The Influences Of Sensation Seeking And Time Pressure On Risk Decision-making: A Study Based On Event-related Potentials

Risk decision-making is an important research domain of decision making. In order to study the effects of sensation seeking and time pressure on risk decision-making, the present research adopted the improved Iowa gambling task and event related potentials technique. in experiment 1, we distinguished the different sensation seeking individuals by the questionnaire to discuss the psychological and neural effects of sensation seeking on risk decision-making under the condition of no time pressure; In experiment 2, we discussed the effects of time pressure on risk decision-making.The behavior results showed that:(1) In condition of no time pressure, high sensation seeking individuals selected more bad cards significantly than the low sensation seeking individuals;(2) In the group of low sensation seeking, the participants under the condition of time pressure selected more bad cards significantly than the participants under the condition of no time pressure;The ERPs results showed that:(3) Under the condition of no time pressure, when the feedback was negative, the FRN amplitude in the low sensation seeking group was significantly higher than that in the high sensation seeking group;(4) Under the condition of no time pressure, when the feedback was positive, the P300 amplitude in the high sensation seeking group was significantly higher than that in the low sensation seeking group;(5) There was no difference of the FRN amplitude between the conditon of time pressure and no time pressure;(6) The P300 amplitude under the condition of time pressure was smaller than that under the condition of no time pressure.In summary, both the behavioral and nerual evidences indicate that the high sensation seeking individuals are more sensitive to profit, which lead to be more risk seeking; while the low sensation seeking individuals are sensitive to loss, which lead to be more risk averse. What’s more, time pressure will promote the adventure level of low sensation seeking individuals and reduce the decision quality.