The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Summary

This protocol aims to investigate the neural activity related to social comparison and social distance during the processing of intertemporal decision outcomes. Indifference points will be measured using event-related potentials as part of the study.

Abstract

Intertemporal choice plays a crucial role in our daily lives, influencing decisions related to education, health, consumption, and investment. This research proposes an innovative experimental protocol that examines how social comparison and social distance jointly affect the neural processes involved in outcome assessment for intertemporal choices. The study is based on the theoretical framework of cognitive resource competition. This protocol enables researchers to dynamically establish an indifference point for each participant, effectively eliminating the influence of any biased indifference points on the assessment of intertemporal choices. Consequently, the study solely measures the combined impact of social comparison and social distance on how participants evaluate intertemporal choice outcomes. The findings reveal that individuals are more inclined to opt for immediate outcomes under negative unfair conditions. Moreover, compared to the fair and positive unfair conditions, people tend to undervalue delayed outcomes in the negative unfair condition. The strength of this approach lies in its dynamic indifference point setting, making it an effective method to investigate the influence of various external factors (such as social status and power level) on intertemporal decision-making. While the protocol is designed to measure electrophysiological events like event-related potentials, it can also be tailored for use with fMRI.

Introduction

In daily life, people often face the choice of enjoying the present or investing in the future. This decision, known as intertemporal choice, requires individuals to weigh the value of outcomes at different time points^1,2,3. Over time, the subjective evaluation of outcomes declines hyperbolically or quasi-hyperbolically^4,5,6,7. People tend to prefer small-but-immediate gains over larger-but-later ones⁸.<....

Protocol

This research scheme was approved by the local and institutional ethics committee and complies with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent before participating. The participants had normal vision or normal correction and no psychiatric or neurological disorders. The participants did not have drug or psychotropic medication using experience and no perm or hair dyeing history within six months. If subjects had excessive artifacts in the EEG data, they were not included in the subsequent data analysis.

1. Experimental stimuli

1. Stimuli of the Delay Discou....

Results

IOS scale result
The IOS scale score³⁰ was used to examine the social distance and self-relevance of the participants to friends and strangers, and it was found that the social distance of the participants to friends (6.20 ± 0.696) was higher than the social distance of the participants to strangers (1.45 ± 0.605), t(19) = 21.978, p < 0.001, 95%, Cl = (4.30 - 5.20), revealing that the social distance manipulation is effective.

Discussion

Experimental results and significance
Generally, additional tasks, such as social distance perception and social comparison, compete for cognitive resources with the intertemporal decision-making task at different cognitive stages. Firstly, both social distance and time delay have main effects on N100 amplitude, respectively. The present results indicate that gambling with friends induces a greater N100 amplitude than with strangers. Moreover, immediate outcomes elicit greater N100 amplitude than d.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Electrode caps	Neurosoft Labs, Inc, USA	64 Ag/AgCl electrodes	with a configuration of the international 10–20 system of electrode
E-Prime software	Psychology Software Tools, Inc, USA	2	Experimental generation system for computerized behavior research
Liquid Crystal Display Monitor	ROYAL PHILIPS, Netherlands		Display experimental procedure
NeuroScan Synamp2 Amplifier	Neurosoft Labs, Inc, USA		bandpass filter 0.05-100 Hz, sampling rate 1000 Hz