This study was interested in investigating the existence of a shared psychological mechanism for the processing of expectations across domains. The literature on music and language shows that violations of expectations produce similar neural responses and violating the expectation in one domain may influence the processing of stimuli in the other domain. Like music and language, our social world is governed by a system of inherent rules or norms, such as fairness. The study therefore aimed to draw a parallel to the social domain and investigate whether a manipulation of melodic expectation can influence the processing of higher-level expectations of fairness. Specifically, we aimed to investigate whether the presence of an unexpected melody enhances or reduces participants' sensitivity to the violations of fairness and the behavioural reactions associated with these. We embedded a manipulation of melodic expectation within a social decision-making paradigm, whereby musically expected and unexpected stimuli will be simultaneously presented with fair and unfair divisions in a third-party altruistic punishment game. Behavioural and electroencephalographic responses were recorded. Results from the pre-planned analyses show that participants are less likely to punish when melodies are more unexpected and that violations of fairness norms elicit medial frontal negativity (MFN)-life effects. Because no significant interactions between melodic expectancy and fairness of the division were found, results fail to provide evidence of a shared mechanism for the processing of expectations. Exploratory analyses show two additional effects: (i) unfair divisions elicit an early attentional component (P2), probably associated with stimulus saliency, and (ii) mid-value divisions elicit a late MFN-like component, probably reflecting stimulus ambiguity. Future studies could build on these results to further investigate the effect of the cross-domain influence of music on the processing of social stimuli on these early and late components.

这项研究有兴趣调查跨域处理期望的共享心理机制的存在。关于音乐和语言的文献表明，对期望的违反会产生类似的神经反应，而在一个领域违反期望可能会影响另一领域对刺激的处理。像音乐和语言一样，我们的社会世界也受制于固有规则或规范（例如公平性）的系统。因此，该研究旨在与社会领域相提并论，并探讨对旋律期望的操纵是否会影响对公平更高层次期望的处理。具体来说，我们旨在调查是否出现意外的旋律会增强还是降低参与者的 对违反公平行为的敏感性以及与之相关的行为反应。我们在社会决策范式中嵌入了对旋律期望的操纵，从而在第三方利他惩罚游戏中，音乐期望和意料之外的刺激将与公平和不公平的划分同时呈现。记录行为和脑电图反应。预先计划的分析结果表明，当旋律更出乎意料时，参与者不太可能受到惩罚，并且违反公平规范会引起内侧额叶负性（MFN）-生活效应。由于没有发现旋律期望与除法公平之间的显着相互作用，因此结果无法提供处理期望的共享机制的证据。探索性分析显示了两个附加影响：（i）不公平的划分会引起早期注意成分（P2），可能与刺激的显着性有关；（ii）中值划分会引起类似MFN的后期成分，可能反映出刺激性的含混性。未来的研究可以在这些结果的基础上进一步研究音乐对这些早期和晚期成分的社会刺激处理的跨域影响。