Abstract
Dispositional greed, characterized by the insatiable hunger for more and the dissatisfaction for not having enough, has often been associated with heightened impulsivity and excessive risk-taking. Despite its far-reaching implications in social sciences and economics, however, the exact neural mechanisms of how greed personality influences risk-taking are still ill understood. In the present study, we showed the correlation between subject's greed personality trait (GPT) score and risk-taking was selectively mediated by individual's loss aversion, but not risk attitude. In addition, our neuroimaging results indicated that gain and loss prospects were jointly represented in the activities of the ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). Furthermore, mOFC responses also encoded the neural loss aversion signal and mediated the association between individual differences in GPT scores and behavioral loss aversion. Our findings provide a basis for understanding the specific neural mechanisms that mediate the effect of greed personality trait on risk-taking behavior.
Highlights
Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates allegedly said of greed that ‘He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have’
In the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, in addition to the completion of GPT and impulsivity personality trait (IPT) measurements, in order to examine whether the greed personality trait scores significantly influence individuals’ risky behavior, each subject completed a gambling task consisting of gain, loss and mixed trials while their brain activities were simultaneously monitored in the fMRI scanner
Consistent with our prediction, we found the correlation between individual’s trait-greed and behavioral loss aversion could be fully mediated by the neural loss aversion measures in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), suggesting higher GPT score might lead to lower behavioral loss aversion by engaging brain activities in the mOFC, which by itself is a pivotal structure involved in the integration of gain and loss prospects (Figure 5)
Summary
Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates allegedly said of greed that ‘He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have’. Anecdotes and field studies generally suggest a potential link between greed personality trait and individual risk-taking, current research demonstrating this association is much less comprehensive and the results are inconsistent (Mussel et al, 2015; Seuntjens et al, 2015). Recent Electroencephalography (EEG) studies showed reduced feedback-related negativity-difference to losses relative to gains in human subjects high in trait-greed (Mussel and Hewig, 2016; Mussel et al, 2015). In light of these findings, one potential hypothesis to reconcile the conflicts in
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