Pre-specified Anxiety Predicts Future Decision-Making Performances Under Different Temporally Constrained Conditions

Abstract

In real-life circumstances, people occasionally require making forced decisions when encountering unpredictable events and situations that yield socially and privately unfavorable consequences. In order to prevent future negative consequences, it is beneficial to successfully predict future decision-making behaviors based on various types of information, including behavioral traits and/or psychological states. For this prospective purpose, the present study used the Iowa Gambling Task, which simulates multiple aspects of real-life decision-making processes, such as choice preference, selection and evaluation of output feedback, and investigated how anxiety profiles predict decision-making performances under conditions with different temporal pressures on task execution. To conduct a temporally causal analysis, we assessed the trait and state anxiety profiles of 33 young participants prior to the task and analyzed their subsequent decision-making performances. We separated two disadvantageous card decks with high rewards and losses into high- and middle-risk decks, and calculated local performance indexes for decision-making immediately after salient penalty events for the high-risk deck in addition to traditional global performance indexes concerning overall trial outcomes such as final winnings and net scores. For global decision-making, higher trait anxiety predicted more risky choices solely in the self-paced condition without temporal pressure. For local decision-making, state anxiety predicted risk-taking performances differently in the self- and forced-paced conditions. In the self-paced condition, higher state anxiety predicted higher risk-avoidance. In the forced-paced condition, higher state anxiety predicted more frequent choices of the middle-risk deck. These findings suggest not only that pre-specified anxiety profiles can effectively predict future decision-making behaviors under different temporal pressures, but also newly indicate that behavioral mechanisms for moderate risk-taking under an emergent condition should be focused on to effectively prevent future unfavorable consequences when actually encountering negative events.

Modeling Skin Conductance Response Time Series during Consecutive Rapid Decision-Making under Concurrent Temporal Pressure and Information Ambiguity

“…As confirmed in Figure 1 , the net scores showed no significant differences between the blocks ( F (4, 60) = 1.128, p = 0.352, partially ( p ) η 2 = 0.070); that is, the temporal pressure and enhanced information ambiguity attenuated the development of risk-avoidance preference (gradual increase in net scores). This result is consistent with previous finding [ 23 ], which observed lower risk-avoidance under temporal pressure and information ambiguity compared to previous observations of IGT.…”

“…Previous studies observed lower risk-avoidance behavior under information ambiguity conditions [ 21 , 22 ], and adding temporal pressure to information ambiguity also induced this tendency [ 23 ]. Following these studies, our analysis of Experiment 1 also employed a net score as the index of risk-avoidance preference.…”

“…We also aimed to examine how model fitting as an index of event-related, automatic physiological reactivity was associated with prespecified anxiety scores and Deck A selection as moderate risk-taking. Behavioral results have already been extensively reported in previous studies [ 23 ]; therefore, this study mainly analyzed the SCR data and moderate risk-taking behaviors (Deck A selection) in order to examine the relationship between them. Experiment 2 was conducted prior to Experiment 1 between March and April 2018.…”

“…Model-fitting coefficients were regressed by STAI-S and STAI-T scores and the controlling variables of age, sex, IQ, and task orders across participants under each condition. As the previous study observed that temporal pressure evoked a moderate risk-taking behavior immediately after maximum penalty events that was associated with state anxiety scores [ 23 ], the present study also regressed moderate risk-taking behaviors via model fitting coefficients (6-s delay model) and the controlling variables (age, sex, IQ, and task order) in a multivariate regression analysis. As argued in the introduction, it is difficult to extract a single SCR waveform for each trial in Experiment 2 because of the overlapping SCRs with a short between-trial interval; therefore, in accordance with the modeling of the overall SCR time series, we used the overall behavior of Deck A selection (proportions (%) of the total selections, including successive selections) as an index for moderate risk-taking.…”

“…One recent IGT study reported for the first time that concurrent temporal pressure and information ambiguity evokes moderate risk-taking (selection of Deck A with frequent middle penalty) after salient penalty events (JPY 125,000 in Deck B) [ 23 ]; this risk-taking was also associated with a self-reported state anxiety, which is defined as transient anxious states in response to current emotional events, in contrast to trait anxiety, which is a stable predisposition as a personality trait to frequent experiences of anxiety [ 24 ]. Such anxiety-related, moderate risk-taking may be valued as a basic behavioral mechanism for fraud victimization: the state anxiety of people who are vulnerable to future victimization may sensitively change under temporal pressure and ambiguity as a result of a lack of information.…”