The Neural and Psychological Processes of Peer-Influenced Online Donation Decision: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

With the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), social media-based donation platforms emerged.1 These platforms innovatively demonstrate peer information (e.g., number of donated peers) on the donation page, which inevitably brings the peer influence into donors’ donation decision process. However, how the peer influence will affect the psychological process of donation decisions are remained unknown. This study used the number of donated peers to examine the effects of peer influence on donors’ donation decisions and extracted event-related potential (ERP) from electroencephalographic data to explore the underlying psychological process. The behavioral results indicated that the number of donated peers positively influenced donors’ willingness to donate. The ERP results suggested that a larger number of donated peers might indicate a higher level of conformity and greater perceived emotional rewards, as a larger P2 amplitude was observed. Following the early processing of emotional stimuli, cognitive detection of decisional risk took place, and the donors reckoned a smaller number of donated peers as a high potential risk, which was reflected by a larger N2 amplitude. In the later stage, the larger number of donated peers, which represented a higher magnitude of prospective emotional rewards, led to a higher incentive to donate, and reflected in a larger amplitude of P3. Additionally, implications and future directions were discussed.

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“…Only about three current studies have explored the psychological mechanisms underlying peer-influenced donation decisions. 3,30,31 As mentioned above, our team's previous work studied the effect of the number of donated peers on donors' willingness to donate and abstracted the peer-influenced donation decision mechanism into a dual-process approach, which we summarized as a cognitive approach (trust formation) and an emotional approach (reward perception). 3 As there is a paucity of research available to inform our understanding of the cognitive and psychological mechanisms that underlie the effect of peer donation amounts on donors' decisions regarding the amount to donate, it is reasonable to construct the psychological processes of the effect on the previous dual-processes approach and put forward new hypothesis through deductive reasoning.…”

“…According to the literature, self-control mainly can impact the donation decision processes in two ways: control donors from impulsive donation to calculated (rational) decision 35,36 and control one's selfish donation to "pure" altruism. 37,38 Since donors can perceive reward from donation, 3 self-control can highlight the "cost" information and prevent donors from impulsive (beyond capacity) donations. In general, other than a cognitive process of truth formation, a cost and benefit analysis process also may exist.…”

“…40 Second, compared with number of donated peers information which needs to perceive abstract expected rewards (eg, satisfaction of relatedness needs, etc.) through cognitive processing, 3,41 information on the peer donation amounts provides richer, more intuitive, and more comparable information on valence differences, 42,43 such as higher or lower amounts that directly reflect a person's level of contribution, corresponding to higher or lower potential reputation rewards, [44][45][46] etc. This suggests that displaying information about the peer donation amount (as compared to other non-monetary information) will further motivate donors to act in a more self-interested manner due to their enhanced perception of the rewards they will receive for donating.…”

“…22,60 Recent studies have also demonstrated that P2 is sensitive to the emotional valuation of potential reward cues, with higher perceived rewards typically eliciting larger P2 amplitudes than lower perceived rewards. 3,[61][62][63] Moreover, scholars have proposed that reward-related cognitive processing can be delineated into two stages, namely cue evaluation and reward anticipation, and P2 is a key index component in the cue evaluation phase. [64][65][66] These observations highlight the potential importance of P2 in the neural processing of decision-making involving rewards.…”

“…72,73 Previous scholarship has purposed that P3 amplitude can mirror reward magnitude (ie, distinguishing large and small rewards), thereby indicating a conscious, topdown elaboration of the motivational significance of the outcome. 3,65,[74][75][76] In this regard, P3 may also convey affective processes, signaling the motivational salience of reward feedback. 77 Subsequent research has shed further light on the P3 component's potential, demonstrating its sensitivity to positive social feedback among healthy individuals, which serves to underscore an encoding bias for self-affirming and desirable information.…”