The value of a real face: Differences between affective faces and emojis in neural processing and their social influence on decision-making

The impact of facial attractiveness and alleged personality traits on fairness decisions in the ultimatum game: Evidence from ERPs

In the mind of the beholder the personality and facial attractiveness of others are interrelated. However, how these specific properties are processed in the neurocognitive system and interact with each other while economic decisions are made is not well understood. Here, we combined the ultimatum game with EEG technology, to investigate how alleged personality traits and the perceived facial attractiveness of proposers of fair and unfair offers influence their acceptance by the responders. As expected, acceptance rate was higher for fair than unfair allocations. Overall, responders were more likely to accept proposals from individuals with higher facial attractiveness and with more positive personality traits. In ERPs, words denoting negative personality traits elicited larger P2 components than positive trait words, and more attractive faces elicited larger LPC amplitudes. Replicating previous findings, FRN amplitudes were larger to unfair than to fair allocations. This effect was diminished if the proposer's faces were attractive or associated with positive personality traits. Hence, facial attractiveness and the valence of personality traits seem to be evaluated independently and at different time points. Subsequent decision making about unfair offers is similarly influenced by high attractiveness and positive personality of the proposer, diminishing the negative response normally elicited by "unfair" proposals, possibly due a "reward" effect. In the ERPs to the proposals the effect of positive personality and attractiveness were seen in the FRN and P300 components but for positive personality traits the effect even preceded the FRN effect. Altogether, the present results indicate that both high facial attractiveness and alleged positive personality mitigate the effects of unfair proposals, with temporally overlapping but independent neurocognitive correlates.

The Effects of Live Streamer's Facial Attractiveness and Product Type on Consumer Purchase Intention: An Exploratory Study with Eye Tracking Technology

As a booming branch of online retailing, live-streaming e-commerce can present abundant information dimensions and diverse forms of expression. Live-streaming e-commerce has enabled online retailers to interact with customers face-to-face, resulting in widespread instances of emotional and impulse buying behavior. Prior research in live-streaming e-commerce has suggested that live streamers' characteristics, especially the live streamer's face, can affect customers' purchase intentions. The present research used questionnaire surveys and an eye tracking experiment to investigate the impact of live streamer's facial attractiveness on consumer purchase intention for search-based and experience-based products. The questionnaire survey analyzed 309 valid questionnaires and revealed that attractive faces are the key influencing factor driving consumers' impulse purchase intentions. Moreover, consumers' emotional experience plays a partial mediating role in the process of live streamers' faces influencing purchase intention. The eye tracking experiment further explored the mechanism of a live streamer's facial attractiveness on consumers' purchase intentions of search-based products and experience-based products from the perspective of visual attention by analyzing 64 valid sets of data. The results showed that attractive faces attract more consumers' attention and, therefore, increase their purchase intention. Furthermore, there is a significant interaction between product type, the live streamer's facial attractiveness, and consumers' purchase intentions. In the case of unattractive live streamers, consumers are more likely to buy search-based products than experience-based products, while the purchase intention does not vary between search-based products and experience-based products in the case of attractive live streamers. The present study provides evidence for 'beauty premium' in live-streaming e-commerce and sheds light on the design of the match between live streamers and different types of products.

Event-related potentials during the ultimatum game in people with symptoms of depression and/or social anxiety

Depression and social anxiety are common disorders that have a profound impact on social functioning. The need for studying the neural substrates of social interactions in mental disorders using interactive tasks has been emphasized. The field of neuroeconomics, which combines neuroscience techniques and behavioral economics multiplayer tasks such as the Ultimatum Game (UG), can contribute in this direction. We assessed emotions, behavior, and Event-Related Potentials in participants with depression and/or social anxiety symptoms (MD/SA, n = 63, 57 females) and healthy controls (n = 72, 67 females), while they played the UG. In this task, participants received fair, mid-value, and unfair offers from other players. Mixed linear models were implemented to assess trial level changes in neural activity. The MD/SA group reported higher levels of sadness in response to mid-value and unfair offers compared to controls. In controls, the Medial Frontal Negativity associated with fair offers increased over time, while this dynamic was not observed in the MD/SA group. The MD/SA group showed a decreased P3/LPP in all offers, compared to controls. These results indicate an enhanced negative emotional response to unfairness in the MD/SA group. Neural results reveal a blunted response over time to positive social stimuli in the MD/SA group. Moreover, between-group differences in P3/LPP may relate to a reduced saliency of offers and/or to a reduced availability of resources for processing incoming stimuli in the MD/SA group. Findings may shed light into the neural substrates of social difficulties in these disorders.

Influence of advisees' facial feedback on subsequent advice-giving by advisors: Evidence from the behavioral and neurophysiological approach

Previous work has demonstrated the interpersonal implications of advisees' decisions (acceptance or rejection) on advisors' advice-giving behavior in subsequent exchanges. Here, using an ERP technique, we investigated how advisees' facial feedback (smiling, neutral, or frowning) accompanying their decisions (acceptance or rejection) influenced advisors' feedback evaluation from advisees and their advice-giving in subsequent exchanges. Behaviorally, regardless of whether the advice was accepted or rejected, advisors who received smiling-expression feedback would show higher willingness rates in subsequent advice-giving decisions, while advisors who received frowning-expression feedback would show lower willingness rates. On the neural level, in the feedback evaluation stage, the FRN and P3 responses were not sensitive to facial feedback. In contrast, frowning-expression feedback elicited a larger LPC amplitude than neutral- and smiling-expression feedback, regardless of whether the advice was accepted or rejected. In the advice decision stage, advisors who received neutral-expression feedback showed a larger N2 in making decisions than advisors who received frowning-expression feedback only after the advice was rejected. Additionally, Advisors who received smiling- and neutral-expression feedback showed a larger P3 in making decisions than advisors who received frowning-expression feedback only after the advice was accepted. In sum, the current findings extended previous research findings by showing that the effect of advisees' facial expressions on the advisors' advice-giving existed in multiple stages, including both the feedback evaluation stage and the advice decision stage.

The power of emojis: The impact of a leader's use of positive emojis on members' creativity during computer-mediated communications

The existing literature on emojis offers limited insights on the effects of using emojis in organizational settings, especially in the context of leader-member relationships. The current research examines how a leader's use of positive emojis can influence members' creative performance, a critical determinant of an organization's success and productivity. We find that a leader's use of positive emojis enhances members' creativity and that this effect is mediated by a decrease in members' perception of objectification by the leader. We further find that this impact of a leader's use of positive emojis on members' creativity is stronger when members have a higher level of relationship orientation. Contrary to the popular belief that the use of emojis in a work setting is inappropriate, our findings reveal that leaders' use of emojis has positive impacts on important workplace outcomes. These findings provide important guidelines on how to apply emojis to computer-mediated communications at work by demonstrating the circumstances in which positive consequences of using emojis occur.

Altered neural correlates of optimal decision-making in individuals with depressive status

Making optimal decisions by computing risk and benefit is necessary for humans. However, whether individuals with depressive status could utilize the optimal strategy to guide decision and its neural correlates remain unclear. The current study explored these issues by combining a decision task and high temporal-resolution electroencephalogram (EEG). The decision task involved an eight-box trial in which participants successively decided whether to open a box containing a potential reward or punishment, deciding to stop guaranteed they would retain the rewards already accumulated. Theoretically, the optimal strategy in the task was to stop at the fourth box, which had the largest expected value. We found that individuals with depressive status stopped fewer trials at the fourth box, relative to healthy controls, indicating their impaired optimal strategy during decision-making. Moreover, compared to healthy controls, individuals with depressive status showed weaker P2 amplitude and weaker beta-band oscillation at the frontocentral scalp when deciding whether to open the fourth box. Additionally, for healthy controls but not for individuals with depressive status, the P2 amplitude fully mediated the relationship between participants' degree of expected benefit (as reflected by the recreational risk-taking scale) and the frequency of trials stopped at the fourth box. Overall, this study revealed that the P2 amplitude and beta-band oscillation might explain the altered optimal decision-making in individuals with depressive status.

Meaning above (and in) the head: Combinatorial visual morphology from comics and emoji

Compositionality is a primary feature of language, but graphics can also create combinatorial meaning, like with items above faces (e.g., lightbulbs to mean inspiration). We posit that these “upfixes” (i.e., upwards affixes) involve a productive schema enabling both stored and novel face–upfix dyads. In two experiments, participants viewed either conventional (e.g., lightbulb) or unconventional (e.g., clover-leaves) upfixes with faces which either matched (e.g., lightbulb/smile) or mismatched (e.g., lightbulb/frown). In Experiment 1, matching dyads sponsored higher comprehensibility ratings and faster response times, modulated by conventionality. In Experiment 2, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed conventional upfixes, regardless of matching, evoked larger N250s, indicating perceptual expertise, but mismatching and unconventional dyads elicited larger semantic processing costs (N400) than conventional-matching dyads. Yet mismatches evoked a late negativity, suggesting congruent novel dyads remained construable compared with violations. These results support that combinatorial graphics involve a constrained productive schema, similar to the lexicon of language.

Neural computations underlying contextual processing in humans

Context shapes our perception of facial expressions during everyday social interactions. We interpret a person’s face in a hostile situation negatively and judge the same face under pleasant circumstances positively. Critical to our adaptive fitness, context provides situation-specific framing to resolve ambiguity and guide our interpersonal behavior. This context-specific modulation of facial expression is thought to engage the amygdala, hippocampus, and orbitofrontal cortex; however, the underlying neural computations remain unknown. Here we use human intracranial electroencephalograms (EEGs) directly recorded from these regions and report bidirectional theta-gamma interactions within the amygdala-hippocampal network, facilitating contextual processing. Contextual information is subsequently represented in the orbitofrontal cortex, where a theta phase shift binds context and face associations within theta cycles, endowing faces with contextual meanings at behavioral timescales. Our results identify theta phase shifts as mediating associations between context and face processing, supporting flexible social behavior.

Context influences our perception of facial expressions. Zheng et al. show that contextual modulation of faces relies on medial temporal lobe-orbitofrontal cortex communications in humans. High gamma bursts occur in rhythm with theta oscillations, with cross-regional theta-gamma phase shifts binding context-face associations.

I am entitled to it! Social power and context modulate disadvantageous inequity aversion

Previous research consistently indicated that social power influences one's fairness consideration. However, it is unclear how social power and context jointly affect inequity aversion and whether these processes would be manifested in brain activities. In this study, participants were randomly assigned into either high or low power condition and then took part in a modified ultimatum game (UG) as responders in both gain and loss contexts, with their event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded. Behavioral results showed that powerful participants were more likely to reject unfair offers in both contexts compared with powerless ones. In addition, powerful participants showed a more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) loss-win difference wave (d-FRN) upon presentation of proposed offers compared with powerless participants only in the gain context. Interestingly, in a later time window, differences of P300 responses to proposed offers were modulated by social power in both gain and loss contexts. These results suggested that powerful people were more sensitive to fairness levels and FRN may manifest fairness consideration in a gain context, but not in a loss context. Meanwhile, P300 is sensitive to fairness considerations in both gain and loss contexts.

Electrophysiological Markers of Fairness and Selfishness Revealed by a Combination of Dictator and Ultimatum Games

Individual behavior during financial decision making is motivated by fairness, but an unanswered question from previous studies is whether particular patterns of brain activity correspond to different profiles of fairness. Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 39 participants who played the role of allocators in a Dictator Game (DG) and responders in an Ultimatum Game (UG). Two very homogeneous groups were formed by fair and selfish individuals. At fronto-central cortical sites, the latency of ERP early negativity (N1) was 10 ms shorter in selfish participants than in fair participants. In fair DG players, the subsequent positive wave P2 suggested that more cognitive resources were required when they allocated the least gains to the other party. P2 latency and amplitude in the selfish group supported the hypothesis that these participants tended to maximize their profit. During UG, we observed that medial frontal negativity (MFN) occurred earlier and with greater amplitude when selfish participants rejected less favorable endowment shares. In this case, all players received zero payoffs, which showed that MFN in selfish participants was associated with a spiteful punishment. At posterior-parietal sites, we found that the greater the selfishness, the greater the amplitude of the late positive component (LPC). Our results bring new evidence to the existence of specific somatic markers associated with the activation of distinct cerebral circuits by the evaluation of fair and unfair proposals in participants characterized by different expressions of perceived fairness, thus suggesting that a particular brain dynamics could be associated with moral decisions.

Neural Correlates of Successful Costly Punishment in the Ultimatum Game on a Trial-by-Trial Basis

Costly punishment describes decisions of an interaction partner to punish an opponent for violating rules of fairness at the expense of personal costs. Here, we extend the interaction process by investigating the impact of a socio-emotional reaction of the opponent in response to the punishment that indicates whether punishment was successful or not. In a modified Ultimatum game, emotional facial expressions of the proposer in response to the decision of the responder served as feedback stimuli. We found that both honored reward following acceptance of an offer (smiling compared to neutral facial expression) and successful punishment (sad compared to neutral facial expression) elicited a reward positivity, indicating that punishment was the intended outcome. By comparing the pattern of results with a probabilistic learning task, we show that the reward positivity on sad facial expressions was specific for the context of costly punishment. Additionally, acceptance rates on a trial-by-trial basis were altered according to P3 amplitudes in response to the emotional facial reaction of the proposer. Our results are in line with the concept of costly punishment as an intentional act following norm-violating behavior. Socio-emotional stimuli have an important influence on the perception and behavior in economic bargaining.

Influence of Emojis on Online Trust Among College Students

Emojis are increasingly used in online communication and expression, however, most previous studies have focused on describing this phenomenon, but less on how it affects interpersonal trust relationships. Therefore, this study examines the effect of emojis on online interpersonal trust among college students through three experiments. A total of 62 college students were recruited for Experiment 1. The results demonstrated that positive emoji () improved the level of trust of trustors in the trust game [t(60) = –2.79, p = 0.007], whereas that of the control group exerted no effect on the initial level of online trust among college students. Then, 74 college students were selected for Experiment 2. The results indicated no significant differences between the experiment and control groups in terms of the influence of negative emojis () on initial online trust using. A joint analysis (via ANOVA) of Experiments 1 and 2 illustrated that the type of emoji exerted a significant effect [F(2,96) = 3.96, p = 0.02, η² = 0.08] on college students’ online trust. Finally, we recruited 111 participants for Experiment 3 to explore the role of emojis on online trust among acquaintances. The results suggested that the individual propensity to trust plays a moderate role in the relationship between emojis and online trust among acquaintances. That is, emojis influenced interpersonal trust among acquaintances only if the level of propensity to trust, is low.

Your happy expressions encourage me to take risks: ERP evidence from an interpersonal gambling game

Although the influence of endogenous emotion on decision-making has been widely studied, the effect of interpersonal emotions on risk decision-making is less understood. To address this issue, participants were asked to perform an interpersonal gambling game after perceiving their cooperator's facial emotions. The results found that the cooperator's happy expressions increased individuals' risk-approaching choice compared with angry expressions. Moreover, happy expressions induced larger P300 potentials in the option assessment stage, and diminished the differences between losses and wins in feedback-related FRN/RewP in the outcome valuation stage. Additionally, single-trial analysis found that the neural response induced by interpersonal expressions and feedback could predict participants' subsequent decision-making. These findings suggest that interpersonal emotions shape individuals' risk preference through enhancing in-depth valuation in the option assessment stage and early motivational salience valuation in the outcome valuation stage.

Between Joy and Sympathy: Smiling and Sad Recipient Faces Increase Prosocial Behavior in the Dictator Game

In human interactions, the facial expression of a bargaining partner may contain relevant information that affects prosocial decisions. We were interested in whether facial expressions of the recipient in the dictator game influence dictators’ behavior. To test this, we conducted an online study (n = 106) based on a modified version of a dictator game. The dictators allocated money between themselves and another person (recipient), who had no possibility to respond to the dictator. Importantly, before the allocation decision, the dictator was presented with the facial expression of the recipient (angry, disgusted, sad, smiling, or neutral). The results showed that dictators sent more money to recipients with sad or smiling facial expressions and less to recipients with angry or disgusted facial expressions compared with a neutral facial expression. Moreover, based on the sequential analysis of the decision and the interaction partner in the preceding trial, we found that decision-making depends upon previous interactions.

Smiling as negative feedback affects social decision-making and its neural underpinnings

A crucial aspect of social decision-making is the ability to learn from the outcomes of preceding decisions. In particular, learning might be influenced by the expectedness of feedback and its valence. Expectedness has largely been operationalized as the frequency of stimulus occurrence and not in terms of its social context. Therefore, we investigated the influence of socially unexpected feedback, i.e., smiling upon adverse events, on behavioral and neural responses. We used a modified version of the ultimatum game, a commonly used paradigm for economic decision-making, by implementing different proposer identities with a distinct reaction pattern towards accepted and rejected monetary offers. We could show that an identity, who reacted with a smile towards rejected offers, evoked lower acceptance rates compared to identities, who reward acceptance with a smile. Electrophysiological correlates indicate N170 effects for emotional identities compared to a neutral control identity. Regarding FRN and P3 brain potentials, we detected a particular function of the smiling face when used as a socially unexpected, negative feedback stimulus. Hence, individuals seek an unexpected smile despite the associated monetary loss, which is accompanied by distinct neural patterns.