The Interactive Influence of Perceived Ownership and Perceived Choosership of Stocks on Brain Response to Stock Outcomes

The present research examined the influence of perceived ownership (self/other) and perceived chooser (self/other) of stocks on brain activity, and investigated whether differential brain responses to stock outcomes as a result of perceived differences in ownership of stock would be modulated by perceived chooser of stock. We used a 2 (stock chooser: self, other) × 2 (stock owner: self, other) within-subject design to represent four types of chooser-owner relationships. Brain potentials were recorded while participants observed increasing and decreasing stock prices. Results showed that observations of stock outcomes among four types of chooser-owner relationships elicited differentiated feedback-related negativity (d-FRN: differences in FRN waves between losses and gains, reflecting violations of expectancy to stock outcomes): (1) Self-chosen-other-owned stocks evoked significantly larger d-FRN discrepancies than self-chosen-self-owned stocks, indicating a greater expectancy violation to others' losses than to one's own, demonstrating a reversed ownership effect. Moreover, people high in conscientiousness showed an increase in this trend, suggesting a stronger other-consideration; (2) Self-chosen-self-owned stocks and other-chosen-self-owned stocks revealed no significant d-FRN discrepancy, showing no choosership effect beyond the ownership effect; (3) Other-chosen-self-owned stocks evoked a significantly stronger d-FRN discrepancy than other-chosen-other-owned stocks, demonstrating an ownership effect; (4) Self-chosen-other-owned stocks evoked a significantly stronger d-FRN discrepancy than other-chosen-other-owned stocks, revealing a choosership effect. These findings suggest that the ownership effect could be reversed by conscientiousness induced by perceived choosership in the agency relationship, while the choosership effect is attenuated and even disappears under the influence of perceived ownership.

[1]  H. Murohashi,et al.  The ERPs to feedback indicating monetary loss and gain on the game of modified “rock–paper–scissors” , 2005 .

[2]  Lei Wang,et al.  Non-sympathetic FRN responses to drops in others’ stocks , 2015, Social neuroscience.

[3]  A. Rodríguez-Fornells,et al.  Brain potentials related to self-generated and external information used for performance monitoring , 2005, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[4]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  ERP correlates of feedback and reward processing in the presence and absence of response choice. , 2005, Cerebral cortex.

[5]  Kazuo Hiraki,et al.  Perceiving an opponent's loss: gender-related differences in the medial-frontal negativity. , 2006, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[6]  Alvin E. Roth,et al.  Learning in High Stakes Ultimatum Games: An Experiment in the Slovak Republic , 1998 .

[7]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  The neural basis of human error processing: reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. , 2002, Psychological review.

[8]  Josep Marco-Pallarés,et al.  When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis , 2010, BMC Neuroscience.

[9]  Tingyong Feng,et al.  Feedback-related negativity effects vanished with false or monetary loss choice , 2009, Neuroreport.

[10]  Qiang Shen,et al.  Empathic responses to others’ gains and losses: An electrophysiological investigation , 2011, NeuroImage.

[11]  C. Braun,et al.  Event-Related Brain Potentials Following Incorrect Feedback in a Time-Estimation Task: Evidence for a Generic Neural System for Error Detection , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  R. Sugden,et al.  Regret Theory: An alternative theory of rational choice under uncertainty Review of Economic Studies , 1982 .

[13]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  Mere-Possession Effects without Possession in Consumer Choice , 1997 .

[14]  Scott T. Allison,et al.  Possession enhancement in an interpersonal context: An extension of the mere ownership effect , 1999 .

[15]  M. Lepper,et al.  Rethinking the value of choice: a cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  Alison L. Chasteen,et al.  Your mistakes are mine: Self-other overlap predicts neural response to observed errors , 2010 .

[17]  Johannes Hewig,et al.  Decision-making in Blackjack: an electrophysiological analysis. , 2007, Cerebral cortex.

[18]  Don M. Tucker,et al.  Corticolimbic mechanisms in the control of trial and error learning , 2009, Brain Research.

[19]  J. Brehm.  A theory of psychological reactance. , 1981 .

[20]  Xiaolin Zhou,et al.  Modulation of the brain activity in outcome evaluation by interpersonal relationship: An ERP study , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[21]  H. Semlitsch,et al.  A solution for reliable and valid reduction of ocular artifacts, applied to the P300 ERP. , 1986, Psychophysiology.

[22]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  Brain potentials associated with expected and unexpected good and bad outcomes. , 2005, Psychophysiology.

[23]  David E. Bell,et al.  Regret in Decision Making under Uncertainty , 1982, Oper. Res..

[24]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  Reward prediction error signals associated with a modified time estimation task. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[25]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[26]  Xiaolin Zhou,et al.  The P300 and reward valence, magnitude, and expectancy in outcome evaluation , 2009, Brain Research.

[27]  C. D. De Dreu,et al.  The possessive self as a barrier to conflict resolution: effects of mere ownership, process accountability, and self-concept clarity on competitive cognitions and behavior. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[28]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  Reinforcement-related brain potentials from medial frontal cortex: origins and functional significance , 2004, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[29]  Clay B. Holroyd,et al.  It's worse than you thought: the feedback negativity and violations of reward prediction in gambling tasks. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[30]  Geoffrey M. Boynton,et al.  Efficient Design of Event-Related fMRI Experiments Using M-Sequences , 2002, NeuroImage.

[31]  James K. Beggan.  On the social nature of nonsocial perception: The mere ownership effect. , 1992 .

[32]  Rongjun Yu,et al.  Brain responses to outcomes of one's own and other's performance in a gambling task , 2006, Neuroreport.

[33]  A. Sanfey,et al.  Independent Coding of Reward Magnitude and Valence in the Human Brain , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[34]  Sean M. McCrea,et al.  The Role of Ability Judgments in Self-Handicapping , 2001 .

[35]  Shiwei Jia,et al.  Detecting perceptual conflict by the feedback-related negativity in brain potentials , 2007, Neuroreport.

[36]  Michael X. Cohen,et al.  Behavioral / Systems / Cognitive Reinforcement Learning Signals Predict Future Decisions , 2007 .

[37]  Kazuo Hiraki,et al.  Whose loss is it? Human electrophysiological correlates of non-self reward processing , 2009, Social neuroscience.

[38]  G. Saucier.  Mini-markers: a brief version of Goldberg's unipolar big-five markers. , 1994, Journal of personality assessment.

[39]  Qiang Liu,et al.  The influence of the diffusion of responsibility effect on outcome evaluations: Electrophysiological evidence from an ERP study , 2010, NeuroImage.

[40]  Atsushi Sato,et al.  Effects of value and reward magnitude on feedback negativity and P300 , 2005, Neuroreport.

[41]  N. Roese,et al.  The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking , 2008, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[42]  X. Gu,et al.  Neural consequences of religious belief on self-referential processing , 2008, Social neuroscience.

[43]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Using the implicit association test to measure self-esteem and self-concept. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[44]  R. Belk.  Possessions and the Extended Self , 1988 .

[45]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Social neuroeconomics: the neural circuitry of social preferences , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[46]  Shihui Han,et al.  Why we respond faster to the self than to others? An implicit positive association theory of self-advantage during implicit face recognition. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[47]  Lei Wang,et al.  When Do Objects Become More Attractive? The Individual and Interactive Effects of Choice and Ownership on Object Evaluation , 2009, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[48]  Adrian R. Willoughby,et al.  The Medial Frontal Cortex and the Rapid Processing of Monetary Gains and Losses , 2002, Science.

[49]  E. Deci,et al.  On the Importance of Self-Determination for Intrinsically-Motivated Behavior , 1978 .

[50]  Jun'ichi Katayama,et al.  Self-relevant criteria determine the evaluation of outcomes induced by others , 2008, Neuroreport.

[51]  Xiaolin Zhou,et al.  To Bet or Not to Bet? The Error Negativity or Error-related Negativity Associated with Risk-taking Choices , 2009, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[52]  J. Kurman.  Is Self‐enhancement Related to Modesty or to Individualism‐collectivism? A Test with Four Israeli Groups , 2001 .