Losing control without your smartphone: Anxiety affects the dynamic choice process of impulsive decision-making and purchase.

Different interacting contexts influence the decision-making process, as revealed by the computational modeling. Through four studies, we investigated how smartphone addiction and anxiety influenced impulsive behaviors, along with the underlying psychological mechanisms and dynamic decision-making processes. In the first and second studies, we found no significant correlation between smartphone addiction and impulsive behavior. However, in the third study, we found that smartphone separation increased impulsive decision-making and purchases, and state anxiety, but not trait anxiety, mediated this effect. We explored the dynamic decision-making process using a multi-attribute drift diffusion model (DDM). The results showed that anxiety triggered by smartphone separation changed the trade-offs between decision weights for the fundamental components of the dynamic choice process. In the fourth study, we investigated why smartphone addiction led to increased anxiety and found that extended-self was a mediating factor. Our findings show that smartphone addiction was not correlated with impulsive behaviors, but was correlated with state anxiety in the context of smartphone separation. Further, this study shows how emotional states triggered by different interacting contexts affect the dynamic decision-making process and consumer behaviors.

Author Correction: Dissociable functional activities of cortical theta and beta oscillations in the lateral prefrontal cortex during intertemporal choice.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Good Slang or Bad Slang? Embedding Internet Slang in Persuasive Advertising.

Internet slang is a new language with innovative and novel characteristics, and its use can be considered a form of creative advertising. Embedding internet slang into advertisements can thus enhance their creative quality and increase the attention paid to them. In this study, we examined the effect of the characteristics of internet slang on attention to advertisements, brand awareness, product evaluation, and attitudes toward advertising by conducting two empirical studies, one utilizing eye-tracking experiments and the other utilizing questionnaires. We found that using internet slang in advertising significantly increased audience attention compared with standard language but did not necessarily improve product evaluation and brand awareness for various types of goods. We discovered code-switching effects of psycholinguistics existed in standard language and its variant (internet slang). Our findings can guide advertisers in selecting the embedded language that can be effective in achieving their desired advertising effect. Our findings also indicate that the excessive use of internet slang may have a negative effect on brand and product evaluation.

Dissociable functional activities of cortical theta and beta oscillations in the lateral prefrontal cortex during intertemporal choice.

The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays an important role in the neural networks involved in intertemporal choice. However, little is known about how the neural oscillation of LPFC functions during intertemporal choice, owing to the technical limitations of functional magnetic resonance imaging and event-related brain potential recordings. Electrocorticography (ECoG) is a novel neuroimaging technique that has high spatial and temporal resolution. In this study, we used ECoG and projected the ECoG data onto individual brain spaces to investigate human intracranial cortex activity and how neural oscillations of the LPFC impact intertemporal choice. We found that neural activity of theta oscillation was significantly higher during impulsive decisions, while beta oscillation activity was significantly higher during non-impulsive ones. Our findings suggest a functional dissociation between cortical theta and beta oscillations during decision-making processes involved in intertemporal choice, and that decision outcomes may be determined by LPFC modulation, which involves neural oscillations at different frequencies.

Temporal Dynamics of the Interaction between Reward and Time Delay during Intertemporal Choice.

Intertemporal choice involves the processes of valuation and choice. Choice is often the result of subjective valuation, in which reward is integrated with time delay. Here, using event-related potential (ERP) signals as temporal hallmarks, we aim to investigate temporal dynamics of how reward interacts with time delay during a delayed discounting task. We found that participants preferred immediate rewards when delayed rewards were small or over long-term delays. Our ERP results suggested that the P200 component reflected an initial valuation of reward and time delay, while the frontal N2 component correlated with individual choices of immediate option of rewards. The LPP component was modulated by the N2 component. These findings demonstrate that the N2 component is the key component in temporal dynamics of the interaction between reward and time valuation.

Neural evidence for moral intuition and the temporal dynamics of interactions between emotional processes and moral cognition.

Behavioral and neurological studies have revealed that emotions influence moral cognition. Although moral stimuli are emotionally charged, the time course of interactions between emotions and moral judgments remains unknown. In the present study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of the interaction between emotional processes and moral cognition. The results revealed that when making moral judgments, the time course of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform was significantly different between high emotional arousal and low emotional arousal contexts. Different stages of processing were distinguished, showing distinctive interactions between emotional processes and moral reasoning. The precise time course of moral intuition and moral reasoning sheds new light on theoretical models of moral psychology. Specifically, the N1 component (interpreted as representing moral intuition) did not appear to be influenced by emotional arousal. However, the N2 component and late positive potential were strongly affected by emotional arousal; the slow wave was influenced by both emotional arousal and morality, suggesting distinct moral processing at different emotional arousal levels.

Victims' time discounting 2.5 years after the Wenchuan earthquake: an ERP study.

BACKGROUND: Time discounting refers to the fact that the subjective value of a reward decreases as the delay until its occurrence increases. The present study investigated how time discounting has been affected in survivors of the magnitude-8.0 Wenchuan earthquake that occurred in China in 2008. METHODOLOGY: Nineteen earthquake survivors and 22 controls, all school teachers, participated in the study. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) for time discounting tasks involving gains and losses were acquired in both the victims and controls. FINDINGS: The behavioral data replicated our previous findings that delayed gains were discounted more steeply after a disaster. ERP results revealed that the P200 and P300 amplitudes were increased in earthquake survivors. There was a significant group (earthquake vs. non-earthquake) × task (gain vs. loss) interaction for the N300 amplitude, with a marginally significantly reduced N300 for gain tasks in the experimental group, which may suggest a deficiency in inhibitory control for gains among victims. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that post-disaster decisions might involve more emotional (System 1) and less rational thinking (System 2) in terms of a dual-process model of decision making. The implications for post-disaster intervention and management are also discussed.