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Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions

In many instances in life, our decisions’ outcomes hinge on someone else’s choices (i.e., under social uncertainty). Behavioral and pharmacological work has previously focused on different types of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity, but not so much on risk behaviors under social uncertainty. H...

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Autores principales: Bellucci, Gabriele, Münte, Thomas F., Park, Soyoung Q.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35715450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13778-x
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author Bellucci, Gabriele
Münte, Thomas F.
Park, Soyoung Q.
author_facet Bellucci, Gabriele
Münte, Thomas F.
Park, Soyoung Q.
author_sort Bellucci, Gabriele
collection PubMed
description In many instances in life, our decisions’ outcomes hinge on someone else’s choices (i.e., under social uncertainty). Behavioral and pharmacological work has previously focused on different types of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity, but not so much on risk behaviors under social uncertainty. Here, in two different studies using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, we administrated citalopram (a selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitor) to male participants and investigated decisions in a gambling task under social and nonsocial uncertainty. In the social condition, gamble outcomes were determined by another participant. In the nonsocial condition, gamble outcomes were determined by a coin toss. We observed increased gamble acceptance under social uncertainty, especially for gambles with lower gains and higher losses, which might be indicative of a positivity bias in social expectations in conditions of high uncertainty about others’ behaviors. A similar effect was found for citalopram, which increased overall acceptance behavior for gambles irrespective of the source of uncertainty (social/nonsocial). These results provide insights into the cognitive and neurochemical processes underlying decisions under social uncertainty, with implications for research in risk-taking behaviors in healthy and clinical populations.
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spelling pubmed-92059372022-06-19 Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions Bellucci, Gabriele Münte, Thomas F. Park, Soyoung Q. Sci Rep Article In many instances in life, our decisions’ outcomes hinge on someone else’s choices (i.e., under social uncertainty). Behavioral and pharmacological work has previously focused on different types of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity, but not so much on risk behaviors under social uncertainty. Here, in two different studies using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, we administrated citalopram (a selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitor) to male participants and investigated decisions in a gambling task under social and nonsocial uncertainty. In the social condition, gamble outcomes were determined by another participant. In the nonsocial condition, gamble outcomes were determined by a coin toss. We observed increased gamble acceptance under social uncertainty, especially for gambles with lower gains and higher losses, which might be indicative of a positivity bias in social expectations in conditions of high uncertainty about others’ behaviors. A similar effect was found for citalopram, which increased overall acceptance behavior for gambles irrespective of the source of uncertainty (social/nonsocial). These results provide insights into the cognitive and neurochemical processes underlying decisions under social uncertainty, with implications for research in risk-taking behaviors in healthy and clinical populations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-06-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9205937/ /pubmed/35715450 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13778-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Bellucci, Gabriele
Münte, Thomas F.
Park, Soyoung Q.
Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title_full Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title_fullStr Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title_full_unstemmed Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title_short Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
title_sort influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205937/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35715450
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13778-x
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