Misfortune might be a blessing in disguise: Novel evidence from model fitting and feedback-related negativity indicates the impact of fairness perception and negative emotional experience in the enhancement of decision-making performance
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Hwang, Yin-Dir
Abstract
Equality and fairness in social interaction often elicit affective arousal and show a great impact on decision making. The present study aims to un- cover the mechanism behind such daily-life experiences using the behavioral, model-fitting, and electrophysiological approaches. In the first session of the experiment, Sixty-three paid participants were randomly assigned to one of the “Neutral,” “Harsh,” and “Kind” groups to undertake a different level of perceived fairness. Then a probabilistic gambling task with different proba- bilities of negative-reward assignments was applied to each participant to ex- amine the impact of emotional experience on her choice behavior. Altogether the procedures lasted about two hours. Trial-by-trial data were fitted by a hybrid reinforcement learning model using the Bayesian estimation approach. Brain activities were measured via event-related potentials. Our analyses re- vealed that, compared with other two groups, participants in the Harsh group retained more task scores, exhibited distinct parameter values of the reinforce- ment learning model, and demonstrated a larger feedback-related negativity to unexpected outcomes, suggesting a higher sensitivity to prediction error and a tendency to loss aversion.
Subjects
affective modulation
event-related potential
fairness
feedback-related negativity
medial frontal negativity
prediction error
reinforcement learning model
Type
thesis