The Time-course Dynamic Processing Of Happiness And Fulfillment Rewards And Their Relationship With Happiness

There are great changes in people’s material and spiritual life from ancient times to present.However,people’s think and pursuit of happiness has never stopped.The debate about what is happiness and how to achieve it has lasted from ancient Greece to today.One opinion holds that happiness is the sum of happy times in one’s life,such as playing video games and enjoying delicious food.The other holds that happiness in life lies in the pursuit of meaning and self-realization,such as helping people in need.Is the pursuit of hedonic reward or the pursuit of eudaimonic reward more conducive to human development?Exploring this problem can expand the theory of reward and happiness,and guide people how to pursue good life.Although the neural lechanism of hedonic and eudaimonic reward processing has been preliminarily studied by predecessors,there are still some questions that need to be further explored.First,the time dynamic process of hedonic and eudaimonic reward processing still remains unclear.In addition,previous studies mostly used response time to represent the motivation of reward processing,and lacked the physiological indicators to represent the motivation process of reward processing.Finally,the relationship between the dynamic change of time in the laboratory and the individual’s happiness in real life is not clear enough.To solve these problems,at the cognitive level,this study used the EEfRT task(Expenditure for Rewards Task)to quantify the dynamic process of reward pursuit at the cognitive and physiological levels.The study also used gambling task and combining behavioral and physiological indicators,and to explore the dynamic process of reward pursuit and individual well-being in two types of reward processing.In this study,we defined hedonic reward as winning money for oneself(hedonic reward);and we defined eudaimonic reward as winning money for charity(eudaimonic reward).A total of 101 subjects participated in this study.On the cognitive level,subjects made their own choices in simple and difficult tasks on their own initiative.There are three kinds of reward probabilities in the EEfRT task(12%,50%,88%),and participant completed the task by pressing the corresponding buttons with the prescribed fingers.In the gambling task,the subjects made a choice between the two doors and EEG was recorded at the same time.The result may be to win or lose for themselves(hedonic reward)or charity(eudaimonic reward).Eventually,ERP and ERSP were used to represent the dynamic process of reward processing.At the cognitive level,the behavior results of EEfRT task showed that participants preferred to choose difficult tasks in hedonic or high probability condition.On the physiological level,the EEG results of gambling task showed that the hedonic reward and winning result would lead to more positive FRN and more positive fb-P3 amplitude;the hedonic reward triggered stronger theta than the eudaimonic reward.The results of habituation analysis show that at Fz point,the second block of hedonic reward triggered a smaller FRN differential wave than the first block.After correlating EEG indicators with individual well-being,we found that the FRN differential wave was positively correlated with the negative emotions of the subjects under the eudaimonic condition,while the fb-P3 differential wave was negatively correlated with the depression and negative emotions of the subjects under the hedonic condition.Summarizing the results and discussions of EEfRT task and gambling task,we can draw the following conclusions:1.Regardless of hedonic or eudaimonic reward,the motivation of the subject to pursue the reward increases with the increase of the probability and the amount of the reward.And the motivation for this increase is related to the enhancement of the ERP index.2.Happiness caused by hedonic reward decreased over time,while happiness caused by eudaimonic reward did not.This study confirmed the theory of "hedonic treadmill"from the physiological level.3.The faster the happiness of the eudaimonic reward fades,the individual will easier generate negative emotions.