Abstract
The present study investigated various attitudes toward social-psychological stress among individuals by examining behavior and contingent negative variation (CNV) in a cued reaction time task under critical competitive situations. Participants exhibiting high or low levels of competitiveness completed the task, competing on reaction speed with a visible or invisible opponent. The measures of individual arousal (early CNV) and, motor preparation or stimulus anticipation (late CNV) were collected and analyzed by a principal component analysis (PCA). For subjects exhibiting low levels of competitiveness, the amplitude of the late CNV was larger and reaction time (RT) was shorter when winning a trial, and the early CNV was also larger and RT was shorter when competing with a visible opponent. For subjects with high levels of competitiveness, the late CNV was larger in competitive situations with a visible opponent than with an invisible one, independent of RT. The early CNV exhibited a more anterior distribution, while the late CNV was located predominantly from the central to the parietal region and from the midline to the right hemisphere, a distribution which resembles that of stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN). These findings suggest that less competitive individuals have a chance of winning when motor preparation is adequate and their arousal level increases when they are acutely aware of their opponents, and that more competitive individuals may be highly motivated to win when they become more aware of their opponents.
