From feeling less to doing more: Affective habituation underlies risk escalation

从感觉更少到做得更多：情感习惯是风险升级的基础

• 批准号: 2714481
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2714481
• 关键词: feeling; less; doing; more; Affective

The research will examine the mechanism that underlies the escalation of risk-taking behaviors. Anecdotally, low-risk behaviors are the antecedents of extreme risk-taking. The research will investigatehow small acts of risk-taking snowball into extreme and possibly life-threatening behaviors by testing the hypothesis that affective habituation lies at the heart of risk escalation. The idea is that the moreindividuals engage in risky behavior (e.g., gambling, unprotected sex, extreme sport), the less emotionally arousing they will experience that behavior to be. With less fear to curb risk-taking, anindividual will gradually engage in greater and greater risk. The risk itself may be perceived as smaller the more a person engages in it despite the actual threat level remaining the same.The research will utilize behavioral, physiological, and neural methodologies to study the proposed hypothesis. In particular, it will use virtual reality to simulate a situation of risk and measure risk-takingseverity and physiological arousal. It will also examine risk-taking in a financial task and measure fMRI signal in brain regions associated with arousal. The research will be conducted in healthy and clinical populations, such as individuals with anxiety disorders that are expected to exhibit impaired emotional adaptation to risk which might be related to low-risk behaviors.Understanding why and how risk-taking escalates to dangerous behaviors that can be financially or physically detrimental is important for developing tools to curb such behaviors and establishingprevention programs for vulnerable populations. The research falls within the discipline of social science remit by adding to the understanding of human functioning. Particularly, our ability to improve informed policies, clinical treatments, and prevention programs is contingent on knowing how the human mind functions and the emotional and motivational aspects that govern behaviors.

这项研究将考察冒险行为升级的基础机制。坊间传闻，低风险行为是极端冒险行为的先兆。这项研究将通过检验情感习惯是风险升级的核心这一假设，来调查冒险的小行为如何滚雪球般变成极端的、可能危及生命的行为。这个想法是，越多的人从事危险的行为(例如，赌博、无保护的性行为、极限运动)，他们就越不会体验到这种行为的情感唤醒。随着对遏制冒险的恐惧减少，个人将逐渐承担越来越大的风险。尽管实际的威胁水平保持不变，但一个人参与的越多，风险本身可能被认为越小。这项研究将利用行为、生理和神经方法来研究提出的假设。特别是，它将使用虚拟现实来模拟冒险的情景，并测量冒险的严重性和生理唤醒。它还将检查金融任务中的冒险行为，并测量与唤醒相关的大脑区域的fMRI信号。这项研究将在健康和临床人群中进行，例如焦虑障碍患者，他们预计会表现出对风险的情绪适应受损，这可能与低风险行为有关。了解冒险行为升级为危险行为的原因和方式，可能会对经济或身体造成损害，对于开发工具来遏制此类行为，并为弱势群体建立预防计划非常重要。通过增加对人类功能的理解，这项研究属于社会科学的范畴。特别是，我们改善知情政策、临床治疗和预防计划的能力取决于对人类大脑如何运作的了解，以及控制行为的情感和动机方面。