Loss impresses human beings more than gain in the decision-making game

TL;DR

This study investigates how humans process losses versus gains in decision-making, revealing that losses evoke stronger brain responses than gains, especially as the difference between them increases.

Contribution

It provides neurophysiological evidence that losses impact human decision-making more than gains, highlighting EEG signals associated with loss anticipation.

Findings

Losses evoke stronger EEG responses than gains.

Negative EEG waves are concentrated in the forebrain during high expectation.

The EEG signals differ significantly before different decision outcomes.

Abstract

What happen in the brain when human beings play games with computers? Here a simple zero-sum game was conducted to investigate how people make decision via their brain even they know that their opponent is a computer. There are two choices (a low or high number) for people and also two strategies for the computer (red color or green color). When the number selected by the human subject meet the red color, the person loses the score which is equal to the number. On the contrary, the person gains the number of score if the computer chooses a green color for the number selected by the human being. Both the human subject and the computer give their choice at the same time, and subjects have been told that the computer make its decision randomly on the red color or green color. During the experiments, the signal of electroencephalograph (EEG) obtained from brain of subjects was recorded. From the analysis of EEG, we find that people mind the loss more than the gain, and the phenomenon becoming obvious when the gap between loss and gain grows. In addition, the signal of EEG is clearly distinguishable before making different decisions. It is observed that significant negative waves in the entire brain region when the participant has a greater expectation for the outcome, and these negative waves are mainly concentrated in the forebrain region in the brain of human beings.