Social Exclusion And Delay Discounting

Social exclusion brings many negative feelings to individuals,of which anxiety is one.Whether social exclusion can lead to the increase of money seeking desire,and thus affect people's delay discounting level is a problem that has not been studied.Based on the comforting nature of money,this study explores the impact of social exclusion on delay discounting,and attempts to analyze the potential role of anxiety in it.Our results show that social exclusion leads to an increase in anxiety.In Experiment 1,there was a positive correlation between the change of state anxiety and the delay discounting score.The subjects who reported more anxiety after social exclusion showed stronger desire for money in the subsequent delay discounting task.At the same time,experiment 1 also found that trait anxiety affected the resistance of subjects to the threat of social exclusion.The low trait anxiety group showed a more significant increase in anxiety after social exclusion,while the high trait anxiety group maintained a more stable anxiety and a lower delay discounting level after social exclusion.In Experiment 2,social exclusion led to the left side tendency of prefrontal activity,which was more obvious in the group with low trait anxiety.This study did not find a significant correlation between prefrontal ? asymmetry and anxiety.The degree of prefrontal activity after social acceptance and exclusion compared with the right side of resting state positively predicted the delay discounting level.In general,this study found that the influence of social exclusion on the level of delay discounting was influenced by trait anxiety and state anxiety.The higher level of trait anxiety can resist the threat of social exclusion and help maintain a lower level of delay discounting.