Effects Of Reward And Punishment Incentive On Attentional Control And Decision-making Behaviors Of Shy Individuals

The “shy-bold” continuum is a basic behavioral feature that organisms(e.g.,humans,animals,plants)have evolved in the struggle for drawing on advantages and avoiding disadvantages.It also plays an important role in evading social threats and striving for survival resources in human society.However,with the acceleration of the process of world integration and the advent of the era of commodity economy,the disadvantages of shy individuals are highlighted in this process thus encountered more social adaptation problems.This issue is of concern to psychology researchers.Currently,the experimental studies of shyness were relatively less and merely focused on stress coping and threat perception which emphasized the role of avoidance motivation.However,the current research of shyness ignored the incentive mechanism and approach motivation.Monetary incentive is a way of motivating people to improve performance or behavior with monetary(or token)reward or punishment.Based on the monetary incentive cognitive and decision-making research,researchers have explored the adaptive behaviors of people in pursuit of rewards and avoidance of punishments,and have also revealed the role of personality and individual differences to a certain extent.Through the study of monetary incentive,it is of great value to understand the shortcomings of shy individuals' academic/work performance,social adaptation and approach-avoid conflict.However,current research on shyness in monetary incentive processing still has many deficiencies.First,previous research on monetary incentive processing of shy individuals is very limited,which restricts researchers from revealing the effects and mechanisms of monetary incentive processing on shy individuals.Second,although previous research on monetary incentive processing of shy individuals revealed that shy and non-shy individuals show different sensitivities in reward and punishment tasks,there are still contradictions in the conclusions.Third,previous research did not reveal the cognitive and decision-making deficits of shy individuals in monetary incentive processing.Fourth,previous shyness research focused too much on avoidance motivation however ignores approach motivation,which leads to insufficient explanations for the causes of shy individuals.Finally,there are plenty of cognitive neurological studies on rewards and punishments,but few studies provide cognitive neurological evidence for the sensitivity of shy individuals to monetary rewards and punishments.Based on the above analysis,the current study examined the effects of rewards and punishments on attention control and decision-making behaviors of shy individuals and also provide neurophysiological evidence for the sensitivity of shy individuals in reward and punishment processing.In research 1,we examined the effects of reward and punishment incentives on attentional control(experiment 1: inhibition,experiment 2: shifting,experiment 3:updating)and facial emotions processing(experiment 4)of shy individuals.Results showed that reward and punishment incentives are not as effective in improving attentional control(inhibition,shifting,updating)of shy individuals as non-shy individuals.The improvement of reward and punishment on attentional control of shy individuals is limited to simple tasks,with working memory load increases,the incentives of reward and punishment weaken or even disappear.Reward and punishment incentives improve upcoming facial emotion processing.Compared with non-shy college students,shy college students are more likely to be affected by facial emotion.In research 2 experiment 5,we used Ultimatum game to examine the response patterns of shy college students to unfair distribution in the framework of reward and punishment.Results showed that shy college students have higher rejection rates and longer response times in the punishment framework.In experiment 6 and 7,we used Iowa gambling task to examine the effects of rewards and punishments on affective decision-making behaviors of shy college students.Results showed that shy college students chose more cards with lower rewards and lower penalties than cards with higher rewards and higher risks.Mediation analysis revealed that the choice mode of shy college students is related to social maladaption.The above results indicate that shy individuals have shortcomings in decision-making functions,manifested as overestimating the value of punishments and underestimating the value of rewards,which may be related to their avoidance behavior.Based on research 1 and research 2,in research 3,we used the Monetary Incentive Delay task to examine the sensitivities as well as cognitive features of shy college students during reward and punishment cues processing stage and outcome evaluation processing stage.Results revealed that compared with non-shy college students,shy college students exhibited more vigilance(larger P2)and lower level of motivation expectation(smaller P3)to incentive cues and lower level of consumption experience to rewards(smaller P3).To our knowledge,this study was the first one to systematically investigate the effects of reward and punishment on attentional control and decision-making behaviors of shy individuals,and provide neurophysiological evidence for the sensitivity of shy individuals to reward processing.The above results revealed that shy individuals exhibited more vigilance and lower expectation to reward and punishment incentives;reward and punishment exhibited a poor incentive effect on shy individuals however promote facial emotions processing.This may cause an adverse effect on learning or work efficiency of shy individuals.Besides,results revealed that shy individuals may overestimate the value of punishments and underestimate the value of rewards,which may be the vital cause for their avoidance behavior.Since monetary incentive is a typical incentive way of external motivation,this study reflect that the failure of external incentive mechanism is likely to be an important reason for shy individuals to encounter more work/academic and social-emotional difficulties in the current era.In addition,this study also reflect the shortcomings of shy individuals in both approach and avoid motivation,and show certain practical value in education and intervention to shy individuals.