Emotion regulation strategies provide a means by which to modulate our social behavior. In this study, we investigated the effect of using reappraisal to both up- and downregulate social decision making. After being instructed on how to use reappraisal, participants played the Ultimatum Game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and applied the strategies of upregulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as more negative), down-regulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as less negative), as well as a baseline “look” condition. As hypothesized, when reappraising, decision acceptance rates were altered, with a greater number of unfair offers accepted while down-regulating and a greater number of unfair offers rejected while upregulating, both relative to the baseline condition. At the neural level, during reappraisal, significant activations were observed in the inferior and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), in addition to the medial prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus for unfair offers only. Regulated decisions involved left inferior frontal gyrus for upregulation and MFG for down-regulation strategies, respectively. Importantly, the effects of emotion modulation were evident in posterior insula, with less activation for down-regulation and more activation for upregulation in these areas. Notably, we show for the first time that top-down strategies such as reappraisal strongly affect our socioeconomic decisions.

Previous studies have reported the effect of emotion regulation strategies on both individual and social decision making, however the effect of regulation on socially driven emotions independent of decisions is still unclear. In the present study, we investigated the neural effects of using reappraisal to both up- and down-regulate socially driven emotions. Participants played the Dictator Game in the role of recipient while undergoing fMRI, and concurrently applied the strategies of either up-regulation (reappraising the proposer’s intentions as more negative), down-regulation (reappraising the proposer’s intentions as less negative), as well as a baseline ‘look’ condition. Results showed that regions responding to the implementation of reappraisal (effect of strategy, that is, “regulating regions”) were the inferior and middle frontal gyrus, temporo parietal junction and insula bilaterally. Importantly, the middle frontal gyrus activation correlated with the frequency of regulatory strategies in daily life, with the insula activation correlating with the perceived ability to reappraise the emotions elicited by the social situation. Regions regulated by reappraisal (effect of regulation, that is, “regulated regions”) were the striatum, the posterior cingulate and the insula, showing increased activation for the up-regulation and reduced activation for down-regulation, both compared to the baseline condition. When analyzing the separate effects of partners’ behavior, selfish behavior produced an activation of the insula, not observed when subjects were treated altruistically. Here we show for the first time that interpersonal emotion regulation strategies can strongly affect neural responses when experiencing socially driven emotions. Clinical implications of these findings are also discussed to understand how the way we interpret others’ intentions may affect the way we emotionally react.

Affect can have a significant influence on decision-making processes and subsequent choice. One particularly relevant type of negative affect is anxiety, which serves to enhance responses to threatening stimuli or situations. In its exaggerated form, it can lead to psychiatric disorders, with detrimental consequences for quality of life, including the ability to make choices. This study investigated, for the first time, how pathological anxiety affects risk-taking behavior. In this study, 20 anxious participants meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, criteria for either generalized anxiety disorder (n = 10) and for panic attack disorder (n = 10), as well as 20 matched nonanxious controls, performed a gambling task. To investigate the tendency toward either a risk-seeking or a risk-averse behavior, we employed a task that did not allow for learning from outcomes. Anxious participants made significantly fewer risky choices than matched nonanxious participants. Specifically, they become risk-avoidant after gains. Moreover, anxious participants not only were less happy after gains but were also less sad after losses, and they also evinced less desire to change their choices after losses than did nonanxious participants. Importantly, whereas the desire to switch choice was followed by actual choice switch for all participants, happiness directly predicted subsequent risky choices, particularly in the nonanxious participants. Further analyses revealed that the anxious participants' risk-avoidance behavior was independent of different types of anxiety disorder (panic attack disorder and generalized anxiety disorder) as well as of the effects of psychotropic drugs treatment. This study demonstrates a specific role for anxiety in individual decision making. In particular, hypersensitivity to potential threats and pessimistic evaluation of future events reduced risk-taking behavior.