The temporal course of the influence of anxiety on fairness considerations.
This study investigated the potential causes of anxious people's social avoidance. The classic ultimatum game was utilized in concert with electroencephalogram recording. Participants were divided into two groups according to levels of trait anxiety as identified by a self-report scale. The behavioral results indicate that high-anxious participants were more prone to reject human-proposed than computer-proposed unequal offers compared to their low-anxious counterparts. The event-related potential results indicate that the high-anxious group showed a larger feedback-related negativity when receiving unequal monetary offers than equal ones, and a larger P3 when receiving human-proposed offers than computer-proposed ones, but these effects were absent in the low-anxious group. We suggest anxious people's social avoidance results from hypersensitivity to unequal distributions during interpersonal interactions.
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Yi
Y
Luo
Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.|Department of Psychology, Queens College, The City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.
Tingting
T
Wu
Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, USA.
Lucas S
LS
Broster
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Chunliang
C
Feng
Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Dandan
D
Zhang
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Ruolei
R
Gu
Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
Yue-Jia
YJ
Luo
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
Anxiety; Equality; Event-related potential (ERP); Fairness evaluation; Feedback-related negativity (FRN); P3; Social decision making; Ultimatum game