Emotion-based Decision-making Research Articles

Music to the ears: the role of sonic branding in advertising

Marketers are taking note by using music and sound to reinforce a brand’s identity. Sonic branding involves designing an auditory equivalent of a graphic representation of a brand that embodies the brand’s essence, attributes and values. This research examines how the use of sonic logos in advertising can aid in inducing positive emotions in consumers in affect-rich decision contexts. Findings demonstrate that sonic logos have the ability to evoke positive emotions, stimulate engagement and enrich the brand experience, especially for those individuals high in emotion-based decision-making. Implications for how sonic branding can aid in enhancing marketing communications are discussed.

The Bangor Gambling Task: Computerized replication and reappraisal of an emotion-based decision task

Emotion-based decision making (EBDM) is the capacity to make decisions based on prior emotional consequences of actions. Several neuropsychological tasks, using different gambling paradigms and with different levels of complexity, have been designed to assess EBDM. The Bangor Gambling Task (BGT) was created as a brief and simple card gambling-task to assess EBDM. BGT contains a single-card deck and requires participants to decide whether to gamble or not, which can result in wins or losses. Unknown to the participant, the winning probabilities decrease throughout the task (from 0.75 in the first block to 0.25 in the fifth block), requiring participants to reduce their gambling probability to avoid long-term losses. A few studies have offered evidence regarding the BGT convergent validity. However, there are no computerized versions of BGT available, thus slowing the process of gathering information to explore the EBDM mechanisms behind the task, its validity, and clinical usefulness. In this article, we present a computerized version of the BGT using the Matlab environment and make all our code available. We explore BGT’s replicability and analyze its probabilistic structure, providing trial-level and block-level analyses. Eighty-one participants performed the computerized version, which followed the same structure as the original version. It took participants 8.5 ± 3.3 minutes to complete the task, which is faster than the paper version. Replicating previous studies, participants diminished their gambling probability throughout the task, learning to inhibit the initially rewarded gambling behavior. This change in gambling probability could be considered a proxy for EBDM. Our analyses suggest that the last blocks are especially sensitive to capturing deficits in EBDM, and we propose some modifications to BGT’s original version to enhance the initial exploratory and learning phase. Our results show that the BGT constitutes a quick and simple task to evaluate EBDM capacities.

Emotion-based decision-making as a predictor of alcohol-related consequences in college students

Student drinking during the college years can result in many adverse outcomes. Emotion-based decision-making (EBDM), or the use of emotional information to influence future plans and behavior, may lead to increased harmful consequences of alcohol. The current study examined both the number of types and total frequency of alcohol consequences as a function of EBDM. Undergraduate students from three large universities (n = 814) were assessed on EBDM and typical weekly drinking during their 2nd year of college, and alcohol-related consequences during their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years. Alcohol-related consequences were operationalized both as unique types of consequences and total consequences experienced in the previous year. Latent growth modeling used EBDM in year 2 to predict unique and total alcohol consequences in years 2, 3, and 4. Students who endorsed higher levels of EBDM experienced a significantly increased total frequency of consequences over the three years, without differences in trajectory between students high and low on this construct. Participants with higher levels of EBDM experienced a significantly greater number of unique consequences at all time points, but these consequences increased at a significantly lower rate than individuals lower on this construct. Findings of this study indicate Emotion-Based Decision-Making may be a useful predictor of harmful consequences of student drinking over time.

Emotion and decision-making: Induced mood influences IGT scores and deck selection strategies

ABSTRACTThe somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) represents a rich neuropsychological framework to study emotion-based decision-making. It originates from early brain lesion studies using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which showed that adaptive decision-making relies on intact ventromedial prefrontal cortex for the integration of so-called “hot” affective signals and rational “cold” perceptual cognitive computations. Subsequent studies over the past 20 years have provided converging evidence for the reliability and validity of the IGT in assessing decision-making in both healthy and clinical samples, although some discrepancies remain. In healthy individuals, it has been shown that differences in emotional states prior to taking the IGT result in different outcomes, thus potentially accounting for some of the variation within this group. However, the precise role of such transient modulations of emotional states remains unclear. In this study we sought to examine the role of specific induced moods under carefully controlled conditions. Accordingly, we randomly assigned 44 healthy college undergraduates to a positive, negative, or neutral affect condition in which they simultaneously viewed images and listened to music that previous studies had shown to induce specific moods. Results indicated that mood induction was successful, and the positive affect group showed a clearly different pattern of IGT performance compared to the other two groups, in that they showed a rapidly established and stable bias favoring the positive expected value (EV) card decks. The negative affect group showed significantly lower bias towards the positive EV decks, although this group was not different from the neutral affect group. Bayesian analyses confirmed these findings. While consistent with SMH, these current findings may be best understood in support of a more general effect of normal mood on cognition as outlined in the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

Relating neural processing of reward and loss prospect to risky decision-making in individuals with and without gambling disorder

ABSTRACTNeuroimaging studies demonstrate alterations in fronto-striatal neurocircuitry in gambling disorder (GD) during anticipatory processing, which may influence decision-making impairments. However, to date little is known about fronto-striatal anticipatory processing and emotion-based decision-making. While undergoing neuroimaging, 28 GD and 28 healthy control (HC) participants performed the Monetary Incentive Delay Task (MIDT). Pearson correlation coefficients assessed out-of-scanner Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) performance with the neural activity during prospect (A1) processing on the MIDT across combined GD and HC groups. The HC and GD groups showed no significant difference in out-of-scanner IGT performance, although there was a trend for higher IGT scores in the HC group on the last two IGT trial blocks. Whole-brain correlations across combined HC and GD groups showed that MIDT BOLD signal in the ventral striatum/caudate/ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate regions during the prospect of winning positively correlated with total IGT scores. The GD group also contained a higher proportion of tobacco smokers, and correlations between neural activations in prospect on the MIDT may relate in part to gambling and/or smoking pathology. In this study, fronto-striatal activity during the prospect of reward and loss on the MIDT was related to decision-making on the IGT, with blunted activation linked to disadvantageous decision-making. The findings from this work are novel in linking brain activity during a prospect-of-reward phase with performance on a decision-making task in individuals with and without GD.

Antecedents and consequences of experiential versus utilitarian consumption in the travel context

PurposeAlthough experiential consumption has received some attention from tourism and hospitality researchers in the past decade, the profile of experiential consumers has not been discussed thus far. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: to test the sociodemographic antecedents of experiential versus utilitarian consumption for profiling purposes and to examine the potential behavioral consequences of experiential versus utilitarian consumption tendencies.Design/methodology/approachOn an online research platform, 413 respondents answered questions concerning logic-based/emotion-based decision-making traits, as well as sociodemographic characteristics and several travel behavior variables.FindingsData revealed that emotion-based decision makers are more likely to be females, who are more passionate about their travel needs than are logic-based decision makers. Results also revealed that the importance that emotion-based decision makers place on travel preferences, potential travel risks and travel information sources is higher than that of their logic-based counterparts.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study used one personality trait, emotion-based decision-making, as a proxy for experiential consumption. There are other potentially explanatory traits that should be investigated in future studies.Practical implicationsDestination marketing organizations (DMOs) promoting destinations with historical and cultural attractions can capitalize on the finding that these attractions are highly demanded by both types of decision makers, whereas DMOs of man-made attraction destinations may need to find ways to embellish the significance of these attractions for both types of decision makers.Social implicationsEven though social risk was the lowest-rated item in general, both decision-making traits were highly correlated with social risk. The higher the tendency in the decision-making style, either logic-based or emotion-based, the more important how a trip would make them look within their social circle. Social risk concerns for both types of decision makers should be addressed in marketing messages.Originality/valueThe current study represents one of the earliest attempts to draw a picture of experiential consumers in comparison with utilitarian consumers in sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics.

Emotional and Motivational Functions of the Prefrontal Cortex

Patients with the damage to the orbital region of the prefrontal cortex and monkeys with lesions in this area show impairment in emotional and motivational behavior. They also have difficulty in the extinction of learned behavior and in the reversal learning. This brain area is concerned with not only the value estimation of reward and aversive stimuli but also the expectation of these stimuli. The lateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in the integration of emotion/motivation and cognition. The medial prefrontal cortex is concerned with action selection based on the previous reward history. The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex that comprises the anterior parts of the orbital and inferior medial prefrontal cortex plays an important role in emotion-based decision-making.

The Case for Using Personally Relevant and Emotionally Stimulating Gambling Messages as a Gambling Harm-Minimisation Strategy

Emotions typically exert powerful, enduring, and often predictable influences over decision-making. However, emotion-based decision-making is seen as a mediator of impulsive and reckless gambling behaviour, where emotion may be seen as the antithesis of controlled and rational decision-making, a proposition supported by recent neuroimaging evidence. The present paper argues that the same emotional mechanisms can be used to influence a gambler to cease gambling, by focusing their emotional decision-making on positive external and personally relevant factors, such as familial impact or longer term financial factors. Emotionally stimulating messages may also have the advantage of capturing attention above and beyond traditionally responsible gambling messaging. This is important given the highly emotionally aroused states often experienced by both gamblers and problem gamblers, where attentional activation thresholds for external stimuli such as messages may be increased.

Brain structure correlates of emotion-based rash impulsivity

Negative urgency (the tendency to engage in rash, ill-considered action in response to intense negative emotions), is a personality trait that has been linked to problematic involvement in several risky and impulsive behaviours, and to various forms of disinhibitory psychopathology, but its neurobiological correlates are poorly understood. Here, we explored whether inter-individual variation in levels of trait negative urgency was associated with inter-individual variation in regional grey matter volumes. Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in a sample (n=152) of healthy participants, we found that smaller volumes of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and right temporal pole, regions previously linked to emotion appraisal, emotion regulation and emotion-based decision-making, were associated with higher levels of trait negative urgency. When controlling for other impulsivity linked personality traits (sensation seeking, lack of planning/perseverance) and negative emotionality per se (neuroticism), these associations remained, and an additional relationship was found between higher levels of trait negative urgency and smaller volumes of the left ventral striatum. This latter finding mirrors recent VBM findings in an animal model of impulsivity. Our findings offer novel insight into the brain structure correlates of one key source of inter-individual differences in impulsivity.

Flexible emotion-based decision-making behavior varies in current and former smokers

IntroductionSuboptimal decision-making is a feature in the initiation and maintenance of substance use, often manifested in choosing for short-term benefits rather than long-term gain, and the failure to display cognitive flexibility, respectively. Studies of nicotine users typically focus on characterizing those who are already addicted; less is known about decision-making in former smokers. MethodsNon- (n=21), former daily- (n=23) and current daily smokers (n=24), completed the contingency-shifting variant Iowa Gambling Task (csIGT), in which the reward and punishment contingencies of the decks are systematically varied after 100 trials of the ‘standard’ IGT. Scores on the standard blocks of the csIGT provided an index of emotion-based decision-making, while the contingency-shifting blocks assessed flexible decision-making. Subjective ratings were also recorded at 20-trial intervals. ResultsBoth current and former smokers showed significantly impaired performance relative to non-smokers when making decisions during the standard blocks of the csIGT. Both former and non-smokers' awareness of the reward/punishment contingencies was significantly higher than those of current smokers at the end of the standard IGT. Both former and non-smokers had significantly better performance on the contingency shifting blocks, relative to current smokers. ConclusionsThe findings indicate that both current and former smokers display a suboptimal pattern of decision-making than non-smokers during the standard IGT. However, with respect to the ability to change behavior following reversed contingencies, former smokers are more similar to non-smokers than to current smokers. Former smokers were also more aware of the contingencies than current smokers.

Interpretative Repertoires That Shape Low-Income African American Women’s Reproductive Health Care Seeking: “Don’t Want to Know” and “Taking Charge of Your Health”

In the context of reproductive and sexual health, African American women have higher incidence of disease and poorer outcomes on key indicators when compared with White women. In this study, we used discourse analysis to identify and examine the workings of two clusters of interpretive resources (“interpretative repertoires”) associated with reproductive/sexual health care seeking among low-income African American women who participated in semistructured interviews as part of a health promotion initiative. Interpretative repertoires are ways of accounting for engaging in or refraining from engaging in actions, which are shared by people in a community. We labeled the two interpretative repertoires “Don’t Want to Know,” and “Take Charge of Your Health.” Within the “Don’t Want to Know” repertoire, that testing would lead to threatening findings was assumed, a chain of devastating consequences was imagined, and a preference for uncertainty over certain knowledge was expressed. Conversely, the “Take Charge of Your Health” repertoire valued certainty over uncertainty, though in both interpretive frameworks, knowledge-based and emotion-based decision-making were intertwined. We conclude that health promotion initiatives—if they are to succeed in encouraging women to obtain valuable preventive health care services—must respond, in their choices of language and outreach strategies, to the expressed dilemma of wishing for reassurance but fearing bad news, to the intertwining of emotional reasoning and technorationality in health decision making, and to the particular relational experiences of African American women. Failure to do so will contribute to the continuation of reproductive and sexual health disparities.

Social Cognition Interventions in Neuro-Rehabilitation: An Overview

This article provides an overview of interventions developed and trialled in the embryonic field of social cognition neuro-rehabilitation. Interventions are categories under the headings of explicit skills training, embodied/relational interventions, and relational approaches. The assessment and treatment of social neuropsychological impairments have received comparably less attention and development than other domains of cognition. These include difficulties in representing the intentions and perspectives of others (mentalising), recognising emotions, inferring nuanced social communications such as sarcasm and deceit, accessing social knowledge, and emotion-based decision-making. Founded on distributed neuroanatomical substrates, impairments of these functions have been found to be present and enduring across major sub-groups of acquired brain injury (for review see [1]). The theoretical richness of the social neuroscience revolution has not been matched by the translation of concepts and findings into rehabilitation practice. This article will review the embryonic field of social cognition rehabilitation, categorised into three intervention clusters: a) explicit skills training, b) embodied and affective interventions and c) relational approaches.

Apathy and emotion-based decision-making in amnesic mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

Background. Apathy and reduced emotion-based decision-making are two behavioral modifications independently described in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Objectives. The aims of this study were to investigate decision-making based on emotional feedback processing in AD and aMCI and to study the impact of reduced decision-making performances on apathy. Methods. We recruited 20 patients with AD, 20 participants with aMCI, and 20 healthy controls. All participants completed the Lille apathy rating scale (LARS) and the Iowa gambling task (IGT). Results. Both aMCI and AD participants had reduced performances on the IGT and were more apathetic compared to controls without any difference between aMCI and AD groups. For the entire sample, LARS initiation dimension was related to IGT disadvantageous decision-making profile. Conclusions. We provide the first study showing that both aMCI and AD individuals make less profitable decisions than controls, whereas aMCI and AD did not differ. Disadvantageous decision-making profile on the IGT was associated with higher level of apathy on the action initiation dimension. The role of an abnormal IGT performance as a risk factor for the development of apathy needs to be investigated in other clinical populations and in normal aging.

The effect of acute tyrosine phenylalanine depletion on emotion-based decision-making in healthy adults

Despite interest in dopamine's role in emotion-based decision-making, few reports of the effects of dopamine manipulations are available in this area in humans. This study investigates dopamine's role in emotion-based decision-making through a common measure of this construct, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), using Acute Tyrosine Phenylalanine Depletion (ATPD). In a between-subjects design, 40 healthy adults were randomized to receive either an ATPD beverage or a balanced amino acid beverage (a control) prior to completing the IGT, as well as pre- and post-manipulation blood draws for the neurohormone prolactin. Together with conventional IGT performance metrics, choice selections and response latencies were examined separately for good and bad choices before and after several key punishment events. Changes in response latencies were also used to predict total task performance. Prolactin levels increased significantly in the ATPD group but not in the control group. However, no significant group differences in performance metrics were detected, nor were there sex differences in outcome measures. However, the balanced group's bad deck latencies speeded up across the task, while the ATPD group's latencies remained adaptively hesitant. Additionally, modulation of latencies to the bad decks predicted total score for the ATPD group only. One interpretation is that ATPD subtly attenuated reward salience and altered the approach by which individuals achieved successful performance, without resulting in frank group differences in task performance.

Cognitive decision modelling of emotion-based learning impairment in schizophrenia: The role of awareness

Individuals with schizophrenia often lack insight or awareness. Resulting impairment has been observed in various cognitive domains and, recently, linked to problems in emotion-based learning. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has been used to assess emotion-based decision-making in patients with schizophrenia, but results have been inconclusive. The current study further investigates emotion-based decision-making in schizophrenia by elucidating the unique contribution of awareness. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 24 healthy controls were assessed with a modified version of the IGT recording awareness at regular intervals. Symptom assessment, medication and medical history were recorded for the clinical group. Patients with schizophrenia underperformed on the IGT compared to controls. Subjective awareness levels were significantly lower in the schizophrenia group and were associated with hallucination severity. Cognitive decision modelling further indicated that patients with schizophrenia had impaired attention to losses, compared to controls. This parameter was positively correlated with awareness. We also found that positive symptoms altered awareness levels and suggest that this disruption may contribute to sub-optimal decision-making. Overall, a lack of awareness may be an important aspect in understanding impaired social cognitive functioning and emotion-based learning observed in schizophrenia.

Cognitive Impairment in Pain through Amygdala-Driven Prefrontal Cortical Deactivation

Cognitive deficits such as impaired decision-making can be a consequence of persistent pain. Normal functions of the intact amygdala and prefrontal cortex are required for emotion-based decision-making that relies on the ability to assess risk, attribute value, and identify advantageous strategies. We tested the hypothesis that pain-related cognitive deficits result from amygdala-driven impairment of medial prefrontal cortical (mPFC) function. To do this, we used electrophysiological single-unit recordings in vivo, patch clamp in brain slices, and various behavioral assays to show that increased neuronal activity in the amygdala in an animal model of arthritis pain was accompanied by decreased mPFC activation and impaired decision-making. Furthermore, pharmacologic inhibition (with a corticotropin-releasing factor 1 receptor antagonist) of pain-related hyperactivity in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), but not central amygdala (CeA), reversed deactivation of mPFC pyramidal cells and improved decision-making deficits. Pain-related cortical deactivation resulted from a shift of balance between inhibitory and excitatory synaptic transmission. Direct excitatory transmission to mPFC pyramidal cells did not change in the pain model, whereas polysynaptic inhibitory transmission increased. GABAergic transmission was reduced by non-NMDA receptor antagonists, suggesting that synaptic inhibition was glutamate driven. The results are consistent with a model of BLA-driven feedforward inhibition of mPFC neurons. In contrast to the differential effects of BLA versus CeA hyperactivity on cortical-cognitive functions, both amygdala nuclei modulate emotional-affective pain behavior. Thus, this study shows that the amygdala contributes not only to emotional-affective but also cognitive effects of pain. The novel amygdalo-cortical pain mechanism has important implications for our understanding of amygdala functions and amygdalo-cortical interactions.

The Effect of Education and Gender on Emotion-Based Decision-Making

In the last decade, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has become a widely employed instrument for the investigation of emotion-based decision-making. Previous research has suggested that education may de-emphasise the role of emotion-based learning in decision-making, which suggests the paradox that better-educated participants should show poorer performance on the IGT. Previous research has also demonstrated gender differences on the task. We investigated the effects of education level and gender on performance on the IGT in the South African context. In order to investigate the effects of these two variables, two contrast groups were utilised: 32 volunteer university students and 20 less educated volunteers with, at most, a Grade 10 level of schooling. Both groups were divided equally by gender. It was found that the university-educated group outperformed the less educated group only in the last stage of the task. The learning profiles for the two genders appeared to be similar; no significant gender differences were found. A range of possible explanations are explored for these findings including: lack of motivation, differences in tracking punishments, differences in risk taking behaviours and difficulty with reversal learning. The implication of these findings is that, in real world situations, an excessive reliance on emotion-based resources may not be an advantage, and it may be that the university educated group was advantaged by a combination of emotional and cognitive sources of evidence. These results are discussed with reference to international findings.

Executive Function and Decision-Making in Women with Fibromyalgia

Patients with fibromyalgia (FM) typically report cognitive problems, and they state that these deficits are disturbing in everyday life. Despite these substantial subjective complaints by FM patients, very few studies have addressed objectively the effect of such aversive states on neuropsychological performance. In this study we aimed to examine possible impairment of executive function and decision-making in a sample of 36 women diagnosed with FM and 36 healthy women matched in age, education, and socio-economic status. We contrasted performance of both groups on two measures of executive functioning: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), which assesses cognitive flexibility skills, and the Iowa Gambling Tasks (IGT; original and variant versions), which assess emotion-based decision-making. We also examined the relationship between executive function performance and pain experience, and between executive function and personality traits of novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence (measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised). Results showed that on the WCST, FM women showed poorer performance than healthy comparison women on the number of categories and non-perseverative errors, but not on perseverative errors. FM patients also showed altered learning curve in the original IGT (where reward is immediate and punishment is delayed), suggesting compromised emotion-based decision-making; but not in the variant IGT (where punishment is immediate but reward is delayed), suggesting hypersensitivity to reward. Personality variables were very mildly associated with cognitive performance in FM women.

Iowa Gambling Task in schizophrenia: A review and new data in patients with schizophrenia and co-occurring cannabis use disorders

Background We reviewed previous studies comparing schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects for performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (a laboratory task designed to measure emotion-based decision-making), and found mixed results. We hypothesize that deficits in IGT performance in schizophrenia may be more specifically related to concurrent substance use disorders. To test this hypothesis, we compared schizophrenia patients with (SCZ (+)) or without (SCZ (−)) cannabis use disorders, to healthy subjects, on measures of cognition and IGT performance. Methods A comprehensive battery of cognitive tests and the IGT were administered to three groups of subjects: (1) 13 subjects with DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia and no concurrent substance use disorders (mean age: 28 ± 12 (SD); 54% males); (2) 14 subjects with schizophrenia and concurrent cannabis use disorders (mean age: 29 ± 9 (SD); 71% males); and (3) 20 healthy subjects (mean age 33 ± 10 (SD); 60% males). Results Compared to the healthy group, both schizophrenia groups were cognitively more impaired, and did worse on IGT performance. There were no differences between SCZ (+) and SCZ (−) patients on most of the cognitive tests, and IGT performance. Conclusions Schizophrenia patients show widespread impairments in several cognitive domains and emotion-based decision-making. These results are consistent with the evidence that schizophrenia reflects a dorsolateral and orbitofrontal/ventromedial prefrontal cortex dysfunction. More intriguing, it appears that the concurrent abuse of cannabis has no compounding effects on cognition, as well as emotion/affect-based decision-making.

Neuropsychological impairment associated with compulsive hoarding

A group of patients with compulsive hoarding ( n=30) was compared to a mixed clinical group ( n=30) and a nonclinical community group ( n=30) on laboratory tests of information-processing features hypothesized to be central to hoarding (memory, attention, and decision-making). Hoarding patients demonstrated slower and more variable reaction time, increased impulsivity, greater difficulty distinguishing targets and nontargets, and worse spatial attention relative to comparison groups. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that slower reaction time and increased impulsivity were significantly related to hoarding symptoms over and above the effect of depression, schizotypy, and other obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. There were no group differences on a test of emotion-based decision-making. Results are discussed in terms of previous findings and theoretical models of compulsive hoarding.