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Inter-brain synchrony occurs between individuals who feel connected socially, but how synchrony relates to felt connectedness under naturalistic social interaction has remained enigmatic. We hypothesized that inter-brain synchrony between naturally interacting individuals might be associated with the internalization of a social identity, a link between an individual's personal identity and the social group to which the individual belongs. A convenience sample of sixty participants were split into dyads and interacted naturalistically on a social task. Through mapping EEG oscillatory waveforms onto a conceptual model categorizing the formation of a social identity within a naturalistic conversation, greater inter-brain synchrony was observed in the emergent stage within the formation of a social identity compared to earlier stages, where a social identity was not present. We provide evidence for greater neural synchrony related to higher socio-psychological connectedness during the development of social identity under naturalistic social interaction., (© 2024 The Author(s). British Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society.)

A goal of brain-computer-interface (BCI) research is to accurately classify participants' emotional status via objective measurements. While there has been a growth in EEG-BCI literature tackling this issue, there exist methodological limitations that undermine its ability to reach conclusions. These include both the nature of the stimuli used to induce emotions and the steps used to process and analyze the data. To highlight and overcome these limitations we appraised whether previous literature using commonly used, widely available, datasets is purportedly classifying between emotions based on emotion-related signals of interest and/or non-emotional artifacts. Subsequently, we propose new methods based on empirically driven, scientifically rigorous, foundations. We close by providing guidance to any researcher involved or wanting to work within this dynamic research field.

Increasing financial trading performance is big business. A lingering question within academia and industry concerns whether emotions improve or degrade trading performance. In this study, 30 participants distributed hypothetical wealth between a share (a risk) and the bank (paying a small, sure, gain) within four trading games. Skin Conductance Response was measured while playing the games to measure anticipatory emotion, a covert emotion signal that impacts decision-making. Anticipatory emotion was significantly associated with trading performance but the direction of the correlation was dependent upon the share's movement. Thus, anticipatory emotion is neither wholly "good" nor "bad" for trading; instead, the relationship is context-dependent. This is one of the first studies exploring the association between anticipatory emotion and trading behaviour using trading games within an experimentally rigorous environment. Our findings elucidate the relationship between anticipatory emotion and financial decision-making and have applications for improving trading performance in novice and expert traders., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Hinvest, Alsharman, Roell and Fairchild.)