Behavioral and neural reactions to emotions of others in the distribution of resources

Abstract

This study investigated the neural mechanisms involved in the interpersonal effects of emotions--i.e., how people are influenced by other people's emotions. Participants were allocators in a version of the dictator game and made a choice between two offers after receiving written emotional expressions of the recipients. The results showed that participants more often made a self-serving offer when dealing with an angry recipient than when dealing with a happy or disappointed recipient. Compared to disappointment, expressions of anger increased activation in regions associated with self-referential thinking (anterior medial prefrontal cortex, aMPFC) and (emotional) conflict (anterior cingulate cortex). We found increased activation in temporoparietal junction for receiving happy reactions in comparison with receiving angry or disappointed reactions. This study thus emphasizes that distinct emotions have distinct effects on people in terms of behavior and underlying neurological mechanisms.

Differential Fairness Decisions and Brain Responses After Expressed Emotions of Others in Boys with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…The absence of group differences in these areas might result from the specific task used in the current study, in which written emotions were presented and participants made fairness decisions subsequently. However, previous studies did report differences between ASD and TD controls in these regions in tasks using written stimuli (Lombardo et al 2011) and the TPJ specifically has been implicated in previous studies using the same paradigm as in the current study (Klapwijk et al 2016b; Lelieveld et al 2013a). It might also be that individuals with ASD do not recruit these hypothesized social-affective brain regions differently from controls when making social decisions.…”

“…For example, reduced activation in the inferior frontal gyrus has been reported in ASD when presenting emotional faces (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al 1999; Greimel et al 2010; Holt et al 2014) and altered activation in ASD in this region during mentalizing and social cognition has been identified in two meta-analyses (Di Martino et al 2009; Philip et al 2012). Furthermore, prior studies that used the same paradigm as in the current study showed that the TPJ is sensitive to happy reactions in TD controls (Klapwijk et al 2016b; Lelieveld et al 2013a). Given reports of reduced TPJ activation in social tasks in ASD (Castelli et al 2002; Lombardo et al 2011), we also expected group differences here.…”

“…We examined participants’ fairness choices in the Dictator Game (Kahneman et al 1986) after receiving emotional reactions from others, using a procedure previously used in studies with adults and (conduct disordered) adolescents (Klapwijk et al 2013, 2016b; Lelieveld et al 2013a). Participants first took part in a preliminary study 1 week before scanning ( first phase of the experiment ), where they read a scenario after which they were instructed to divide ten tokens between themselves and another person.…”

“…Hereby we assured the credibility of the second phase in which angry, disappointed, or happy emotional reactions would be directed at the 6–4 offer chosen in the first phase. Using these three emotions allows for comparisons of the effects of negative and positive communicated emotions and the effects of different types of negative emotions (Lelieveld et al 2013a; van Kleef et al 2010). Additionally, although it is not uncommon to find angry and disappointed reactions in response to a 6–4 distribution because of the relative unfairness of this distribution, happy reactions should be considered acceptable since offers of around 40% of the total are mostly accepted in economic games (Falk and Fischbacher 2006).…”

“…A previous study using this paradigm found that TD adolescents reacted with more fair allocations after they read disappointed reactions compared with angry and happy reactions from their peers (Klapwijk et al 2013). Neuroimaging studies that used this paradigm found that when TD participants received happy reactions they showed increased responses in the TPJ, a brain area that is important for mentalizing and attention (Klapwijk et al 2016b; Lelieveld et al 2013a). …”