A Study On The Risk Decision-Making Differences Between Chinese And American MBA Groups From The Perspective Of Cognitive Neuroscience

With the development of globalization and the increasingly frequent economic and trade exchanges between countries,multinational corporations have gradually become a common business model.This means that in the same enterprise,leaders and employees may come from different countries,and individual differences in behaviors induced by cross-cultural backgrounds may lead to misunderstandings,contradictions and conflicts,thus affecting the harmonious environment.For enterprise managers,decision-making is a crucial task,especially in an environment full of risks and uncertainties.There are certain differences in the decision-making process among the managers with multiple cultural backgrounds,which will inevitably affect the decision-making efficiency and the enterprise development.Therefore,a full understanding of enterprise managers' differences in risk decisions-making between different countries,as well as the sources of such differences is conducive to communication,negotiation and resolution of conflicts in corporate decisions.Given this context,the current dissertation investigated the risk decision-making behavior differences between Chinese and American MBA groups.At the same time,using the functional magnetic resonance(fMRI)technology,the dissertation aimed to study the underlying source of the neurophysiological mechanism of the differences in risk decision-making behavior between Chinese and the Amercican,as well as the psychological cognition components involved.In addition,risk decision-making is influenced by multiple factors,which must be taken account into when studying cultural differences.Based on the previous research.Taking the MBA group as the representative of enterprise managers,the current dissertation systematically investigated the differences in risk decision-making between Chinese and American enterprise managers.The study was conducted from the perspective of cultural background,personality traits and the participation model of decision makers,combining multiple approaches,including the behavioral research,cognitive neuroscience and modeling analyses.First,using the behavioral research,we investigated the differences in risk decision-making performances between Chinese and American MBA groups,as well as between Chinese and American average public by employing the classic Balloon Analogue Risk Task(BART).The behavioral results showed that the risk preference level of Caucasian MBA group from U.S.was significantly higher than that of Chinese MBA group,while there was no such difference in the risk preference level between the average public between two countries.This finding suggests that the MBA group or the enterprise managers are a special group,and the difference in risk decision-making between Chinese and American enterprise managers is unique,indicating the importance of studying this special group.Moreover,only among Caucasian subjects,the MBA group showed higher level of risk preference than the non-MBA group.According to previous research,these findings may imply that under the background of American individualism culture,the enterprise managers,who have a rich business background and wealth,tend to obtain a stronger achievement motivation and a higher level of self-evaluation than the average.Thus,they tend to show a relatively positive attitude towards risk.However,under the background of Chinese collectivism culture,individuals attach to the interdependent relationship with the collective,pursue the same values and receive the same general education.Under such cultural,the influence of educational or professional background on individual behavior is relatively weak.In addition,Asian-Americans are often considered as a special group with biculture background of Chinese and American,but there is less research on the risk decision-making of this group.We further compared the differences in risk decision-making performance between Asian American-MBA and Caucasian MBA,and Chinese MBA.The results showed that the risk preference level of Asian-American MBA was significantly lower than that of Caucasian MBA.Although there was no significant difference from the Chinese MBA,Asian-American MBA had the lowest level of risk propensity among the three groups.It might demonstrate the lack of cultural identity of this group possibly affect their risk decision-making attitude and performance.Second,after confirming the differences in risk decision-making behavior between Chinese and American MBA groups,applying fMRI technique,we attemped to explain the differences in risk decision-making behavior.The results showed that compared with the Caucasian MBA,the Chinese MBA and the Asian-American MBA groups showed greater activation in the brain areas related to risk processing and risk aversion,which supported their more conservative risk attitude.On the other hand,compared to the Chinese MBA group,the Caucasian MBA and Asian-American MBA groups showed greater activation in the brain areas related to the task performing and motivation processing,which was inline with their greater activation in the "reward network" during the outcome processing phase.More importantly,we found that in the MBA group,the activation level of insula was negatively correlated with individuals'risk preference,which again verified that the stronger brain activity in the risk aversion-related areas was associated with Asian-American and Chinese MBA groups' lower risk preference level,compared to the Caucasion MBA group.Third,Structural Equation Model(SEM)was employed to investigate the moderation effect of individual' s self-evaluation personality traits(i.e.self-esteem and self-efficacy)on cultural differences in risk decision-making.Chinese,Asian-American and Caucasian American MBA groups were included as participants.The results showed significant differences in the self-evaluation level among three groups.Specifically,the Caucasian MBA group scored significantly higher in self-evaluation than that of the other two groups,and the self-evaluation level of the Asian-American subjects was the lowest among the three groups.Furthermore,the study found that the higher level of self-evaluation was associated with the higher level of risk preference,and correspondingly,the less activity in the brain region responsible for risk aversion.The most important finding of this study is that the self-evaluation level significantly moderated the cultral differences in risk propensity.These findings indicated that cultural differences in risk decision-making behavior might partially be due to the different ways that how people evaluate and recognize themselves.Forth,the previous three studies only examined the active decision-making.However,people also face a common but rarely studied risk decision-making activity,which is passive decision-making.In this situation,people are passively exposed to the risk environment and feel the existence of risk stimulus,but cannot make the choice by themsevels.Some studies have suggested that individuals' participation in decision-making affects their expectations of risk and outcome,and is closely related to their sense of control experience,thus modulating the brain activity.Therefore,this study focused on the modulation effect of the decision-maker's agency on the brain activity in response to risk decision-making,as well as the differences of this modulation effect among the three MBA groups(i.e.Chinese,Asian-American and American Caucasian).The results showed that the decision-maker' s agency effect in the Chinese MBA group was significantly less than that in the other two MBA groups,especially in the insula region and the regions related to the task control and motivation processing.The findings suggested that the Chinese MBA group still showed a certain degree of risk aversion even though they only passively experienced the risk scenario.In addition,the Asian-American and Caucasian MBA groups' activation in the motivation processing areas were regulated by the decision-maker's agency more significantly than the Chinese MBA group,which might imply that participation and attempts of changing environment were their important behavioral motivations.This assumption is consistent with the positive correlation between the modulation effect of decision-maker's agency and the self-efficacy.The innovation of this dissertation includes four aspects:(i)Verified the differences in the objective risk decision-making behavior between Chinese and American enterprise managers using experimental approach.Most of previous studies on risk decision-making between Chinese and American enterprise managers are based on questionnaires or surveys,which have mainly investigated individuals' subjective risk attitudes.Using the behavioral research method,the current dissertation measured the differences in the objective risk decision-making behaviors between Chinese and American subjects.More importantly,it revealed that such differences in risk decision-making behaviors were only observed between Chinese and American enterprise managers,but not between Chinese and American average population.(ii)Investigated the neural correlates of differences in risk decision-making behaviors between Chinese and American enterprise managers.It is important to understand the underlying neural mechanisms of the differences between groups.In this dissertation,the cognitive neuroscience technology was used to compare the brain activities corresponding to the risk decision-making process between Chinese and American MBA groups.Given the differences in brain activities between groups and the relevant cognitive functions,it was able to explain the cognitive source causing the differences in risk decision-making behaviors between groups.It is significant to understand the cross-cultural differences.(iii)Demonstrated the "dual culture" feature in risk decision-making in the Asian American MBA group.Among the previous cross-cultural research,few studies have investigated the differences in risk decision-making between different groups within the same cultural background.The dissertation not only compared the differences in risk decision-making between Chinese and Caucasian MBA groups,but also examined the risk decision-making in the Asian American MBA group.The findings demonstrated that the Asian American MBA group showed the "dual culture" feature in risk decision-making.Specifically,they showed the similar risk aversion to the Chinese MBA group.Meanwhile,they had the similar achievement motivation to the Caucasian MBA group.This enriches the cross-culture research.(iv)Established the model of "culture-personality traits-brain activities-risk decision-making behaviors"Risk decision-making is influenced by multiple factors.The dissertation found that the personality traits related to self-evaluation moderated the differences in risk decision-making among different MBA groups,which helps to establish the model of "cultural-personality traits-brain activities-risk decision-making behaviors".This model indicated that the relevant factors should be considered when studying cognitive behaviors and cultural differences.In addition,for the first time,the current dissertation revealed the difference in modulation effects of agency(i.e.active-passive)on the decision-making process among MBA groups of different cultural background.The findings supported the motivation differences among different cultural backgrounds during the risk decision-making process.