Incidental sadness biases social economic decisions in the ultimatum game

Item does not contain fulltextRecent dual-process models of decision making have suggested that emotion plays an important role in decision making: however, the impact of incidental moods (i.e., emotions unrelated to the immediate situation) on decisions remains poorly explored. This question was investigated by inducing 2 basic emotional states (amusement or sadness) that were compared with a neutral-emotion control group. Decision making was assessed with a well-studied social task, the Ultimatum Game. In this task, participants had to make decisions to either accept or reject monetary offers from other players, offers that varied in their degree of unfairness. Emotion was induced with short movie clips. Induced sadness interacted with otter fairness, with higher sadness resulting in lower acceptance rates of unfair offers. Induced amusement was not associated with any significant biases in decision making. These results demonstrate that even subtle incidental moods can play an important role in biasing decision making. Implications of these results in regards to the emotion, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical literatures are discussed

Unilateral hand contractions produce motivational biases in social economic decision making

Item does not contain fulltextObjective: Unilateral hand contractions have been shown to induce relative activation of the contralateral hemisphere, which is in turn associated with distinct motivational states. Specifically, right hand contraction increases relative left activation and promotes an approach state, and left hand contractions promote relative right activation and withdrawal states. Using the same hand clenching technique, the present study extends this research to examine the incidental role of motivational tendency on interactive economic decision making. Method: A total of 75 right-handed participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions, including withdrawal/left-hand contractions, approach/right-hand contractions, and control/no contraction. Participants completed 2 well-known economic tasks, namely the Ultimatum Game (UG), Dictator Game (DG). Results: In the UG, we found that relative to individuals in the withdrawal condition, those in the approach (right-hand contraction) condition made higher monetary offers to human partners who could either accept or reject these offers. Moreover, those in the approach condition rejected significantly more unfair offers from human partners. Conclusions: This study provides the first evidence that hemispheric activation, using unilateral muscle contractions, may play a causal role in biasing social economic decision making. Overall, there results suggest that greater relative left frontal activation promotes reward-maximizing strategies, consistent with an approach motivation, and relative right frontal activation may decrease such strategic tendencies.6 p

"The impact of depression on social economic decision making": Correction to Harlé et al. (2010)

Item does not contain fulltextReports an error in "The impact of depression on social economic decision making" by Katia M. Harlé, John J. B. Allen and Alan G. Sanfey (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2010[May], Vol 119[2], 440-446). In the article, the last revision received date printed on the final page of the article was incorrect due to an error in the production process. The correct publication dates are as follows: Received April 14, 2009; Revision received November 6, 2009; Accepted November 9, 2009.(The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-08841-020.) Although the role of emotion in social economic decision making has been increasingly recognized, the impact of mood disorders, such as depression, on such decisions has been surprisingly neglected. To address this gap, 15 depressed and 23 nondepressed individuals completed a well-known economic task, in which they had to accept or reject monetary offers from other players. Although depressed individuals reported a more negative emotional reaction to unfair offers, they accepted significantly more of these offers than did controls. A positive relationship was observed in the depressed group, but not in controls, between acceptance rates of unfair offers and resting cardiac vagal control, a physiological index of emotion regulation capacity. The discrepancy between depressed individuals' increased emotional reactions to unfair offers and their decisions to accept more of these offers contrasts with recent findings that negative mood in nondepressed individuals can lead to lower acceptance rates. This suggests distinct biasing processes in depression, which may be related to higher reliance on regulating negative emotion

Expectations and outcome: The role of Proposer features in the Ultimatum Game

Item does not contain fulltextIn social decision-making individuals make choices in an interactive context and their decisions may therefore be influenced by information they receive about features of the other player. These features may 'frame' the other player in particular ways and generate expectations about the outcome. This research examines the impact of information about the Proposer on the Responder's decision in the Ultimatum Game (UG). Two-hundred and forty undergraduates played the UG after being provided with different descriptions of the Proposer's (no information, physical description, psychological description). The results show that acceptance rates are significantly influenced by both offer fairness as well as the type of description. These results support the relevance of the expectation effects due to the framing in social decision making

The neural mechanisms of affect infusion in social economic decision-making: A mediating role of the anterior insula

Item does not contain fulltextThough emotions have been shown to have sometimes dramatic effects on decision-making, the neural mechanisms mediating these biases are relatively unexplored. Here, we investigated how incidental affect (i.e. emotional states unrelated to the decision at hand) may influence decisions, and how these biases are implemented in the brain. Nineteen adult participants made decisions which involved accepting or rejecting monetary offers from others in an Ultimatum Game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Prior to each set of decisions, participants watched a short video clip aimed at inducing either a sad or neutral emotional state. Results demonstrated that, as expected, sad participants rejected more unfair offers than those in the neutral condition. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that receiving unfair offers while in a sad mood elicited activity in brain areas related to aversive emotional states and somatosensory integration (anterior insula) and to cognitive conflict (anterior cingulate cortex). Sad participants also showed a diminished sensitivity in neural regions associated with reward processing (ventral striatum). Importantly, insular activation uniquely mediated the relationship between sadness and decision bias. This study is the first to reveal how subtle mood states can be integrated at the neural level to influence decision-making