The Influence of Facial Attractiveness and Advice Feedback on Advisors’ Subsequent Willingness to Continue Giving Advice: Evidence from ERPs

Advice-giving during social interaction is not a one-way flow of information. Instead, it constitutes a dynamic process that includes offering advice, receiving feedback, and adjusting subsequent behaviors. Few studies have examined how advisees’ facial attractiveness and feedback type together shape advisors’ willingness to keep providing advice, as well as the corresponding neural temporal patterns. In this study, we adopted an advice-giving game paradigm. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) when 28 participants received feedback and made subsequent advice decisions, to explore the interaction between facial attractiveness and feedback type. Behavioral results showed that both high facial attractiveness and acceptance feedback significantly increased advisors’ willingness to continue giving advice. Moreover, an interaction effect was observed: compared with rejection feedback, the influence of facial attractiveness on willingness to continue advising was relatively weaker under acceptance feedback. ERP results revealed that high facial attractiveness evoked greater P300 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes at the feedback reception stage. Under acceptance conditions, low facial attractiveness evoked greater feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitudes. At the advice decision stage, high facial attractiveness similarly elicited larger P300 and LPP amplitudes, while low facial attractiveness produced greater N2 amplitudes in acceptance trials. These findings indicate that facial attractiveness affects static social evaluation and also shapes the dynamic interaction sequence of giving advice, receiving feedback and forming subsequent decisions. Attractive faces and acceptance feedback may possess greater motivational significance and social salience, thereby promoting advisors’ subsequent willingness to provide advice.