Narcissistic Personality Modulates The Decision Making And Outcome Evaluation During Interpersonal Cooperation

Narcissism can be regarded as one’s capacity to maintain a relatively positive self-image through a variety of self-,affect-,and field regulatory processes,and it underlies individuals’needs for validation and affirmation as well as the motivation to overtly and covertly seek out self-enhancement experiences from the social environment。Narcissism is considered as a trait of the healthy personality in general people,and can influenced the individual’s cognition,affection and behaviors.Narcissism have two expression:grandiosity and vulnerability.Both share a cognitive-affective preoccupation with the self,a tendency to give into one’s own needs,and disregard for others.Contextual reinforcement model proposed that narcissistic behavior is a joint function of trait narcissism and situational factors.Grandiose narcissism is often expressed behaviorally through interpersonally exploitative and aggressive acts.Further,vulnerable narcissism is associated with a tendency to avoidance and withdrawal in social interactions.The young people became more narcissistic accompany with the development of social economy in China,and the narcissistic personality disorder has become a kind of important personality types in our country.Thus,investigating the interpersonal interaction behavior of narcissistic individuals has important social significanceInterpersonal interaction is individual’s simultaneous or sequential actions that affect the immediate and future outcomes of the other individuals involved in the situation.Cooperation is an important form of interpersonal interaction and have a great significance in human social life.Researchers have categorized social interaction into two structures:concurrent interaction requiring action synchrony between two persons and sequential interaction that the two persons act in turn.We adopted Chicken Game and Trust Game tasks to make operation definition for cooperative behavior.A complete decision process included the assessment of the decision situation,decision-making and the outcome evaluation.The decisions between individuals can influence each other in social interaction,and has subsequent impact on individual decisions.The outcome evaluation is helpful for reasonable decisions.So the research of the interpersonal cooperation and their dynamic process carries on important scientific significance.In this dissertation.Using simultaneous cooperative game(Chicken Game)and sequential cooperative game(Trust Game),as well as event related potentials(ERPs)and event related oscillations(EROs)to investigate the characteristics of narcissistic individuals(selected from a larger subject pool)in interpersonal cooperation and decision-making as well as the outcome evaluation process.This dissertation is composed of four studies:Study 1 used the Chicken Game task and ERPs to explore the narcissistic individuals’ time courses of brain activity in decision and outcome phase in interpersonal cooperation and conflict.Study 2 used the Chicken Game task and EROs to explore the narcissistic individuals’ neural oscillation characteristics of decision and outcome phase in interpersonal cooperation and conflict.Study 3 used Trust Game and ERPs to study the narcissistic individuals’ time courses of brain activity in decision and outcome phase in interpersonal trust.Study 4 used the combination of Trust Game task and EROs to explore the narcissistic individuals’neural oscillation characteristics during decision and outcome process in interpersonal trust.The results were as follows:1.The highly narcissistic individuals chose more aggress after mutual cooperation,and chose less aggress after mutual aggression in the Chicken Game,compared to low narcissistic individuals.In decision phase,highly narcissistic individuals’ choice induced greater P3 amplitude than low narcissistic individuals,especially cooperate decision.In the outcome phase,compared to the low narcissistic individuals,highly narcissism individuals’ cooperation decision induced more negative dFRN,and highly narcissistic individuals chose cooperation induced greater P300 amplitude than those who chose aggression.2.Participants’ PNI scores were negative correlated with their aggression choose rate after mutual aggression,but positive correlated with their aggression choose rate after mutual cooperation in the Chicken Game,In decision phase,the beta band(25～30 Hz,350～400 ms)power induced by cooperation in highly narcissistic individuals is larger than which in low narcissistic individuals.In the outcome phase,the theta band(4～7Hz,400～500 ms)power induced by the unsuccessful cooperation(CA)in highly narcissistic individuals is smaller than which in low narcissistic individuals,and the dtheta(loss minus gain)induced by cooperation in highly narcissistic individuals is smaller than which in low narcissistic individuals.3.The highly narcissistic individuals made trusting decision less than low narcissistic individuals in the Trust Game.In decision phase,compared to low narcissistic individuals,highly narcissistic individuals’ trust choice induced more negative N2 than distrust choice.In evaluation phase,the FRN elicited by loss in highly narcissistic individuals is smaller than which in low narcissistic individuals,and the dFRN in highly narcissistic individuals is more negative than which in low narcissistic individuals,as well as,the P300 elicited by the gain feedback in highly narcissistic individuals is larger than which in low narcissistic individuals.4.Participants’ PNI scores were negative correlated with their trust choose rate in the Trust Game.In decision phase,compared to low narcissistic individuals,the beta band(20～25 Hz,150～250 ms)power induced by trusting decision is larger than distrusting decision in highly narcissistic individuals.In evaluation phase,the beta band(25～30 Hz,280～380 ms)power elicited by gain in highly narcissistic individuals is smaller than which in low narcissistic individuals,the dbeta(loss minus gain)in low narcissistic individuals is smaller than which in highly narcissistic individuals.To conclude,behavior results have shown that the narcissistic cooperation behavior were affected by the interaction of personality traits and interaction situation,and they can adjust their strategy according to the variation of the interactive situation.Highly narcissistic individuals aggress more in mutual cooperation situations,and cooperate more in mutual aggression situations,as well as,highly narcissistic individuals showed less trust in interpersonal cooperation.The EEG results in the Chicken Game during decision phase showed that high narcissists’ cooperation decisions need more cognitive control to overcome their own selfish.The EEG results of the outcome phase showed that high narcissists have expected to the unsuccessful cooperation,while the successful cooperation is unexpected,and high narcissists may allocated more cognitive resources to the outcome by their cooperation decision.The EEG results in Trust Game during decision phase showed that the high narcissists who made distrust decision experienced more cognitive conflict,while need more cognitive control to make a trust decision.The EEG results in the evaluation phase showed that high narcissists more sensitive to loss feedback,and less emotional experience to gain feedback,as well as high narcissists experienced greater incentive/emotional significance to cooperation reciprocity.