The Dissociation Of Status Quo Bias And Omission Bias:a Behavioral And ERP Study

Status quo bias is the decision makers’excessive preference for the options that will not change the current or previous states of affairs. Omission bias is the excessive preference for the options requiring no action on the decision maker’s part. It is difficult to tell apart the manifestations and influences of these two kinds of biases in many occasions. By dissociating status quo and action as two factors and focusing on the effects of them on behavior response and outcome appraisal, this study provided a basis for investigating the differences between status quo bias and omission bias on both levels of behavioral and brain neural mechanisms.In experiment1, the subjects were asked to read the narrations about others’decision-making processes and outcomes, then estimate the characters’emotion intensity to the adverse outcome and assess the advisability of the decisions. The results showed that the subjects thought that the characters would experience stronger negative emotion and the decisions were more inadvisable if the adverse outcomes came from changing the status quo; While action factor had no effect on emotion estimation, and inaction was considered more inadvisable relative to action; And status quo had interaction effect with action, namely, inaction was considered more inadvisable and would cause stronger negative emotion when the status quo was changed simultaneously. In experiment2,a gambling game involving monetary gains and losses was used to observe the subjects’ actual decision making behavior, and EEG signals were recorded during decision process.After the game,subjects reported the emotional experience in various situations.The subjective reports showed that the emotion experience associated to action were more positive than that associated to inaction:while the effect of status quo and the interaction between status quo and action were not significant.The analysis of FRN difference waves showed that there was a marginally significant interaction effect between status quo and action. Specifically,if action was not taken,changing options elicited larger amplitude of FRN than maintaining the.riginal options.And the result about P300showed that there was a significant interaction between action and outcome feedback,and inaction induced larger amplitude of P300than action when the outcomes were negative.The prelimnary conclusions of this study were:a)The status quo bias is relatively more stable,but decision makers might not show the omission bias,and even have the prefefence for taking action;b)There are interactions between action and status quo, and the most repellent situation is omission and leaving the status quo get changed;c)Action and status quo have different effects on FRN and P300,which could be related to different mechanisms of counterfactual thinking.