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Prior personal information is highly relevant during social interactions. Such knowledge aids in the prediction of others, and it affects choices even when it is unrelated to actual behaviour. In this investigation, we aimed to study the neural representation of positive and negative personal expectations, how these impact subsequent choices, and the effect of mismatches between expectations and encountered behaviour. We employed functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in combination with a version of the Ultimatum Game (UG) where participants were provided with information about their partners' moral traits previous to receiving their fair or unfair offers. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed the implication of the supplementary motor area (SMA) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in the representation of expectations about the partners in the game. Further, these regions also represented the valence of these expectations, together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Importantly, the performance of multivariate classifiers in these clusters correlated with a behavioural choice bias to accept more offers following positive descriptions, highlighting the impact of the valence of the expectations on participants' economic decisions. Altogether, our results suggest that expectations based on social information guide future interpersonal decisions and that the neural representation of such expectations in the vmPFC is related to their influence on behaviour.

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Since emotions and regulatory control are relevant for decision-making, their circadian fluctuation should influence the outcome of such decisions, but this question has been rarely addressed. A review of the literature suggests that the evidence regarding circadian synchrony effects (better performance at optimal vs. non-optimal times of day according to chronotype) on decision-making is mixed, likely due to the use of different approaches to estimate chronotype. The current experiment studied economic decision-making as a function of both chronotype and the time of day when decisions are made. The influence of chronotype (Morning-type: N = 28 vs. Evening-type: N = 30) and time of day (8 am vs. 10 pm) on decision-making was measured by the acceptance rate of unfair and fair offers in the Ultimatum Game, and the event-related potentials time-locked to such offers. Subjective affect (PANAS), and appraisal of emotional images (IAPS) were also measured. Chronotype was estimated through questionnaires (MEQ, rMEQ, MCTQ) and the circadian rhythm of wrist temperature. Synchrony effects were found for both wrist temperature and subjective affect, but not for behavioral performance. Morning-types showed earlier phases of circadian rhythms in temperature, reported better sleep quality, more positive affective balance, accepted more unfair offers, and their frontal P200 potential was attenuated as compared to Evening-types in the Ultimatum Game. Acceptance rate of unfair offers correlated with the chronotype measured by questionnaires (positive correlation with rMEQ and MEQ scores, and negative correlation with Midsleep time in workdays -MSWsc from MCTQ) but not with midsleep time estimated through wrist temperature. Finally, participants who accepted more unfair offers later judged positive IAPS stimuli as more pleasant. We did not observe a synchrony effect in the Ultimatum Game, but morningness was related to rational decision-making as indexed by increased acceptance of unfair offers. Since morning-types show higher emotional regulation and positive mood than evening-types, it is possible that unfair offers did not elicit negative emotions as intense in morning-types as in evening-types, making it easier for them to accept.Abbreviations: ACC: anterior cingulate cortex; ANOVA: analysis of variance; BART: Balloon Analogue Risk Task; DLPFC: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; EEG: electroencephalography; IAPS: International Affective Picture System; ICA: Independent component analysis; KSS: Karolinska Sleepiness Scale; LPP: Late Positive Potential; M: mean; MCTQ: Munich Chronotype Questionnaire; MEQ: Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire; MFN: Medial Frontal Negativity; MSWsc: midsleep time for working days corrected for sleep debt; MSFsc: midsleep time for free days corrected for sleep debt; N: number of participants; PANAS: Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; PSQI: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; PVT: Psychomotor Vigilance Task; rMEQ: reduced Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire; RNA: Ribonucleic acid; RT: reaction time; SAM: Self-Assessment Manikin; SD: standard deviation; UG: Ultimatum Game.

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Two sources of information most relevant to guide social decision making are the cooperative tendencies associated with different people and their facial emotional displays. This electrophysiological experiment aimed to study how the use of personal identity and emotional expressions as cues impacts different stages of face processing and their potential isolated or interactive processing. Participants played a modified trust game with 8 different alleged partners, and in separate blocks either the identity or the emotions carried information regarding potential trial outcomes (win or loss). Behaviorally, participants were faster to make decisions based on identity compared to emotional expressions. Also, ignored (nonpredictive) emotions interfered with decisions based on identity in trials where these sources of information conflicted. Electrophysiological results showed that expectations based on emotions modulated processing earlier in time than those based on identity. Whereas emotion modulated the central N1 and VPP potentials, identity judgments heightened the amplitude of the N2 and P3b. In addition, the conflict that ignored emotions generated was reflected on the N170 and P3b potentials. Overall, our results indicate that using identity or emotional cues to predict cooperation tendencies recruits dissociable neural circuits from an early point in time, and that both sources of information generate early and late interactive patterns.

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Whereas the automaticity of emotion processing has been investigated in several cognitive domains, its mandatory influence on cooperative decision-making is still unexplored. We employed an interference-task to evaluate whether explicit instructions to ignore the emotions of others during alleged interpersonal interactions override their behavioral effects. Participants played a Trust Game multiple times with eight cooperative or non-cooperative partners, who displayed facial expressions of happiness or anger. Emotions were non-predictive regarding the partners’ cooperation. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants were explicitly asked to ignore the emotions, and the uncertainty about the partners’ behavior varied. We found an effect of emotional interference; whereas happy partners speeded cooperative decisions, angry ones speeded non-cooperative choices. This was replicated in Experiment 3, where the request of ignoring emotions was removed. Our results show the inevitable influence of the emotional displays of others during cooperation decisions, which fits with theories that contend for a tight link between emotions and social context (AU)

Pese a que la influencia ejercida por el procesamiento de las emociones ha sido estudiada en diferentes dominios cognitivos, el papel de estas durante la toma decisiones en contextos sociales queda aún por explorar. Utilizamos una tarea de interferencia con el fin de estudiar en qué grado es posible evitar la influencia de las emociones de otras personas cuando nos encontramos en interacción con ellas. Los participantes jugaron, en múltiples rondas, al Juego de la Confianza con ocho compañeros que podían ser de tipo cooperativo o no cooperativo, y cuya expresión facial podía ser de felicidad o de enfado. Las emociones de los compañeros de juego no eran predictivas, en ningún caso, de su grado de cooperación. Tanto en el Experimento 1 como en el Experimento 2 los participantes fueron instruidos de manera explícita que debían ignorar las expresiones emocionales de sus compañeros. La validez de la información personal (el grado de cooperación) fue manipulada entre ambos expresultados revelaron un efecto de interferencia emocional; las expresiones de felicidad redujeron el tiempo necesario para tomar la decisión de cooperación, mientras que las expresiones de enfado acortaron las decisiones de no cooperación. Este efecto de interferencia fue replicado en el Experimento 3, en el que la instrucción explícita de ignorar las emociones de los compañeros había sido eliminada.Nuestros resultados muestran que las emociones de otros nos influyen de manera inevitable durante nuestra interacción con ellos. Esta evidencia es coherente con las teorías que defienden la existencia de un estrecho vínculo entre emociones y contexto social (AU)

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In the present study we compared the nature of cognitive and affective conflict modulations at different stages of information processing using electroencephalographic recordings. Participants performed a flanker task in which they had to focus on a central word target and indicate its semantic category (cognitive version) or its valence (affective version). Targets were flanked by congruent or incongruent words in both versions. Although tasks were equivalent at the behavioral level, event-related potentials (ERPs) showed common and dissociable cognitive and emotional conflict modulations. At early stages of information processing, both tasks generated parallel sequential conflict effects in the P1 and N170 potentials. Later, the N2 and the first part of the P3 wave were exclusively modulated by cognitive conflict, whereas the last section of the P3 deflection/Late Positive Component (LPC) was only involved in affective current conflict processing. Therefore, the whole data set suggests the existence of early common mechanisms that are equivalent for cognitive and affective materials and later task-specific conflict processing.

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The present study tested how social information about the proposer biases responders' choices of accepting or rejecting real monetary offers in a classic ultimatum game (UG) and whether this impact is heightened by the uncertainty of the context. Participants in our study conducted a one-shot UG in which their responses had direct consequences on how much money they earned. We used trait-valenced words to provide information about the proposers' personal characteristics. The results show higher acceptance rates for offers preceded by positive words than for those preceded by negative words. In addition, the impact of this information was higher in the uncertain than in the certain context. This suggests that when deciding whether or not to take money from someone, people take into account what they know about the person they are interacting with. Such non-rational bias is stronger in an uncertain context.