Loss impresses human beings more than gain in the decision-making game

📝 Abstract

What happen in the brain when human beings play games with computers? Here a simple zero-sum game was conducted to investigate how people make decision via their brain even they know that their opponent is a computer. There are two choices (a low or high number) for people and also two strategies for the computer (red color or green color). When the number selected by the human subject meet the red color, the person loses the score which is equal to the number. On the contrary, the person gains the number of score if the computer chooses a green color for the number selected by the human being. Both the human subject and the computer give their choice at the same time, and subjects have been told that the computer make its decision randomly on the red color or green color. During the experiments, the signal of electroencephalograph (EEG) obtained from brain of subjects was recorded. From the analysis of EEG, we find that people mind the loss more than the gain, and the phenomenon becoming obvious when the gap between loss and gain grows. In addition, the signal of EEG is clearly distinguishable before making different decisions. It is observed that significant negative waves in the entire brain region when the participant has a greater expectation for the outcome, and these negative waves are mainly concentrated in the forebrain region in the brain of human beings.

💡 Analysis

What happen in the brain when human beings play games with computers? Here a simple zero-sum game was conducted to investigate how people make decision via their brain even they know that their opponent is a computer. There are two choices (a low or high number) for people and also two strategies for the computer (red color or green color). When the number selected by the human subject meet the red color, the person loses the score which is equal to the number. On the contrary, the person gains the number of score if the computer chooses a green color for the number selected by the human being. Both the human subject and the computer give their choice at the same time, and subjects have been told that the computer make its decision randomly on the red color or green color. During the experiments, the signal of electroencephalograph (EEG) obtained from brain of subjects was recorded. From the analysis of EEG, we find that people mind the loss more than the gain, and the phenomenon becoming obvious when the gap between loss and gain grows. In addition, the signal of EEG is clearly distinguishable before making different decisions. It is observed that significant negative waves in the entire brain region when the participant has a greater expectation for the outcome, and these negative waves are mainly concentrated in the forebrain region in the brain of human beings.

📄 Content

Loss impresses human beings more than gain in the decision-making game Jia-Quan Shen, Luo-Luo Jiang* College of Physics and Electronic Information, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou 325035, China *jiangluoluo@gmail.com Abstract： What happen in the brain when human beings play games with computers? Here a simple zero-sum game was conducted to investigate how people make decision via their brain even they know that their opponent is a computer. There are two choices (a low or high number) for people and also two strategies for the computer (red color or green color). When the number selected by the human subject meet the red color, the person loses the score which is equal to the number. On the contrary, the person gains the number of score if the computer chooses a green color for the number selected by the human being. Both the human subject and the computer give their choice at the same time, and subjects have been told that the computer make its decision randomly on the red color or green color. During the experiments, the signal of electroencephalograph (EEG) obtained from brain of subjects was recorded. From the analysis of EEG, we find that people mind the loss more than the gain, and the phenomenon becoming obvious when the gap between loss and gain grows. In addition, the signal of EEG is clearly distinguishable before making different decisions. It is observed that significant negative waves in the entire brain region when the participant has a greater expectation for the outcome, and these negative waves are mainly concentrated in the forebrain region in the brain of human beings. 1、Introduction At present, a series of research results have been obtained by using EEG to study behavioral decision-making [1-8]. There is a more profound recognition about decision-making in neural systems, especially those concerned with reward and punishment [9-11]. These studies have made considerable progress and through the system of rewards and punishments experiments to extract the features in EEG [12-16]. In addition, human behaviors can be more intensively by the change of reward and punishment mechanism, such as conditioned reinforcers and probability change [26-32]. Moreover, people often change their behavior to avoid monetary losses [33-38]. In particular, the EEG can be more powerfully influenced by people’s expectations, the different in the expected value of the outcomes will also have different effects on EEG [39-43]. In ERP (event-related potential) studies on outcome evaluation or feedback processing, it has found MFN (medial-frontal negativity) is particularly sensitive to the valence of reward or performance, which is a negative deflection at frontocentral recording sites that reaches maximum between 250 and 300ms post-onset of feedback stimulus [17-21]. The MFN is more sensitive for negative feedback affected by bad outcomes, such as error responses or pecuniary losses, than for positive feedback [21-25]. Previous studies on neural activity related to losses and gains mainly concerned with after the outcomes presented. For example, studies based on scalp recording and neuro-imaging have shown that information after the outcomes presented, such as the response to gains and losses and the effects on different regions of the brain [44-47]. In fact, the EEG before the outcomes presented is also worthy of our attention. It is mainly related to people’s expectations of the outcomes. It will produce different EEG due to the different expectations of the outcomes. The main purpose of our study is to provide further evidence for the impacts of reward valence, reward magnitude and magnitude expectancy upon the EEG in outcome evaluation. Our research not only concerned about the impact of outcomes on the EEG, but also talking more attention about the decision making process impact on EEG. Here, we conducted three experiments under different reward magnitude. In every experiment, we studied the EEG which generated after the outcomes presented and before making a decision respectively. 2、Experimental Scheme 12 subjects participate in the experiment, including 7 boys and 5 girls. The subjects were undergraduate or graduate students with an average age of 21 years old.The subjects were selected according to the psychological experiment standard, healthy, right hand and so on, and all the subjects were voluntarily participating in these experiments. The subjects will receive a certain reward after the experiment was completed. EEG acquisition devices use NeuroScan40 amplifiers and wearable device electrode caps. We use curry7 software to collect and process EEG signals.The stimulation of the subjects and the choice of the strategies of the subjects were carried out by using psychological experiment software E-prime. Fig.1. The experiment of game decision making. There are two squares with no color which the participants can select one of them. The squares contained the numeral 5 or X. The value of X is variable and will

This content is AI-processed based on ArXiv data.