A causal account of the brain network computations underlying strategic social behavior

Hill, C. A.; Suzuki, Shinsuke; Polanía, Rafael; Moisa, Marius; O’Doherty, John P.; Ruff, Christian C.

doi:10.1038/nn.4602

Cited by 163 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Interestingly, however, we also found that dmPFC activity was negatively correlated with subjects' propensity to deviate from the default option of following private information ( Figure 3b). Such an activation pattern and individual difference correlation result were more aligned with the theory that the dmPFC activity might represent subjective task difficulty, and the amount of cognitive control based on the expected value of such control rather than foraging value (De Martino et al, 2017;Hampton, Bossaerts, & O'Doherty, 2008;Hill et al, 2017;Kolling et al, 2016;Kragel et al, 2018;Shenhav et al, 2013;Shenhav et al, 2017;Shenhav, Straccia, Cohen, & Botvinick, 2014). It should be noted that, in our study, we found brain areas that encompass both traditionally defined dACC and dmPFC responded to both social and private information conflict as well as social information conformity (Figure 3a).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Private but not social information validity modulates social conformity bias

Tam

2019

Human Brain Mapping

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It is well established that human behaviors are susceptible to others' opinions. However, optimal decision theory mandates choices be made upon the estimated validities of different information sources and little is known about whether and how people could wean themselves off social conformity bias, especially when the social signals are uninformative. Here, we asked subjects to participate in a probabilistic urn guessing task based on their private information as well as observed choices from their partners. Specifically, we manipulated the information validity of these two sources such that only the private evidence was informative. Across trials, social conformity declined, manifested by the increased influence of the private evidence but steady effect of social information. Correspondingly, we found dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was involved in detecting the conflict of private and social information and conforming to social signal whereas striatum was responsible for selectively updating the influence of private (but not social) evidence contingent on its inferred validity. Furthermore, functional coupling between striatum and dmPFC predicted the resistance toward the influence of social information. Together, these results may provide a mechanistic account of how the conformity bias toward uninformative social information can be remedied.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Private but not social information validity modulates social conformity bias

Tam

2019

Human Brain Mapping

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“…interactive decisions)(Hampton et al, 2008;Hill et al, 2017). In particular, the TPJ is engaged 641 when weighing self-interest with other regarding preferences(Strombach et al, 2015) and it has 642 been shown to be causally necessary to signal the moral conflict between personal profits and 643 moral costs (Obeso et al, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying immoral decisions benefiting self or others

Tang

et al. 2019

Preprint

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15Immoral behavior often consists of weighing transgression of a moral norm against maximizing 16 personal profits. One important question is to understand why immoral behaviors vary based on 17 who receives specific benefits and what are the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying such 18 moral flexibility. Here, we used model-based fMRI to investigate how immoral behaviors change 19 when benefiting oneself or someone else. Participants were presented with offers requiring a 20 tradeoff between a moral cost (i.e., profiting a morally bad cause) and a benefit for either oneself 21 or a charity. Participants were more willing to obtain ill-gotten profits for themselves than for a 22 charity, driven by a devaluation of the moral cost when deciding for their own interests. The 23 subjective value of an immoral offer, computed as a linear summation of the weighed monetary 24 gain and moral cost, recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex regardless of beneficiaries. 25Moreover, paralleling the behavioral findings, this region enhanced its functional coupling with 26 mentalizing-related regions while deciding whether to gain morally-tainted profits for oneself vs. 27charity. Finally, individual differences in moral preference differentially modulated choice-specific 28 signals in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex according to who benefited from the decisions. These 29 findings provide insights for understanding the neurobiological basis of moral flexibility. 31Keywords: immoral choice, beneficiary, model-based fMRI, moral flexibility 32 advantage of information of multiple voxels to describe the neural pattern similarity between 83 conditions (Kriegeskorte et al., 2008;Kriegeskorte and Kievit, 2013), and this approach has been 84 recently applied to the field of social and decision neuroscience (van Baar et al., 2019). 85Here, we developed a novel paradigm in which participants were asked to make a series 86 of decisions involving trade-offs (i.e., offers) between two parties in the MRI scanner. One party 87 had been established to be a morally bad cause in the opinions of the participants, namely an 88 organization severely violating the moral values of caring for the safety and life of others (a gun-89 holding/hunting advocacy group; see SI: association selection for details). The other party (i.e., 90 the beneficiary) was either the participant (self) or a charity considered to be morally positive. 91Crucially, by accepting offers in both types of dilemma, either the participant or the charity would 92 be better off; however, it was always accompanied by the moral cost of also profiting the bad 93 cause. When offers were rejected, neither party earned any benefit offered ( Fig. 1). Notably, to 94 capture how individuals weighs the financial gain and moral cost depending on beneficiaries, we 95 independently varied the monetary payoff for each party (i.e. self/charity vs bad cause) in a 96 parametric manner. 97This novel experimental design allows us to go beyond traditional behavioral analyses by 98 proposing a...

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“…The TPJ is involved in multiple cognitive functions (Alkire, Levitas, Warnell, & Redcay, ; Baumgartner, Dahinden, Gianotti, & Knoch, ; Donaldson et al, ; Fujino, Yamasaki, et al, ; Mars et al, ; Soutschek et al, ). In particular, the right TPJ plays a key role in social cognition, such as perspective taking (Krall et al, ; Schurz, Tholen, Perner, Mars, & Sallet, ; Tei et al, ), moral decision‐making (Bitsch, Berger, Nagels, Falkenberg, & Straube, ; Chen, Decety, Huang, Chen, & Cheng, ; Tei et al, , ; Young, Camprodon, Hauser, Pascual‐Leone, & Saxe, ), and strategic social behavior (Hampton, Bossaerts, & O'Doherty, ; Hill et al, ). Significantly, previous fMRI studies have shown that the right TPJ plays a vital role in differentiating between in‐group and out‐group members in judgments and behavior (Baumgartner et al, ; Falk et al, ; Wu et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The TPJ is involved in multiple cognitive functions (Alkire, Levitas, Warnell, & Redcay, 2018;Baumgartner, Dahinden, Gianotti, & Knoch, 2019;Donaldson et al, 2015;Fujino, Yamasaki, et al, 2014;Mars et al, 2012;Soutschek et al, 2016). In particular, the right TPJ plays a key role in social cognition, such as perspective taking (Krall et (Hampton, Bossaerts, & O'Doherty, 2008;Hill et al, 2017). Significantly, previous fMRI studies have shown that the right TPJ plays a vital role in differentiating between in-group and out-group members in judgments and behavior (Baumgartner et al, 2012;Falk et al, 2012;Wu et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of the right temporoparietal junction in intergroup bias in trust decisions

Fujino

Tei

Itahashi

et al. 2019

Human Brain Mapping

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Intergroup bias, which is the tendency to behave more positively toward an in‐group member than toward an out‐group member, is pervasive in real life. In particular, intergroup bias in trust decisions substantially influences multiple areas of life and thus better understanding of this tendency can provide significant insights into human social behavior. Although previous functional magnetic resonance imaging studies showed the involvement of the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in intergroup trust bias, a causal relationship between the two has rarely been explored. By combining repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and a newly developed trust game task, we investigated the causal role of the right TPJ in intergroup bias in trust decisions. In the trust game task, the counterpart's group membership (in‐group or out‐group) and reciprocity were manipulated. We applied either neuronavigated inhibitory continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) or sham stimulation over the right TPJ before performing the trust game task in healthy volunteers. After the sham stimulation, the participants' degrees of investments with in‐group members were significantly higher than those with out‐group members. However, after cTBS to the right TPJ, this difference was not observed. The current results extend previous findings by showing that the causal roles of the right TPJ can be observed in intergroup bias in trust decisions. Our findings add to our understanding of the mechanisms of human social behavior.

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A causal account of the brain network computations underlying strategic social behavior

Cited by 163 publications

References 57 publications

Private but not social information validity modulates social conformity bias

Private but not social information validity modulates social conformity bias

Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying immoral decisions benefiting self or others

Role of the right temporoparietal junction in intergroup bias in trust decisions

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