Hello handsome! Male's facial attractiveness gives rise to female's fairness bias in Ultimatum Game scenarios-An ERP study

Influence of male's facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness and social interest on female's decisions of fairness

The present study employed dictator game and ultimatum game to investigate the effect of facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness and social interest in expressing positive ("I like you") versus negative signals ("I don't like you") on decision making. Female participants played against male recipients in dictator game and ultimatum game while played against male proposers in ultimatum game. Results showed that participants offered recipients with attractive faces more money than recipients with unattractive faces. Participants also offered recipients with attractive voices more money than recipients with unattractive voices, especially under the positive social interest condition. Moreover, participants allocated more money to recipients who expressed positive social interest than those who expressed negative social interest, whereas they would also expect proposers who expressed positive social interest to offer them more money than proposers who expressed negative social interest. Overall, the results inform beauty premium for faces and voices on opposite-sex economic bargaining. Social interest also affects decision outcomes. However, the beauty premium and effect of social interest varies with participants' roles.

A premium for positive social interest and attractive voices in the acceptability of unfair offers? An ERP study

Although the attractiveness of voices plays an important role in social interactions, it is unclear how voice attractiveness and social interest influence social decision-making. Here, we combined the ultimatum game with recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and examined the effect of attractive versus unattractive voices of the proposers, expressing positive versus negative social interest ("I like you" vs. "I don't like you"), on the acceptance of the proposal. Overall, fair offers were accepted at significantly higher rates than unfair offers, and high voice attractiveness increased acceptance rates for all proposals. In ERPs in response to the voices, their attractiveness and expressed social interests yielded early additive effects in the N1 component, followed by interactions in the subsequent P2, P3 and N400 components. More importantly, unfair offers elicited a larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN) than fair offers but only when the proposer's voice was unattractive or when the voice carried positive social interest. These results suggest that both voice attractiveness and social interest moderate social decision-making and there is a similar "beauty premium" for voices as for faces.

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.

Which is More Important, Proposer Identity or Allocation Motive? Event-Related Potential in Economic Decision-Making

Purpose

Most studies have supported the view that individuals prefer to reward the in-group and discriminate against the out-group in response to unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game. However, the current study advanced a different view, that is, the "black sheep effect", in which in-group members were punished more severely compared with out-group members. This study aimed to incorporate proposer identity and allocation motive as possible explanations for offer rejection.

Methods

In the current study, the in-group and out-group identities were distinguished by their health condition, and the allocation motive was defined according to its benefit maximization. With a total of 89 healthy college student participants, a mixed design of 2 (proposer identity: out-group vs in-group) × 2 (allocation motive: selfish vs random) × 2 (offer type: unfair vs fair) was used in the Ultimatum Game. Event-related potential (ERP) technology was used, and ERPs were recorded while participants processed the task.

Results

The behavioral result showed that the "black sheep effect" was found on the fair offer when a random allocation motive was used. Our ERP result suggested that feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300 were modulated by proposer identity but not by allocation motive. However, the allocation motive interacted with proposer identity affecting FRN and P300 when the fair offer was proposed.

Conclusion

These findings demonstrated that the "black sheep effect" was related to the experience of the out-group member, such as disadvantage or distress, but it was also modulated by allocation motive. Meanwhile, the out-group (depressed college students) captured more attention because they violated individual expectations, according to the P300. This finding plays an integral role in understanding the mechanism of response to the "black sheep effect".

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.

Female rats prefer to forage food from males, an effect that is not influenced by stress

As social beings, animals and humans alike make real life decisions that are often influenced by other members. Most current research has focused on the influence of same-sex peers on individual decision-making, with potential opposite sex effect scarcely explored. Here, we developed a behavioral model to observe food foraging decision-making in female rats under various social situations. We found that female rats preferred to forage food from male over female rats or from the no-rat storage side. Female rats were more likely to forage food from familiar males than from unfamiliar. This opposite-sex preference was not altered by the lure of sweet food, or with estrous cycle, nor under stress conditions. These results suggest that the opposite sex influences food foraging decision-making in female rats. The behavioral model established could facilitate future investigation into the underlying neurobiological mechanisms.

Younger adults are more prosocial than older adults in economic decision making results from the give and take game

The present study was designed to investigate the disadvantageous and advantageous inequity aversion of young and older adults in situations which allowed them to maximize or minimize payoff inequalities. Given the very limited evidence regarding an actual age-related effect on inequity aversion, the purpose of this study was to examine this question using an economic game, "the Give-and-Take Game", which is able to circumvent certain limitations of the Ultimatum Game, to evaluate inequity aversion (i.e., a same behaviour which can be induced by opposite motivations: prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations). In the "Give-and-Take Game", a sum of money was randomly distributed between the participant and a dummy player. These distributions created monetary inequalities, advantageous either for the participant (to examine advantageous inequity aversion) or for the other player (to examine disadvantageous inequity aversion). Different response options were proposed to the participants to either maximize or minimize payoff inequalities between the players. This procedure not only allowed to differentiate individual's profiles with more prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations, but also to examine age-related effects on these profiles. The results showed that older adults showed a more important pro-self orientation compared to their younger counterparts. They more frequently selected the options which maximized their own payoffs and were less averse to advantageous inequity compared to young adults. In contrast, young adults showed a similar level of advantageous and disadvantageous inequity aversion. Older adults focused on the economic and competitive dimension of the game, which may have motivated them to maximize their own payoffs. Conversely, young adults took into account the social dimension of the game, focusing on a fair monetary distribution.

Neural Mechanisms of the Conscious and Subliminal Processing of Facial Attractiveness

The purpose of this study was to investigate the neural activity evoked by facial attractiveness in conscious and subliminal conditions. The 41 participants judged facial attractiveness in a conscious condition and a subliminal condition (backward masking paradigm). The event-related potential (ERP) analysis indicated that in the conscious condition, more attractive faces elicited a longer N1 (80-120 ms) latency than less attractive faces. Moreover, more attractive female faces elicited a larger late positive component (LPC) (350-550 ms) amplitude than less attractive female faces. In the subliminal condition, more attractive faces elicited a longer P1 (140-180 ms) latency than less attractive faces. The present study demonstrated that more attractive faces evoked different early-stage ERPs from that evoked by less attractive faces in both conscious and subliminal conditions. However, the processing of facial attractiveness is obviously weakened in the subliminal condition.

The Role of Sex in the Effect of Vocal Attractiveness on Ultimatum Game Decisions

The present research investigated the role of sex in the effect of vocal attractiveness on fairness judgment in a two-person Ultimatum Game. Each participant in the game decided whether to accept offers from a proposer who was either associated with an attractive or unattractive voice. The results showed that while participants were more likely to accept fair offers, they would also accept some unfair offers that were associated with an attractive voice. This effect of vocal attractiveness was more clearly shown by female participants, although all male and female participants took longer to make a decision when an attractive voice was associated with an offer, regardless of whether the voice was from the same sex or the opposite sex. Overall, the results inform the role of sex in the effect of vocal attractiveness and further confirm the beauty premium effect on economic bargaining, where people with an attractive voice would benefit.

Neural responses to facial attractiveness: event-related potentials differentiate between salience and valence effects

We examined the neural correlates of facial attractiveness by presenting pictures of male or female faces (neutral expression) with low/intermediate/high attractiveness to 48 male or female participants while recording their electroencephalogram (EEG). Subjective attractiveness ratings were used to determine the 10% highest, 10% middlemost, and 10% lowest rated faces for each individual participant to allow for high contrast comparisons. These were then split into preferred and dispreferred gender categories. ERP components P1, N1, P2, N2, early posterior negativity (EPN), P300 and late positive potential (LPP) (up until 3000 ms post-stimulus), and the face specific N170 were analysed. A salience effect (attractive/unattractive > intermediate) in an early LPP interval (450-850 ms) and a long-lasting valence related effect (attractive > unattractive) in a late LPP interval (1000-3000 ms) were elicited by the preferred gender faces but not by the dispreferred gender faces. Multi-variate pattern analysis (MVPA)-classifications on whole-brain single-trial EEG patterns further confirmed these salience and valence effects. It is concluded that, facial attractiveness elicits neural responses that are indicative of valenced experiences, but only if these faces are considered relevant. These experiences take time to develop and last well beyond the interval that is commonly explored.

Neuroelectric Correlates of Human Sexuality: A Review and Meta-Analysis

Many reviews on sexual arousal in humans focus on different brain imaging methods and behavioral observations. Although neurotransmission in the brain is mainly performed through electrochemical signals, there are no systematic reviews of the electrophysiological correlates of sexual arousal. We performed a systematic search on this subject and reviewed 255 studies including various electrophysiological methods. Our results show how neuroelectric signals have been used to investigate genital somatotopy as well as basic genital physiology during sexual arousal and how cortical electric signals have been recorded during orgasm. Moreover, experiments on the interactions of cognition and sexual arousal in healthy subjects and in individuals with abnormal sexual preferences were analyzed as well as case studies on sexual disturbances associated with diseases of the nervous system. In addition, 25 studies focusing on brain potentials during the interaction of cognition and sexual arousal were eligible for meta-analysis. The results showed significant effect sizes for specific brain potentials during sexual stimulation (P3: Cohen's d = 1.82, N = 300, LPP: Cohen's d = 2.30, N = 510) with high heterogeneity between the combined studies. Taken together, our review shows how neuroelectric methods can consistently differentiate sexual arousal from other emotional states.

The effect of attire attractiveness on students' perception of their teachers

Introduction

Generally, people do judge a book by its cover. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of teachers' attire on students' perception of 34 psychological dimensions.

Methods

The research is an experiment, with self-reported data, in groups, based on a questionnaire. The participants were 173 students (M_age = 12.16, SD = 1.74) from Suceava, Romania. Two groups of students were asked to listen to a sample lesson of a therapeutic story, narrated by a teacher. One group was given a picture of the attractive teacher and the other group a picture of the unattractive teacher, and were told that the teacher who is narrating is the teacher in the picture. After listening to the same story, the respondents had to answer a questionnaire about teachers' personality and characteristics.

Results

The results indicated that when the teacher is perceived as being more attractive, the students have a greater openness for school activities, the evaluation of the teacher's personality is more positive, the evaluation of the teaching effort is more positive, students expect a higher grade, and the perceived age of the teacher is lower.

Discussion

The article underlines the role of clothing in molding student's perception and raises questions about dress codes in schools. Implications for school context are discussed.

Do looks matter in supply chain contracting? An experimental study

We present results of an experiment designed to reveal the "face effect" on pricing behavior in a supply chain game. In particular, we study the variation in wholesale prices driven by subjective judgments of three facial traits-attractiveness, trustworthiness, and dominance-of a retailer's face and own appearance. Our experimental data suggest that the distributions of decisions in settings whether individuals see, or not see, retailers' faces are not equivalent. Furthermore, we find the complex dependencies between decision behaviors and facial traits. Subjective evaluations of facial traits, both self-reported and others, have a significant effect on the selected decisions.

The “beauty premium” effect of voice attractiveness of long speech sounds in outcome-evaluation event-related potentials in a trust game

Previous research suggested that people with attractive voices had an advantage in economic games, even if the voices were only presented for 400 ms. The present study investigated the influence of voice attractiveness on the cooperative trust behavior with longer exposure times to the voices. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the feedback outcome evaluation. Participants heard a voice of the partner for 2,040 ms and decided whether to invest to the partner for a possibility to gain more money. The results showed that participants made more invest choices to the attractive partners, replicating the “beauty premium” effect of the attractive voices. Moreover, participants were more likely to invest to male partners. The ERP analysis for the outcome showed that the difference waves of feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitude were smaller in the attractive voice condition than in the unattractive voice condition, suggesting that the rewarding effect of attractive voices weakened the frustrating feelings of the loss. In sum, the present study confirms that attractive voices with longer presentation durations facilitate cooperative behavior and modulate the processing of feedback evaluations.

Beauty affects fairness: facial attractiveness alters neural responses to unfairness in the ultimatum game

Human faces consist of rich information for social interactions and facial attractiveness is a key dimension affecting social decisions. Previous studies have indicated that human players are less likely to refuse an unfair offer from proposers with high facial attractiveness in the Ultimatum Game (UG). However, the neural mechanisms underlying such beauty premium effect remain unclear. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and examined the effects of facial attractiveness on brain responses to fair and unfair offers in the UG. Behavioral data showed that subjects were overall prone to refuse unfair offers across conditions but were more likely to accept unfair offers from higher facial attractive proposers than those from lower facial attractive proposers. Imaging data showed that unfair offers induced greater activity in the anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex (MePFC) compared to those in fair offers condition for both high and low facial attractive proposers. Moreover, the acceptance rate of unfair offers positively correlated with the MePFC activity for high facial attractive proposers and negatively correlated with the anterior insula activity for low facial attractive proposers. These findings suggest that facial attractiveness modulates brain responses to unfairness through altering the roles of emotion and cognitive motivation in social interactions.

Vocal Attractiveness Matters: Social Preferences in Cooperative Behavior

Research has shown the phenomenon that "what sounds beautiful is good" is a stereotype. It is not clear whether vocal attractiveness affects social decision-making in economic games. Using a modified trust game task, we investigated the neural mechanism of the influence of vocal attractiveness on cooperative decision-making. Participants first heard the voice (attractive or unattractive) of the partner. They had enough time to decide whether to cooperate with the partner for a chance to earn monetary rewards. The behavioral results showed that participants made more invest choices in the attractive partner condition, and they were more likely to cooperate with the female partners in the unattractive voice condition. The event-related potential (ERP) analysis for voice stimuli showed that attractive voices induced larger N1 amplitude than unattractive voices only in the male voice condition. And female voices elicited smaller N1 and larger P2 amplitudes than male voices in both the attractive and unattractive voices condition. A larger P3 amplitude was evoked by female voices and attractive voices. In addition, a more positive late positive complex (LPC) was induced by male voices and attractive voices. This study suggested that attractive voices facilitated cooperative behavior, providing evidence for the "beauty premium" effect of the attractive voices. Moreover, participants were more likely to cooperate with female partners. In the early stage, gender information and male vocal attractiveness were processed automatically, suggesting that male vocal attractiveness was processed preferentially than the female voice. In the late stage, participants allocated attention to both male and female vocal attractiveness.

The Effect of Task Difficulty and Self-Contribution on Fairness Consideration: An Event-Related Potential Study

Self-contribution may be an influential factor in fairness consideration and consequent behavioral decisions. Few studies have investigated simultaneous effects of task difficulty and self-contribution on fairness consideration outcomes and associated neurophysiological responses. To elucidate modulation effects of task difficulty and self-contribution on fairness consideration, 30 recruited participants played a modified ultimatum game (UG) while undergoing event-related potential measurements. A 2 (task difficulty: hard vs. easy) × 3 (contribution: other-contribution vs. both-contribution vs. self-contribution) × 2 (fairness type: fair vs. unfair) within-subject design was adopted. A significant interaction between fairness type and contribution was observed in the behavioral data, with unfair offers being more acceptable in the other-contribution condition than in the self-contribution or both-contribution conditions. In the early processing time window, feedback-related negative magnitudes were greater in the hard condition than in the easy condition. P300 responses were more pronounced when participants contributed equally to the proposer than in the self- and other-contribution conditions. These results demonstrated that individuals’ decisions are influenced by their own effort contributions relative to those of others in cooperative contexts.

You are excusable! Neural correlates of economic neediness on empathic concern and fairness perception

There is ample experimental evidence showing that the proposers' social role is related to individuals' fairness perception in the Ultimatum Game (UG). However, various social roles, e.g., degree of economic neediness, have different influences on fairness perception, yet it has not been well studied. In this study, we adapted the UG paradigm and recorded electroencephalography (EEG) to probe the neural signatures of whether and how the degree of neediness influences fairness perception. Behavioral results showed that responders are prone to accept unfair offers from proposers in need more than those who are not in need. At the brain level, MFN (medial frontal negativity) was more negative-going in response to unfair than fair offers for not-in-need proposers. In contrast, we found a reversed MFN difference response to unfair and fair offers for in-need proposers, showing a strongly pure altruistic phenomenon. Moreover, we found smaller P300 amplitude was induced in the proposer-in-need condition, compared with its counterpart, while a negative correlation between empathy rating and P300 amplitude in the proposer-in-need condition regardless of the offers' fairness. The current results indicate that the degree of neediness might reduce fairness perception by promoting the empathic concern toward the in-need proposers rather than decreasing the empathic concern for the not-in-need proposers.

Mate preference and brain oscillations: Initial romantic attraction is associated with decreases in alpha- and lower beta-band power

Initial romantic attraction (IRA) refers to a series of positive reactions (such as feelings of exhilaration and compulsive thinking) toward desirable potential partners, usually at initial or early‐stage encounters when no close relationship has yet been established. After decades of effort, the evolutionary value and key characteristics of IRA are well understood. However, the brain mechanisms associated with IRA are unclear. To address this question, we simulated a mate selection platform similar to that of Tinder. When participants assessed their romantic interest in potential partners on the platform, their electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded in real time. The behavioral data demonstrated that IRA to ideal potential partners mainly reflects the dimensions of arousal and domination. The main study finding was that processing of the individual preference faces that resulted in IRA was associated with a decrease in power in the alpha and lower beta bands over the posterior and anterior sensor clusters; this occurred between 870 and 2,000 ms post‐stimulus. Key findings regarding event‐related potentials (ERPs) sensitive to individual stimuli preferences were replicated. The results support the hypothesis that brain oscillations in the alpha and lower beta range may reflect modulation in cortical activity associated with individual mate preferences.

Confidence Modulates the Conformity Behavior of the Investors and Neural Responses of Social Influence in Crowdfunding

The decision about whether to invest can be affected by the choices or opinions of others known as a form of social influence. People make decisions with fluctuating confidence, which plays an important role in the decision process. However, it remains a fair amount of confusion regarding the effect of confidence on the social influence as well as the underlying neural mechanism. The current study applied a willingness-to-invest task with the event-related potentials method to examine the behavioral and neural manifestations of social influence and its interaction with confidence in the context of crowdfunding investment. The behavioral results demonstrate that the conformity tendency of the people increased when their willingness-to-invest deviated far from the group. Besides, when the people felt less confident about their initial judgment, they were more likely to follow the herd. In conjunction with the behavioral findings, the neural results of the social information processing indicate different susceptibilities to small and big conflicts between the own willingness of the people and the group, with small conflict evoked less negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) and more positive late positive potential (LPP). Moreover, confidence only modulated the later neural processing by eliciting larger LPP in the low confidence, implying more reliance on social information. These results corroborate previous findings regarding the conformity effect and its neural mechanism in investment decision and meanwhile extend the existing works of literature through providing behavioral and neural evidence to the effect of confidence on the social influence in the crowdfunding marketplace.

Roles of P300 and Late Positive Potential in Initial Romantic Attraction

Initial romantic attraction (IRA) refers to a series of positive reactions to potential romantic partners at the initial encounter; it evolved to promote mate selection, allowing individuals to focus their mating efforts on their preferred potential mates. After decades of effort, we now have a deeper understanding of the evolutionary value and dominant factors of IRA; however, little is known regarding the brain mechanisms related to its generation and evaluation. In this study, we combined classic event-related potential analysis with dipole-source analysis to examine electroencephalogram (EEG) signals generated while participants assessed their romantic interest in potential partners. The EEG signals were categorized into IRA-engendered and unengendered conditions based on behavioral indicators. We found that the faces elicited multiple late positivities, including P300 over the occipital-parietal regions and late positive potentials (LPPs) over the anterior regions. When compared to faces that did not engender IRA, faces that did engender IRA elicited (1) enhanced P300 over the parietal regions and heightened neural activity in the insula and cingulate cortex and (2) larger LPPs over the anterior regions and heightened neural activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, frontal eye field, visual cortex, and insula. These results suggest IRA is generated and evaluated by an extensive brain network involved in emotion processing, attention control, and social evaluations. Furthermore, these findings indicate that P300 and LPP may represent different cognitive processes during IRA.

The semiotics of the message and the messenger: How nonverbal communication affects fairness perception

Nonverbal communication determines much of how we perceive explicit, verbal messages. Facial expressions and social touch, for example, influence affinity and conformity. To understand the interaction between nonverbal and verbal information, we studied how the psychophysiological time-course of semiotics—the decoding of the meaning of a message—is altered by interpersonal touch and facial expressions. A virtual-reality-based economic decision-making game, ultimatum, was used to investigate how participants perceived, and responded to, financial offers of variable levels of fairness. In line with previous studies, unfair offers evoked medial frontal negativity (MFN) within the N2 time window, which has been interpreted as reflecting an emotional reaction to violated social norms. Contrary to this emotional interpretation of the MFN, however, nonverbal signals did not modulate the MFN component, only affecting fairness perception during the P3 component. This suggests that the nonverbal context affects the late, but not the early, stage of fairness perception. We discuss the implications of the semiotics of the message and the messenger as a process by which parallel information sources of “who says what” are integrated in reverse order: of the message, then the messenger.

Different neural substrates at first impressions of same-sex and opposite-sex faces in women

First impressions follow a complex process that is greatly influenced by the facial attributes and the sex of the displayer. This study aimed to evaluate whether the initial impression formed in friendship decisions is processed differently between the same-sex and opposite-sex targets in women. Twenty-four healthy female volunteers participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, in which they appraised a given face and decided whether they wanted to befriend the target. Then, a post-scan subjective rating was performed for facial components such as cheerfulness, good-looks, and uniqueness. The data were used to perform univariate whole-brain analysis to identify the neural substrates of sex bias in impression formation, and exploratory parametric modulation analysis to examine the parametric effects of facial components. Results showed that a composite of diverse areas including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior superior temporal sulcus were more engaged when viewing male faces than female faces. Parametric analysis revealed that bilateral lingual gyrus activities showed a negative parametric effect with cheerfulness for male faces, whereas left inferior parietal lobule activity showed a positive parametric effect with good-looks for female faces. During the formation of first impressions, diffuse areas related to emotion processing and conflict-monitoring were utilized when a person of the opposite sex was encountered compared to encounters with a person of the same sex. The perceived cheerfulness of a male face also showed a negative relationship with the identification of facial emotion in the male face; the more a female face was considered good-looking, a greater feeling of uneasiness appeared to be elicited. The findings from this study provide further evidence of sex bias in women during friendship encounters.

Neurological effects of product price and evaluation on online purchases based on event-related potentials

In order to better understand how price and evaluation impact consumers' decision making, this research examined the neural bases underlying consumers' cognition of the two important clues when shopping online. An ERP experiment was conducted involving 19 Chinese students and the behavior data revealed that product price and evaluation significantly influenced their willingness to purchase mobile phones online, and the speed with which they made purchase decisions supported cue-diagnosis theory. Further, ERP results indicated three neural stages of decision-making: early automatic cognition with emotional valence and negativity bias effects elicited by product evaluation ratings, an evaluation stage exhibiting an attention, and a final stage featuring an evaluation-categorization pattern associated with pleasurable sensations. Specifically, those three neural stages of online decision-making were coded with corresponding event-related potentials in brain, that is, N1 and P2 in automatic cognition stage, P300 in evaluation phase, LPP in concluding phase. Hence, the research results reveal neurological effects of product price and evaluation on online purchases and deepen our comprehension of consumers' cognitive process.

An event-related potential comparison of facial expression processing between cartoon and real faces

Faces play important roles in the social lives of humans. Besides real faces, people also encounter numerous cartoon faces in daily life which convey basic emotional states through facial expressions. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we conducted a facial expression recognition experiment with 17 university students to compare the processing of cartoon faces with that of real faces. This study used face type (real vs. cartoon), emotion valence (happy vs. angry) and participant gender (male vs. female) as independent variables. Reaction time, recognition accuracy, and the amplitudes and latencies of emotion processing-related ERP components such as N170, VPP (vertex positive potential), and LPP (late positive potential) were used as dependent variables. The ERP results revealed that cartoon faces caused larger N170 and VPP amplitudes as well as a briefer N170 latency than did real faces; that real faces induced larger LPP amplitudes than did cartoon faces. In addition, the results showed a significant difference in the brain regions as reflected in a right hemispheric advantage. The behavioral results showed that the reaction times for happy faces were shorter than those for angry faces; that females showed a higher accuracy than did males; and that males showed a higher recognition accuracy for angry faces than happy faces. Due to the sample size, these results may suggestively but not rigorously demonstrate differences in facial expression recognition and neurological processing between cartoon faces and real faces. Cartoon faces showed a higher processing intensity and speed than real faces during the early processing stage. However, more attentional resources were allocated for real faces during the late processing stage.

Brains versus beauty in the knowledge economy

Orientation: It is a widely held belief that attractive people generally experience an easier life and that the door to success is opened by perfect bone structure and a sparkling smile. However, attractiveness might play a far lesser role in individual’s achieving their objectives than has previously been thought. Is it possible that an individual’s qualifications may have a greater influence on the perceptions of managers who assess the suitability of a candidate of a knowledge worker?Research purpose: The study sets out to examine the relative predictive power of physical attractiveness and qualifications in the decision to hire a knowledge worker.Motivation for the study: The research was motivated by a desire to explore the presence of bias in the decision-making process when seemingly rational individuals are exposed to factors such as physical attractiveness of a job candidate and then faced with a decision on whether to hire them.Research design, approach and method: A two-phased experimental design was applied to investigate the existence and strength of the beauty premium amongst a group of managers who were provided with fictitious resumes coupled with photographs of the applicants. These managers were requested to make a hiring decision based on the information supplied.Main findings: Although results confirm the existence of a beauty premium, it was relatively weak. It indicated that qualifications have a greater influence on a manager’s perception of the suitability of a candidate to fill a position of a knowledge worker.Practical or managerial implications: The research draws attention to the possibility of bias in selection decisions and proposes ways in which such potential bias can be limited.Contribution: This study contributes to knowledge concerning the existence or otherwise of a so-called beauty premium, with particular reference to its impact in the knowledge economy.