Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2021 Oct;5(10):1391-1401. doi: 10.1038/s41562-021-01213-6. Epub 2021 Oct 19.
People make decisions based on deviations from expected outcomes, known as prediction errors. Past work has focused on reward prediction errors, largely ignoring violations of expected emotional experiences-emotion prediction errors. We leverage a method to measure real-time fluctuations in emotion as people decide to punish or forgive others. Across four studies (N = 1,016), we reveal that emotion and reward prediction errors have distinguishable contributions to choice, such that emotion prediction errors exert the strongest impact during decision-making. We additionally find that a choice to punish or forgive can be decoded in less than a second from an evolving emotional response, suggesting that emotions swiftly influence choice. Finally, individuals reporting significant levels of depression exhibit selective impairments in using emotion-but not reward-prediction errors. Evidence for emotion prediction errors potently guiding social behaviours challenge standard decision-making models that have focused solely on reward.
人们根据偏离预期结果的情况做出决策，这些偏差被称为预测误差。过去的研究主要关注奖励预测误差，而忽略了预期情绪体验的违反，即情绪预测误差。我们利用一种方法来衡量人们决定惩罚或原谅他人时的实时情绪波动。在四项研究中（N=1016），我们揭示了情绪和奖励预测误差对选择有可区分的贡献，即情绪预测误差在决策过程中产生最强的影响。我们还发现，从不断变化的情绪反应中，不到一秒钟就能解码出惩罚或原谅的选择，这表明情绪会迅速影响选择。最后，报告有明显抑郁水平的个体在使用情绪预测误差方面表现出选择性缺陷，但在使用奖励预测误差方面没有缺陷。情绪预测误差有力地指导社会行为的证据，挑战了仅专注于奖励的标准决策模型。
