Starcke Katrin, Agorku Janet D, Brand Matthias
Department of General Psychology, Cognition and Center for Behavioral Addiction Research (CeBAR), University of Duisburg-EssenDuisburg, Germany.
Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance ImagingEssen, Germany.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2017 Jun 8;11:114. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00114. eCollection 2017.
Recent research indicates that external manipulations, such as stress or mood induction, can affect decision-making abilities. In the current study, we investigated whether the exposure to an unsolvable task affected subsequent performance on the Iowa Gambling Task. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were exposed to unsolvable anagrams ( = 20), or a condition in which they worked on solvable anagrams ( = 22). Afterwards, all participants played the Iowa Gambling Task, a prominent task that measures decision making under uncertain conditions with no explicit rules for gains and losses. In this task, it is essential to process feedback from previous decisions. The results demonstrated that participants who worked on unsolvable anagrams made more disadvantageous decisions on the Iowa Gambling Task than the other participants. In addition, a significant gender effect was observed: Males who worked on unsolvable anagrams made a more disadvantageous decisions than the other male participants. Females who worked on unsolvable anagrams also made more disadvantageous decision than the other female participants, but differences were small and not significant. We conclude that the exposure to unsolvable anagrams induced the experience of uncontrollability which can elicit stress and learned helplessness. Stress and learned helplessness might have reduced the ability to learn from the given feedback, particularly in male participants. We assume that in real life, uncontrollable challenges that last longer than a single experimental manipulation can affect decision making severely, at least in males.
近期研究表明，外部操控，如压力或情绪诱导，会影响决策能力。在本研究中，我们调查了接触无法解决的任务是否会影响后续在爱荷华赌博任务中的表现。参与者被随机分配到一个条件组，在该条件组中他们接触无法解决的字谜（n = 20），或被分配到另一个条件组，在该条件组中他们处理可解决的字谜（n = 22）。之后，所有参与者都进行了爱荷华赌博任务，这是一个著名的任务，用于测量在无明确得失规则的不确定条件下的决策。在这个任务中，处理先前决策的反馈至关重要。结果表明，处理无法解决字谜的参与者在爱荷华赌博任务中做出的不利决策比其他参与者更多。此外，观察到显著的性别效应：处理无法解决字谜的男性比其他男性参与者做出更不利的决策。处理无法解决字谜的女性也比其他女性参与者做出更不利的决策，但差异较小且不显著。我们得出结论，接触无法解决的字谜会引发无法控制的体验，进而引发压力和习得性无助感。压力和习得性无助感可能会降低从给定反馈中学习的能力，尤其是在男性参与者中。我们假设在现实生活中，持续时间超过单次实验操控的无法控制的挑战会严重影响决策，至少对男性而言如此。
