Social exclusion influenced intertemporal decision-making and its mechanism

Abstract

Social exclusion exists widely, has a negative impact on human cognition, affection and behavior. It impairs individual's cognitive function and results in difficulties in making rational judgements and decisions. Studies showed that people who experienced social exclusion tended towards risk seeking in risky decision making. Intertemporal decision-making is a particular type of decision-making and it has high similarity with risk decision-making in theoretical development and neural basis. However, whether and how social exclusion affects intertemporal decision-making is largely unknown. Our research aimed to reveal the potential mechanism of social exclusion that affects the two stages of intertemporal decision-making: evaluation and selection. Additionally, the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS, a non-invasive brain stimulation technology) would be applied to stimulate the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rvlPFC) which can regulate a range of negative effects from social exclusion, so as to improve the excluded's intertemporal decision-making capability. The results of this study would shed light on how interpersonal factors affect the intertemporal choice and how to improve the excludeds' ability of intertemporal decision-making, consequently, benefit their quality of life and personal achievement.

Consequences of scarcity: the impact of perceived scarcity on executive functioning and its neural basis

“…As economic scarcity impairs cognitive functioning, time scarcity also impairs individual cognitive and behavioral performance. Studies by Spears (2011) and Zhang (2019) also found that manipulating scarce situations in a laboratory can lead to worse performance in inhibitory control tasks. Zhao (2014) found that in the 6 weeks before the final exam of college students, their performance on Raven’s reasoning task (a task to measure fluid intelligence) declined.…”

Impact of perceived scarcity on delay of gratification: meditation effects of self-efficacy and self-control

“…This result is supported by empirical scientific research (Shah et al, 2012), indicating that individuals become more fatigued and less attentive when facing laboratory-designed scarcity in chances, time, and economy and borrow large sums of money regardless of the interest rate. Studies by Spears (2011) and Zhang (2019) found that compared with non scarcity circumstances, people exhibit worse performance in tasks requiring self-control under manipulated scarcity circumstances. In addition, people generally focus on their urgent needs and neglect remote aims (Soyoun et al, 2008).…”

The mediating role of hostile attribution bias in social exclusion affecting aggressive behavior

“…Depending on how it is measured, social exclusion can be categorized into long-term social exclusion (trait level) and short-term social exclusion (state level). Long-term social exclusion can be examined through questionnaire measurements and short-term social exclusion can be induced through experiments (Zhang et al, 2022). The general aggression model (GAM; Anderson & Bushman, 2002) states that situational factors influence aggression through cognition, emotion, and arousal.…”