People make decisions based on deviations from expected outcomes, known as prediction errors. Past work has focused on reward prediction errors, largely ignoring violations of expected emotional experiences—emotion prediction errors. We leverage a method to measure real-time fluctuations in emotion as people decide to punish or forgive others. Across four studies (N = 1,016), we reveal that emotion and reward prediction errors have distinguishable contributions to choice, such that emotion prediction errors exert the strongest impact during decision-making. We additionally find that a choice to punish or forgive can be decoded in less than a second from an evolving emotional response, suggesting that emotions swiftly influence choice. Finally, individuals reporting significant levels of depression exhibit selective impairments in using emotion—but not reward—prediction errors. Evidence for emotion prediction errors potently guiding social behaviours challenge standard decision-making models that have focused solely on reward.

人们根据与预期结果的偏差做出决策，称为预测误差。过去的工作集中在奖励预测错误上，很大程度上忽略了违反预期情绪体验的行为——情绪预测错误。当人们决定惩罚或原谅他人时，我们利用一种方法来测量情绪的实时波动。跨越四项研究（N = 1,016），我们揭示了情绪和奖励预测错误对选择有明显的贡献，因此情绪预测错误在决策过程中发挥最大的影响。我们还发现，惩罚或宽恕的选择可以在不到一秒的时间内从不断演变的情绪反应中解码出来，这表明情绪会迅速影响选择。最后，报告显着抑郁水平的个体在使用情绪（而非奖励）预测错误时表现出选择性障碍。情绪预测错误的证据有力地指导了社会行为，挑战了仅关注奖励的标准决策模型。