People with social anxiety symptoms (SAS) have an inflated sense of responsibility towards the mistakes that might cause them embarrassment or humiliation. This event-related potential (ERP) study...Show morePeople with social anxiety symptoms (SAS) have an inflated sense of responsibility towards the mistakes that might cause them embarrassment or humiliation. This event-related potential (ERP) study examined individual differences in SAS in social performance monitoring through focusing on the role of perceived responsibility in error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). Healthy volunteers with low (N = 22), specific (N = 26), or generalized (N = 17) SAS took part in the study. Participants completed a Flanker task under the observation of a co-actor in three conditions where their errors resulted in one of the following negative monetary consequences: no harm, harm to oneself, or harm to the other. Behavioural findings suggested an opposite direction of responding to errors between two groups where the low showed more impulsive response patterns, while the specific one showed a cautious one. Moreover, ERP results showed no group differences and unaffected ERN and Pe across conditions. However, an exploratory analysis comparing only generalized and low SAS groups showed that people with generalized SAS displayed enhanced ERNs when they were responsible for other’s compared to their own bonus, but not after controlling for OCD symptoms. These findings suggest that inflated sense of responsibility in generalized SAS is more relevant to situations that involve responsibility towards others compared to oneself. The study also highlights the need for investigating the impact of perceived responsibility in social performance monitoring of people with SAS, but then by explicitly focusing on mistakes that trigger embarrassment.Show less