An Evevt-Related Potentials Investigation Of The Influence Of Individual Internal Conflicts And Emotions On Risky Decision

Risky decisions are social behavior people often have to face in their daily lives. With the development of cognitive neuroscience, it is a new perspective of decision-making field to investigate the neural mechanisms of risky decision from a physiological point, in particular the physiological response of feedback stage (Shen Qiang,2011). It has been found that the individual internal conflicts defined as the want and the should conflict, in which the want self from individual internal conflicts tends to adventure in decision-making, but the should self is more rational and conservative (Milkman, Rogers,& Bazerman,2008). The individual internal conflicts as a kind of motivation conflict, it occurs along with certain emotional experience(Grund, Brassler,& Fries,2014), and the related research has been from emotional valence to other dimensions of emotions, such as motivation dimension. However, to take into account the individual internal conflicts and high motivation of positive and negative emotions affect the risk of decision-making from the point of motivation view and to explore its neural psychological mechanism rarely relevant inquiry. In this study, we take the gambling game task as the risky decision paradigm in laboratory to explore the impact of want conflict, should conflict and emotion with the risky decision, to find neural evidence in decision-making feedback stage through ERP technology.In this study, a total of two experiments:in experiment 1, we use gambling game task to explore the two group of subjects potential differences in brain activity at the completion of risk decision-making and feedback stage; in experiment 2, in the video for the mood-inducing material, we want to examine the two groups of participants the differences in risk decision-making and feedback of brain electrical activity in the excitement, anxiety and neutral emotions with the paradigm of experiment1. Through the analysis and discussion of research findings, we come to the following conclusions:(1) The want self is consistent with low level of self-consciousness, it has a tendency to take risks and a strong appetite for risk. So the want self is more likely to have a negative prediction error. While the should self is consistent with high level of self-consciousness and has more self-control through cognitive efforts, so the should self is more rational and conservative in decisions.The motivation of individuals is only in the decision-making process of the preferred low-risk option in the should conflict group, and they may not concern about the prediction error feedback, and thus the losses and gains of the processing is relatively weakened. So on 200-300ms FRN amplitude, the want conflict group in loss condition is more negative than in the income conditions. On 300-500ms P300 amplitude, the want conflict group are higher than should conflict individuals in gain and loss feedback conditions.(2) The emotion has a motivated action and produced influence in the feedback stage. The reaching excitement strengthen the motivation of want self focusing on the results of the feedback without undue cognitive control and emotional investment, but the rationality of should self make the individuals avoided adventure under high motivation of excitement and the avoidance of anxiety, and should self is able to remain rational in the avoidance of anxiety to enhance the feedback results. So on 200-300ms FRN amplitude, the FRN amplitude is maximum in the excitement and minimum under anxiety in the group of want conflict. On 300-500ms P300 amplitude, the P300 amplitude is maximum in anxiety condition in the group of want conflict, the amplitude of different types of feedback is significantly different only under anxiety condition in should conflict group.