The interplay between feedback-related negativity and individual differences in altruistic punishment: An EEG study

Abstract

To date, the interplay betwexen neurophysiological and individual difference factors in altruistic punishment has been little understood. To examine this issue, 45 individuals participated in a Dictator Game with punishment option while the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was derived from the electroencephalogram (EEG). Unlike previous EEG studies on the Dictator Game, we introduced a third party condition to study the effect of fairness norm violations in addition to employing a first person perspective. For the first time, we also examined the role of individual differences, specifically fairness concerns, positive/negative affectivity, and altruism/ empathy as well as recipients' financial situation during altruistic punishment. The main results show that FRN amplitudes were more pronounced for unfair than for fair assignments in both the first person and third party perspectives. These findings suggest that FRN amplitudes are sensitive to fairness norm violations and play a crucial role in the recipients' evaluation of dictator assignments. With respect to individual difference factors, recipients' current financial situation affected the FRN fairness effect in the first person perspective, indicating that when being directly affected by the assignments, more affluent participants experienced stronger violations of expectations in altruistic punishment decisions. Regarding individual differences in trait empathy, in the third party condition FRN amplitudes were more pronounced for those who scored lower in empathy. This may suggest empathy as another motive in third party punishment. Independent of the perspective taken, higher positive affect was associated with more punishment behavior, suggesting that positive emotions may play an important role in restoring violated fairness norms.

Genetic variation of dopamine and serotonin function modulates the feedback-related negativity during altruistic punishment

“…All participants were of middle European ancestry and reported German as their mother tongue, had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and reported no relevant current health problems and no history of neurologic or psychiatric diseases, psychopharmacological treatment, and substance abuse/dependence. Data for the present study originate from a project examining the neurophysiological correlates of AP 17 .…”

“…They received written study information, gave their written informed consent and were instructed to complete a battery of questionnaires assessing their subjective financial situation (“How do you evaluate your current financial situation?” ranging from 1 = very favorable to 4 = very unfavorable; for better interpretation, the variable was recoded), their sleep duration as well as their nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol consumption during the previous 24 hours (see also ref. 17, for further information about questionnaires not included in this study). Then, participants received instructions for the subsequent EEG recordings and DG scenarios.…”

“…At the EEG level, accumulated evidence shows that the so called feedback-related negativity (FRN), an ACC-generated event-related potential (ERP) with a maximum around 300 ms at fronto-central electrodes is evoked following feedback about negative performance 14, 15 or when outcomes are worse than expected 16 . In relation to economic decision making, larger (i.e., more negative-going) FRN amplitudes have been observed in response to unfair relative to fair offers in Ultimatum and Dictator games 17, 18 . Moreover, there is evidence that the FRN is related to rejecting unfair offers 19 and is sensitive to utilitarian information indicating losses versus gains 20 .…”

“…We used a modified DG that enabled to tap these responses from a first person and a third party perspective 7, 17, 38 . As far as we know, no study to date has examined the influence of allele-specific differences in DRD4 exon III and 5-HTTLPR on the FRN component during AP.…”

Review and Classification of Emotion Recognition Based on EEG Brain-Computer Interface System Research: A Systematic Review

“…Although the affective information from image, video, and audio stimuli has been extensively studied, olfactory stimuli [26], written words [27][28][29][30][31][32], food stimuli (enriched by emotional stimuli) [33], and games have been used as elicitation methods in a number of studies as ways to assess human emotional state by investigating physiological signals [34][35][36][37].…”