Resumen de Neurotransmitters and Hormones in Human Decision-Making
Luis Felipe Sarmiento Rivera, Amauri Gouveia
Decision-making becomes an interdisciplinary process, which joints different fields such as neuroscience, psychology, and economy. It makes sense that decision-making has been studied in different ways and perspectives: economic decisions, related to cost and benefits of a decision; social decisions, involving social bonding, social behavior, and mating; and moral decisions that relates moral principles. This chapter aims to make an approach to the understanding of the molecular genetics, how genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, receptors, and enzymes are interacting, benefiting, or affecting different types of decision-making. This model exhibits a description relating oxytocin with moral decision-making, choosing the common well-being than the own well-being, also related to trustfulness in social decision-making. Arginine vasopressin (AVP) is linked to cooperation in social decision-making. Testosterone makes financial decision-making more risky. It is also connected with competitiveness and social dominance in social decision-making. Serotonin coupled with impulsivity affects social decisions and decision-making under risk and the value of harm in moral decisions. Stress hormones are linked to risky decisions, but just in men. Dopamine is affiliated with rewards and learning. It is typically associated with the valuation of the outcomes in the decisions. Finally, the model portrays the psychobiological interaction between all this hormones and neurotransmitters and their relationships to decision-making.
