The effect of apathy and compulsivity on planning and stopping in sequential decision-making.

Real-life decision-making often comprises sequences of successive decisions about whether to take opportunities as they are encountered or keep searching for better ones instead. We investigated individual differences related to such sequential decision-making and link them especially to apathy and compulsivity in a large online sample (discovery sample: n = 449 and confirmation sample: n = 756). Our cognitive model revealed distinct changes in the way participants evaluated their environments and planned their own future behaviour. Apathy was linked to decision inertia, i.e., automatically persisting with a sequence of searches for longer than appropriate given the value of searching. Thus, despite being less motivated, they did not avoid the effort associated with longer searches. In contrast, compulsivity was linked to self-reported insensitivity to the cost of continuing with a sequence of searches. The objective measures of behavioural cost insensitivity were clearly linked to compulsivity only in the discovery sample. While the confirmation sample showed a similar effect, it did not reach significance. Nevertheless, in both samples, participants reported awareness of such bias (experienced as "overchasing"). In addition, this awareness made them report preemptively avoiding situations related to the bias. However, we found no evidence of them actually preempting more in the task, which might mean a misalignment of their metacognitive beliefs or that our behavioural measures were incomplete. In summary, individual variation in distinct, fundamental aspects of sequential decision-making can be linked to variation in 2 measures of behavioural traits associated with psychological illness in the normal population.

Causal manipulation of self-other mergence in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

To navigate social environments, people must simultaneously hold representations about their own and others' abilities. During self-other mergence, people estimate others' abilities not only on the basis of the others' past performance, but the estimates are also influenced by their own performance. For example, if we perform well, we overestimate the abilities of those with whom we are co-operating and underestimate competitors. Self-other mergence is associated with specific activity patterns in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). Using a combination of non-invasive brain stimulation, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and computational modeling, we show that dmPFC neurostimulation silences these neural signatures of self-other mergence in relation to estimation of others' abilities. In consequence, self-other mergence behavior increases, and our assessments of our own performance are projected increasingly onto other people. This suggests an inherent tendency to form interdependent social representations and a causal role of the dmPFC in separating self and other representations.

A Data Mining and Data Visualization Approach to Examine the Interrelationships Between Life Satisfaction, Secularization and Religiosity.

Previous studies have suggested a positive relationship between secularization and happiness, as well as a geographical, cultural and development pattern, primarily based on data gathered in Europe and the USA. To gain a more holistic view on the interrelationships between secularization, religiosity and subjective perception of well-being, this study utilized the Wave 6 archival data set (2010-2014) of World Values Survey, which contains 74,042 observations from 60 countries. In this study, the rating of satisfaction with life was treated as the dependent variable. Four secular value indices and 12 variables related to religiosity were extracted from the data set for predictive analysis. Data mining tools, such as the partition tree and bootstrap forest approaches, suggested that only secular values were influential. Specifically, secular values had a negative relationship with satisfaction. In addition, hierarchical clustering based on secularization and satisfaction did not suggest a meaningful pattern. For example, the dendrogram showed that South Korea, Lebanon, Estonia and Algeria were grouped together. This implies that secularization and satisfaction could vary from country to country, regardless of their geographical location, culture and development status. Specifically, countries that are similar in terms of satisfaction and secularization are not necessarily culturally similar or geographically clustered. This discourages the idea that these factors (e.g., location, development status, culture) play a role in mediating the relationship between secularization and religiosity. By directly contradicting previous work showing a pattern based on Europe and the USA, this finding challenges the existing understanding of the relationship between these factors. By expanding the scope of study to the whole world, the current analysis suggested that the existing view regarding the positive relationship between secularization and well-being might be oversimplified.

Prospection, Perseverance, and Insight in Sequential Behavior.

Real-world decisions have benefits occurring only later and dependent on additional decisions taken in the interim. We investigated this in a novel decision-making task in humans (n = 76) while measuring brain activity with fMRI (n = 24). Modeling revealed that participants computed the prospective value of decisions: they planned their future behavior taking into account how their decisions might affect which states they would encounter and how they themselves might respond in these states. They considered their own likely future behavioral biases (e.g., failure to adapt to changes in prospective value) and avoided situations in which they might be prone to such biases. Three neural networks in adjacent medial frontal regions were linked to distinct components of prospective decision making: activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, area 8 m/9, and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex reflected prospective value, anticipated changes in prospective value, and the degree to which prospective value influenced decisions.