Retrieval-induced forgetting of emotional memories.

Long-term memory manages its contents to facilitate adaptive behaviour, amplifying representations of information relevant to current goals and expediting forgetting of information that competes with relevant memory traces. Both mnemonic selection and inhibition maintain congruence between the contents of long-term memory and an organism's priorities. However, the capacity of these processes to modulate affective mnemonic representations remains ambiguous. Three empirical experiments investigated the consequences of mnemonic selection and inhibition on affectively charged and neutral mnemonic representations using an adapted retrieval practice paradigm. Participants encoded neutral cue words and affectively negative or neutral associates and then selectively retrieved a subset of these associates multiple times. The consequences of selection and inhibitory processes engaged during selective retrieval were evaluated on a final memory test in which recall for all studied associates was probed. Analyses of memory recall indicated that both affectively neutral and negative mnemonic representations experienced similar levels of enhancement and impairment following selective retrieval, demonstrating the susceptibility of affectively salient memories to these mnemonic processes. These findings indicate that although affective memories may be more strongly encoded in memory, they remain amenable to inhibition and flexibly adaptable to the evolving needs of the organism.

Reining in regret: emotion regulation modulates regret in decision making.

Whereas the influence of regret on decision making is well-established, it remains unclear whether emotion regulation may modulate both the affective experience of regret and its influence on decisions. To examine this question, participants made decisions about options involving uncertainty using two different, instructed emotion regulation strategies. In one case, they were instructed to treat each choice individually, while in the other they were encouraged to treat a series of decisions as a portfolio. The present experiment demonstrates that approaching a series of decisions as a portfolio led to less extreme affective reactions to outcomes and lowered physiological arousal levels compared to focusing on each decision in isolation. However, the different emotion regulation strategies did not alter the influence of anticipatory regret on choices. The results indicate that these different emotion regulation strategies can be used to alter the experience of regret. These findings support a role for cognitive strategies in mitigating the affective experience of regret and suggest a means to encourage consumer welfare.

Information acquisition and decision strategies in intertemporal choice.

Intertemporal decision models describe choices between outcomes with different delays. While these models mainly focus on predicting choices, they make implicit assumptions about how people acquire and process information. A link between information processing and choice model predictions is necessary for a complete mechanistic account of decision making. We establish this link by fitting 18 intertemporal choice models to experimental datasets with both choice and information acquisition data. First, we show that choice models have highly correlated fits: people that behave according to one model also behave according to other models that make similar information processing assumptions. Second, we develop and fit an attention model to information acquisition data. Critically, the attention model parameters predict which type of intertemporal choice models best describes a participant's choices. Overall, our results relate attentional processes to models of intertemporal choice, providing a stepping stone towards a complete mechanistic account of intertemporal decision making.

Age-related differences in ventral striatal and default mode network function during reciprocated trust.

Social relationships change across the lifespan as social networks narrow and motivational priorities shift to the present. Interestingly, aging is also associated with changes in executive function, including decision-making abilities, but it remains unclear how age-related changes in both domains interact to impact financial decisions involving other people. To study this problem, we recruited 50 human participants (Nyounger = 26, ages 18-34; Nolder = 24, ages 63-80) to play an economic trust game as the investor with three partners (friend, stranger, and computer) who played the role of investee. Investors underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the trust game while investees were seated outside of the scanner. Building on our previous work with younger adults showing both enhanced striatal responses and altered default-mode network (DMN) connectivity as a function of social closeness during reciprocated trust, we predicted that these relations would exhibit age-related differences. We found that striatal responses to reciprocated trust from friends relative to strangers and computers were blunted in older adults relative to younger adults, thus supporting our primary pre-registered hypothesis regarding social closeness. We also found that older adults exhibited enhanced DMN connectivity with the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during reciprocated trust from friends compared to computers while younger adults exhibited the opposite pattern. Taken together, these results advance our understanding of age-related differences in sensitivity to social closeness in the context of trusting others.

Search predicts and changes patience in intertemporal choice.

Intertemporal choice impacts many important outcomes, such as decisions about health, education, wealth, and the environment. However, the psychological processes underlying decisions involving outcomes at different points in time remain unclear, limiting opportunities to intervene and improve people's patience. This research examines information-search strategies used during intertemporal choice and their impact on decisions. In experiment 1, we demonstrate that search strategies vary substantially across individuals. We subsequently identify two distinct search strategies across individuals. Comparative searchers, who compare features across options, discount future options less and are more susceptible to acceleration versus delay framing than integrative searchers, who integrate the features of an option. Experiment 2 manipulates search using an unobtrusive method to establish a causal relationship between strategy and choice, randomly assigning participants to conditions promoting either comparative or integrative search. Again, comparative search promotes greater patience than integrative search. Additionally, when participants adopt a comparative search strategy, they also exhibit greater effects of acceleration versus delay framing. Although most participants reported that the manipulation did not change their behavior, promoting comparative search decreased discounting of future rewards substantially and speeded patient choices. These findings highlight the central role that heterogeneity in psychological processes plays in shaping intertemporal choice. Importantly, these results indicate that theories that ignore variability in search strategies may be inadvertently aggregating over different subpopulations that use very different processes. The findings also inform interventions in choice architecture to increase patience and improve consumer welfare.

An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults.

Behavioural and neuroimaging research has shown that older adults are less sensitive to financial losses compared to younger adults. Yet relatively less is known about age-related differences in social decisions and social reward processing. As part of a pilot study, we collected behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 50 participants (Younger: N = 26, ages 18-34 years; Older: N = 24, ages 63-80 years) who completed three tasks in the scanner: an economic trust game as the investor with three partners (computer, stranger, friend) as the investee; a card-guessing task with monetary gains and losses shared with three partners (computer, stranger, friend); and an ultimatum game as responder to three anonymous proposers (computer, age-similar adults, age-dissimilar adults). We also collected B0 field maps and high-resolution structural images (T1-weighted and T2-weighted images). These data could be reused to answer questions about moment-to-moment variability in fMRI signal, representational similarity between tasks, and brain structure.

Neural mechanisms mediating contingent capture of attention by affective stimuli.

Attention is attracted exogenously by physically salient stimuli, but this effect can be dampened by endogenous attention settings, a phenomenon called "contingent capture." Emotionally salient stimuli are also thought to exert a strong exogenous influence on attention, especially in anxious individuals, but whether and how top-down attention can ameliorate bottom-up capture by affective stimuli is currently unknown. Here, we paired a novel spatial cueing task with fMRI to investigate contingent capture as a function of the affective salience of bottom-up cues (face stimuli) and individual differences in trait anxiety. In the absence of top-down cues, exogenous stimuli validly cueing targets facilitated attention in low-anxious participants, regardless of affective salience. However, although high-anxious participants exhibited similar facilitation following neutral exogenous cues, this facilitation was completely absent following affectively negative exogenous cues. Critically, these effects were contingent on endogenous attentional settings, such that explicit top-down cues presented before the appearance of exogenous stimuli removed anxious individuals' sensitivity to affectively salient stimuli. fMRI analyses revealed a network of brain regions underlying this variability in affective contingent capture across individuals, including the fusiform face area (FFA), posterior ventrolateral frontal cortex, and SMA. Importantly, activation in the posterior ventrolateral frontal cortex and the SMA fully mediated the effects observed in FFA, demonstrating a critical role for these frontal regions in mediating attentional orienting and interference resolution processes when engaged by affectively salient stimuli.

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: Consequences for Brands in Customer Service Interactions.

This research demonstrates that interpersonal emotion regulation-attempts to manage others' feelings-influences consumer perceptions during sales and service interactions impacting brand trust and loyalty. Building on previous research linking interpersonal emotion regulation to improved outcomes between people, across five experiments, we demonstrate that antecedent-focused interpersonal emotion regulation strategies result in enhanced brand loyalty and brand trust compared to response-focused interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Analysis of mediation models reveals this effect is explained by changes in the consumer's emotions, which in turn influence evaluations of the service interaction and subsequently impacts brand outcomes. We identify reactance as a moderator of this effect, such that customers with low (high) reactance to interpersonal regulation attempts exhibit more (less) favorable brand trust and loyalty evaluations. Further, we demonstrate that the visibility of interpersonal emotion regulation represents an important boundary condition. These findings support the process model of interpersonal emotion regulation and generate important insights for both theory and practice.

Beyond money: Risk preferences across both economic and non-economic contexts predict financial decisions.

Important decisions about risk occur in wide-ranging contexts, from investing to healthcare. While an underlying, domain-general risk attitude has been identified across contexts, it remains unclear what role it plays in shaping behavior relative to more domain-specific risk attitudes. Clarifying the relationship between domain-general and domain-specific risk attitudes would inform decision-making theories and the construction of decision aids. The present research assessed the relative contribution of domain-general and domain-specific risk attitudes to financial risk taking. We examined risk attitudes across different decision domains, as revealed through a well-validated measure, the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a domain-general risk attitude shaped responses across multiple domains, and structural equation modeling showed that this domain-general risk attitude predicted observed behavioral risk premiums in a financial decision-making task better than domain-specific financial risk attitudes. Thus, assessments of risk attitudes that include both economic and non-economic domains improve predictions of financial risk taking due to the enhanced insight they provide into underlying, domain-general risk preferences.

Getting Everyone Onboard: Framing Collective Goal Progress Broadens Participation in Collective Marketing Campaigns.

Collective marketing campaigns may feature goals that are not shared equally by all customers, such as a fundraiser for an environmental cause. For such campaigns, how can marketers encourage broad participation? The present research demonstrates that the framing of collective progress in such campaigns can broaden participation by highlighting the "large area" of progress toward the goal, emphasizing progress achieved for campaigns in their late stages and progress remaining in their early stages. We tested this large area hypothesis in the context of a waste reduction drive, examining the reactions of Democrats and Republicans who might be more or less inclined to support the drive respectively. Study 1 examined these processes when the drive was nearing completion, finding that an accumulating frame (focusing on progress achieved) increased motivation to participate for Republicans to levels comparable with Democrats. Study 2 evaluated these processes at earlier stages in the drive's progress. In these circumstances, a remaining frame (focusing on contributions still needed) increased motivation to participate among Republicans to a similar level as Democrats. These findings indicate framings that highlight the large area in collective progress broaden participation in collective marketing campaigns, suggesting that marketers should highlight remaining contributions needed early on and accumulated contributions received later in collective marketing campaigns.

The Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model.

Research in emotion regulation has largely focused on how people manage their own emotions, but there is a growing recognition that the ways in which we regulate the emotions of others also are important. Drawing on work from diverse disciplines, we propose an integrative model of the psychological and neural processes supporting the social regulation of emotion. This organizing framework, the 'social regulatory cycle', specifies at multiple levels of description the act of regulating another person's emotions as well as the experience of being a target of regulation. The cycle describes the processing stages that lead regulators to attempt to change the emotions of a target person, the impact of regulation on the processes that generate emotions in the target, and the underlying neural systems.

Emotional task management: neural correlates of switching between affective and non-affective task-sets.

Although task-switching has been investigated extensively, its interaction with emotionally salient task content remains unclear. Prioritized processing of affective stimulus content may enhance accessibility of affective task-sets and generate increased interference when switching between affective and non-affective task-sets. Previous research has demonstrated that more dominant task-sets experience greater switch costs, as they necessitate active inhibition during performance of less entrenched tasks. Extending this logic to the affective domain, the present experiment examined (a) whether affective task-sets are more dominant than non-affective ones, and (b) what neural mechanisms regulate affective task-sets, so that weaker, non-affective task-sets can be executed. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants categorized face stimuli according to either their gender (non-affective task) or their emotional expression (affective task). Behavioral results were consistent with the affective task dominance hypothesis: participants were slower to switch to the affective task, and cross-task interference was strongest when participants tried to switch from the affective to the non-affective task. These behavioral costs of controlling the affective task-set were mirrored in the activation of a right-lateralized frontostriatal network previously implicated in task-set updating and response inhibition. Connectivity between amygdala and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was especially pronounced during cross-task interference from affective features.

A distinct role of the temporal-parietal junction in predicting socially guided decisions.

To make adaptive decisions in a social context, humans must identify relevant agents in the environment, infer their underlying strategies and motivations, and predict their upcoming actions. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging, in conjunction with combinatorial multivariate pattern analysis, to predict human participants' subsequent decisions in an incentive-compatible poker game. We found that signals from the temporal-parietal junction provided unique information about the nature of the upcoming decision, and that information was specific to decisions against agents who were both social and relevant for future behavior.

Affective privilege: asymmetric interference by emotional distracters.

Numerous theories posit that affectively salient stimuli are privileged in their capacity to capture attention and disrupt ongoing cognition. Two underlying assumptions in this theoretical position are that the potency of affective stimuli transcends task boundaries (i.e., emotional distracters do not have to belong to a current task-set to disrupt processing) and that there is an asymmetry between emotional and cognitive processing (i.e., emotional distracters disrupt cognitive processing, but not vice versa). These assumptions have remained largely untested, as common experimental probes of emotion-cognition interaction rarely manipulate task-relevance and only examine one side of the presumed asymmetry of interference. To test these propositions directly, a face-word Stroop protocol was adapted to independently manipulate (a) the congruency between target and distracter stimulus features, (b) the affective salience of distracter features, and (c) the task-relevance of emotional compared to non-emotional target features. A three-way interaction revealed interdependent effects of distracter relevance, congruence, and affective salience. Compared to task-irrelevant distracters, task-relevant congruent distracters facilitated performance and task-relevant incongruent distracters impaired performance, but the latter effect depended on the nature of the target feature and task. Specifically, task-irrelevant emotional distracters resulted in equivalent performance costs as task-relevant non-emotional distracters, whereas task-irrelevant non-emotional distracters did not produce performance costs comparable to those generated by task-relevant emotional distracters. These results document asymmetric cross-task interference effects for affectively salient stimuli, supporting the notion of affective prioritization in human information processing.

Nucleus accumbens mediates relative motivation for rewards in the absence of choice.

To dissociate a choice from its antecedent neural states, motivation associated with the expected outcome must be captured in the absence of choice. Yet, the neural mechanisms that mediate behavioral idiosyncrasies in motivation, particularly with regard to complex economic preferences, are rarely examined in situations without overt decisions. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging in a large sample of participants while they anticipated earning rewards from two different modalities: monetary and candy rewards. An index for relative motivation toward different reward types was constructed using reaction times to the target for earning rewards. Activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and anterior insula (aINS) predicted individual variation in relative motivation between our reward modalities. NAcc activation, however, mediated the effects of aINS, indicating the NAcc is the likely source of this relative weighting. These results demonstrate that neural idiosyncrasies in reward efficacy exist even in the absence of explicit choices, and extend the role of NAcc as a critical brain region for such choice-free motivation.