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.

该研究将探讨冒险行为升级的机制。有趣的是，低风险行为是极端冒险行为的前身。该研究将通过检验情感习惯是风险升级的核心这一假设，来调查微小的冒险行为如何像滚雪球一样发展成极端的甚至可能危及生命的行为。这个想法是，越多的人参与危险行为（例如赌博、无保护的性行为、极限运动），他们体验到这种行为的情绪就越少。随着对抑制冒险行为的恐惧减少，个人将逐渐承担越来越大的风险。尽管实际威胁水平保持不变，但一个人参与的次数越多，风险本身可能会被认为越小。该研究将利用行为、生理和神经方法来研究所提出的假设。特别是，它将使用虚拟现实来模拟风险情况并测量冒险的严重程度和生理唤醒。它还将检查金融任务中的风险承担情况，并测量与唤醒相关的大脑区域的功能磁共振成像信号。该研究将在健康和临床人群中进行，例如患有焦虑症的个体，这些个体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。了解冒险行为为何以及如何升级为危险行为经济或身体上的损害对于开发遏制此类行为的工具以及为弱势群体制定预防计划非常重要。这项研究属于社会科学学科的范围，有助于加深对人类功能的理解。特别是，我们改进明智政策、临床治疗和预防计划的能力取决于了解人类思维如何运作以及控制行为的情感和动机方面。