Commentary: Investigating the Effects of Anger and Guilt on Unethical Behaviour: A Dual-Process Approach

The Effect of Malicious Envy on Schadenfreude When Schadenfreude Is Elicited Through Social Comparisons

Previous studies have investigated whether envy, particularly malicious envy, increases feelings of schadenfreude and whether this effect is evident in both gain and loss frames. However, as a social-comparison-based emotion, schadenfreude was not investigated through social comparisons in these previous studies. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether malicious envy influences schadenfreude when schadenfreude is elicited in the context of precise and ambiguous social comparisons. To address this issue, participants in the present study were asked to play a monetary game with several other players. In the experimental condition, participants gained less or lost more than the other player; in the control condition, both the participants and the player gained little or lost much. Subsequently, the participants observed that the player encountered a misfortune, that is, gained less or lost more money than the participant. The results showed that when participants knew the exact amount of monetary gained and lost by themselves and the other player (i.e., precise social comparisons), malicious envy increased feelings of schadenfreude only in the loss frame rather than in the gain frame. More importantly, malicious envy turned out to reduce feelings of schadenfreude in both gain and loss frames, when participants did not know the exact amount (i.e., ambiguous social comparisons). The findings provide novel evidence that malicious envy does not always increase schadenfreude particularly when schadenfreude is elicited through social comparisons.

Neural Responses to Mandatory and Voluntary Donation Impact Charitable Giving Decisions: An Event-Related Potentials Study

The present study aimed to explore the influence of donation amounts on donation decisions in different donation contexts and to reveal the psychological mechanisms. Furthermore, we focused on how to enhance individuals' intention to donate voluntarily. We designed an experiment on donation decisions, employing event-related potentials (ERPs) to probe the effect of psychological mechanisms on donation decisions by detecting the neural basis of donation decision-making. Based on S-O-R (stimulus-organism-response) theory, we used donation contexts and donation amounts (stimuli) to induce psychological activity in the participants (organism) and then influence individual donation decision behaviors (response). Moreover, we applied psychological reactance (PR) theory to discuss the effect of donation context on decisions and the corresponding psychological process. The behavioral results showed that donation contexts (mandatory vs. voluntary) were significantly related to the donation amounts (i.e., less vs. more money that the charity received than money that the participants donated). At the ERP level, compared with mandatory donation, voluntary donation evoked a larger P2 amplitude when the charity received less money. In addition, a larger mean amplitude of LPP was elicited by voluntary donation compared to mandatory donation. This study provides practical implications for charity organizers to guide people to donate voluntarily.

"I Feel Therefore I Decide": Effect of Negative Emotions on Temporal Discounting and Probability Discounting

Temporal and probability discounting are considered two fundamental constructs in economic science, as they are associated with phenomena with major societal impact and a variety of sub-optimal behaviors and clinical conditions. Although it is well known that positive and negative affective states bear important cognitive/behavioral consequences, the effect of emotional experiences on decision-making remains unclear due to the existence of many conflicting results. Inspired by the need to understand if and to what extent the current COVID-19 pandemic has determined changes in our decision-making processes by means of the unusual, prolonged experience of negative feelings, in this study we investigate the effect of anger, fear, sadness, physical and moral disgust on intertemporal and risky choices. Results show that all emotions significantly increase subjects' preferences for immediate rewards over delayed ones, and for risky rewards over certain ones, in comparison to a "neutral emotion" condition, although the magnitude of the effect differs across emotions. In particular, we observed a more pronounced effect in the case of sadness and moral disgust. These findings contribute to the literature on emotions and decision-making by offering an alternative explanation to the traditional motivational appraisal theories. Specifically, we propose that the increased preference for immediate gratification and risky outcomes serves as a mechanism of self-reward aimed at down-regulating negative feelings and restore the individual's "emotional balance".

Neural basis of corruption in power-holders

Corruption often involves bribery, when a briber suborns a power-holder to gain advantages usually at a cost of moral transgression. Despite its wide presence in human societies, the neurocomputational basis of bribery remains elusive. Here, using model-based fMRI, we investigated the neural substrates of how a power-holder decides to accept or reject a bribe. Power-holders considered two types of moral cost brought by taking bribes: the cost of conniving with a fraudulent briber, encoded in the anterior insula, and the harm brought to a third party, represented in the right temporoparietal junction. These moral costs were integrated into a value signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was selectively engaged to guide anti-corrupt behaviors when a third party would be harmed. Multivariate and connectivity analyses further explored how these neural processes depend on individual differences. These findings advance our understanding of the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying corrupt behaviors.

Oculomotor behavior tracks the effect of ideological priming on deception

The decision to lie to another person involves a conflict between one's own and others' interest. Political ideology may foster self-promoting or self-transcending values and thus may balance or fuel self vs. other related conflicts. Here, we explored in politically non-aligned participants whether oculomotor behavior may index the influence on moral decision-making of prime stimuli related to left and right-wing ideologies. We presented pictures of Italian politicians and ideological words in a paradigm where participants could lie to opponents with high vs. low socio-economic status to obtain a monetary reward. Results show that left-wing words decreased self-gain lies and increased other-gain ones. Oculomotor behavior revealed that gazing longer at politicians' pictures led participants to look longer at opponent's status-related information than at game's outcome-related information before the decision. This, in turn, caused participants to lie less to low status opponents. Moreover, after lying, participants averted their gaze from high status opponents and maintained it towards low status ones. Our results offer novel evidence that ideological priming influences moral decision-making and suggest that oculomotor behavior may provide crucial insights on how this process takes place.