Abstract
BackgroundAbnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it is unresolved whether MDD patients show abnormalities in decision making in a social interaction context, in which decisions have actual influences on both the self-interests of the decision makers per se and those of their partners.MethodsUsing a well-studied ultimatum game (UG), which is frequently used to investigate social interaction behavior, we examined whether MDD can be associated with abnormalities in social decision-making behavior by comparing the acceptance rates of MDD patients (N = 14) with those of normal controls (N = 19).ResultsThe acceptance rates of the patients were lower than those of the normal controls. Additionally, unfair proposals were accepted at similar rates from computer partners and human partners in the MDD patients, unlike the acceptance rates in the normal controls, who were able to discriminatively treat unfair proposals from computer partners and human partners.ConclusionsDepressed patients show abnormal decision-making behavior in a social interaction context. Several possible explanations, such as increased sensitivity to fairness, negative emotional state and disturbed affective cognition, have been proposed to account for the abnormal social decision-making behavior in patients with MDD. This aberrant social decision-making behavior may provide a new perspective in the search to find biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of MDD.
Highlights
Abnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD)
We mainly investigated the decision characteristics of MDD patients from the following two aspects: (1) whether there was a difference in acceptance rates between patients with MDD and normal controls in the ultimatum game (UG) task and (2) whether patients with MDD could treat unfair proposals offered by human and computer partners discriminatively
No significant differences were found between the groups in their performance on the Digit Symbol and Information portions of the WAIS-RC, suggesting that our MDD patients did not show significant cognitive dysfunction in memory, speed of processing, or common sense (Table 2)
Summary
Abnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Previous studies have found that the abnormal feeling state in patients with MDD may bias their decision-making behaviors, as evidenced from altered sensitivity to reward and punishment [4,5,6,7], reduced experiences of regret [8], and poor decision performance [9]. Despite these important findings in MDD, all these studies have investigated people in non-social interaction contexts, in which actions only have consequences for the self-interests of the participants [4,5,6,7,8]. Approximately half of all unfair offers (defined as approximately 20% or less of the pot) are typically rejected, with increasing rejection rates as offers become less fair [18]
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