employed method (interval estimations) and several experimental design choices make it impossible to discern whether the perceived shortening of the interval between a keypress and a self-relevant outcome is due to a perceptual shift of the action or of the action–effect or both. Thus, we conducted four experiments to assess whether temporal binding can indeed be modulated by self-relevance and if so where this perceptual bias is located. The results did not support stronger temporal binding for self- vs other-related action–effects. We discuss these results against the backdrop of the attentional basis of self-prioritization and propose directions for future research.