Effects Of Mortality Threat On Interpersonal Coordination And Competition

Awareness of clues related to death influences tremendously the thoughts and behaviors of human beings.A series of studies suggest that mortality threats contribute to shaping interpersonal coordination and competition.However,there is still a lack of experimental research into whether mortality threats have an impact on coordination and competition,and the neural mechanisms underlying.Therefore,applying hyperscanning method,we explore the influence of mortality threat priming on coordinative and competitive behaviors from the level of multi-brain interaction.In this study,the subjects will complete the coordinative and competitive key-pressing tasks after reading and memorizing a text filled with death threats or a neutral material respectively.In this study,the researchers used hyperscanning method to collect EEG signals of the two agents involved in the tasks simultaneously,and then analyze the interpersonal neural synchronization(INS)between the subjects,explain the correlation between INS and the behavioral performance,in order to figure out how mortality threat affects coordinative and competitive behaviors,and what is the multi-brain mechanism underneath from the level of brain to brain interactions.The results of the cooperative task shows that:(1)compared with the neutral priming condition,the performance of coordination tasks are significantly improved after mortality priming;(2)under the condition of mortality threat,the intercerebral activity in multiple brain regions in alpha,beta,and gamma band was significantly higher than that in the neutral condition,including the coupling between frontal and occipital lobe in alpha band,frontal and parietal lobe in beta band,and left and right temporal lobe and occipital lobe in gamma band;(3)compared with the neutral priming,only under the condition of the mortality threat,the correlations of multiple brain regions in alpha and beta band between INS and the rate of high quality success are significant: in beta band,the INS between the frontal and left temporal lobe,frontal and parietal lobe,frontal and left temporal lobe,parietal and left temporal lobe are significantly correlated with the rate of high quality success;in alpha band,the INS between frontal and parietal lobe,frontal and left temporal lobe,the parietal lobes between the two subjects and the parietal and left temporal lobe correlates positively with the rate of high quality success.The results of competitive tasks shows that :(1)in the competitive task,the subjects ' competitive tendency decreased after mortality priming;(2)compared with the neutral condition,under the mortality priming condition,the INS of multiple brain regions in alpha,beta and gamma band was significantly reduced;(3)only under the mortality threat condition,there is a positive correlation between the INS between the frontal lobes of the two subjects,frontal and prefrontal lobes in gamma band and the interpersonal time lag in competitive tasks.To sum up,this study reveals that: a.the mortality threat priming enhances the coordinative tendencies of the subjects.Moreover,it strengthens the INS in alpha and gamma band,and only under mortality threat condition,higher INS in alpha and beta band correspond to better coordination performance;b.the mortality threat priming weakens the competitive tendencies of individuals and lowers the INS in alpha,beta,and gamma band.The higher the INS in gamma band under mortality priming,the lower the intensity of the competition is.