Impaired social decision making in patients with major depressive disorder.
BACKGROUND
Abnormal decision-making processes have been observed in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it is unresolved whether MDD patients show abnormalities in decision making in a social interaction context, in which decisions have actual influences on both the self-interests of the decision makers per se and those of their partners.


METHODS
Using a well-studied ultimatum game (UG), which is frequently used to investigate social interaction behavior, we examined whether MDD can be associated with abnormalities in social decision-making behavior by comparing the acceptance rates of MDD patients (N = 14) with those of normal controls (N = 19).


RESULTS
The acceptance rates of the patients were lower than those of the normal controls. Additionally, unfair proposals were accepted at similar rates from computer partners and human partners in the MDD patients, unlike the acceptance rates in the normal controls, who were able to discriminatively treat unfair proposals from computer partners and human partners.


CONCLUSIONS
Depressed patients show abnormal decision-making behavior in a social interaction context. Several possible explanations, such as increased sensitivity to fairness, negative emotional state and disturbed affective cognition, have been proposed to account for the abnormal social decision-making behavior in patients with MDD. This aberrant social decision-making behavior may provide a new perspective in the search to find biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of MDD.
Yun
Y
Wang
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. zhouyuan@psych.ac.cn.
Yuan
Y
Zhou
Shu
S
Li
Peng
P
Wang
Guo-Wei
GW
Wu
Zhe-Ning
ZN
Liu
D000328:Adult; D002681:China; D003657:Decision Making; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012929:Psychological Distance; D012920:Social Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology