Social interaction is a primary aspect of communicating how others judge us. It allows us to update ourselves and our expectations about others. While humans generally exhibit self-related positive biases in their updating behavior, theoretical accounts propose that this biased processing is attenuated, absent, or negatively biased in participants with depressive symptoms. The process of aligning and integrating social evaluative feedback in realistic interaction scenarios that would test this assumption is, however, lacking. We provide an event-related potential (ERP) study that combines neuronal (feedback-related negativity [FRN] and late positive potential [LPP]) and behavioral measures of evaluative feedback processing and updating behavior.

We selected healthy adults (N = 62) with depression scores spanning a range of low to high values, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Participants received feedback from supposed experts and peer senders, with the feedback being manipulated to be worse, congruent, or better than the participants’ self-ratings.

Participants with higher depression scores exhibited more negative initial self-ratings and developed a more negative feedback expectation across the experiment. In addition, we found that higher depression scores led to more negative updating toward worse expert feedback and less positive updating after better peer feedback. Concerning ERPs, unexpected but not self-incongruent feedback increased the FRN, while both types of incongruence increased the LPP. Finally, BDI scores correlated with LPP amplitudes for all feedback.

The results contribute to a deeper understanding of how individuals process and integrate social evaluative feedback and its relation to depressive symptoms.