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Social Decision-Making: Insights from Game Theory and Neuroscience
Abstract
By combining the models and tasks of Game Theory with modern psychological and neuroscientific methods, the neuroeconomic
approach to the study of social decision-making has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in
social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment. Research has
already begun to illustrate how social exchange can act directly on the brain's reward system, how affective factors play
an important role in bargaining and competitive games, and how the ability to assess another's intentions is related to strategic
play. These findings provide a fruitful starting point for improved models of social decision-making, informed by the formal
mathematical approach of economics and constrained by known neural mechanisms.
... Game theory has provided the field of behavioural sciences with a variety of rigorous models aiming to predict and understand decision making. However, as, e.g., Sanfey [40] pointed out, humans live in a highly complex social environment and there are a host of results that show that humans do not behave rationally (as defined in game theory). As a matter of fact, game theoretic models often fail to adequately predict human behaviour. ...
... Specifically, participants in experiments often fail to choose a so-called Nash-equilibrium [41,42], i.e., a state in which a player can expect to get the highest payoff assuming that the other players also base their decision on maximizing their subjective payoff. As it turns out, human decisions are often not based on selfish considerations and social factors are frequently considered [40]. Milton Friedman wrote [43] that "[e]conomics as a positive science is a body of tentatively accepted generalizations about economic phenomena that can be used to predict the consequences of changes in circumstances" and Shapley [44] portrayed economics as the most successful social science. ...
... Sanfey [40] reported on investigations into social choice: "the study of decision-making attempts to understand our fundamental ability to process multiple alternatives and to choose an optimal course of action". The author continues to say that this ability has been the matter of many studies in a number of fields and that these studies used a variety of theoretical assumptions as well as measurement techniques, and mentions the discipline of game theory as being one of the fields that has greatly contributed to these investigations. ...
The context of the work presented in this article is the assessment and automated evaluation of human behaviour. To facilitate this, a formalism is presented which is unambiguous as well as such that it can be implemented and interpreted in an automated manner. In the greater scheme of things, comparable behaviour evaluation requires comparable assessment scenarios and, to this end, computer games are considered as controllable and abstract environments. Within this context, a model for behavioural AI is presented which was designed around the objectives of: (a) being able to play rationally; (b) adhering to formally stated behaviour preferences; and (c) ensuring that very specific circumstances can be forced to arise within a game. The presented work is based on established models from the field of behavioural psychology, formal logic as well as approaches from game theory and related fields. The suggested model for behavioural AI has been used to implement and test a game, as well as AI players that exhibit specific behavioural preferences. The overall aim of this article is to enable the readers to design their own AI implementation, using the formalisms and models they prefer and to a level of complexity they desire.
... To investigate simulated social situations, for instance, game theory provides a rich body of models (see Camerer, 2018, for an overview). Paradigms from game theory, or behavioral economic games, simulate and reflect various social mechanisms that take hold of interdependent interactions (Sanfey, 2007). Such operationalization of decision-making is conceived of as more direct since they forgo the meta-level of imagining a social situation and reasoning upon oneself or others in such situations. ...
... These games of strategic decision-making touch on various social concepts. The decision to cooperate has been linked to a general trust in others in terms of reciprocity, whereas defection is usually interpreted in terms of self-interest or an egocentric decision style (Hayashi et al., 1999;Sanfey, 2007). ...
... In addition to reflecting aspects of cooperative styles and economic social decision making, the PDG has been associated with Theory of Mind (ToM) processes. ToM entails the predicting and interpreting of others' actions and forming of corresponding reactions (Rilling et al., 2002;Sanfey, 2007). The findings suggest that highly psychopathic offenders are able to form such adaptive ToM responses in familiar realworld social situations. ...
Despite their decisions to frequently manipulate or even callously harm others in real life, highly psychopathic individuals often exhibit judgments comparable to individuals low in psychopathy when examined experimentally. This conundrum has generated a rich body of studies exploring social decision-making in psychopathy, but no systematic review to date has identified decision-making as measured in real-world or simulated social interactions in criminal offender samples assessed for psychopathic traits. Out of 807 studies provided by database searching in August 2022, 16 studies were included in this review and revealed behavioral economic games and paradigms for the assessment of aggressive behavior as the two main approaches to dissect social decision-making in offender samples regarding psychopathy. The specific paradigms exposed the multidimensional structure of both, the psychopathy construct and social decision-making. On one side, the distinct affordances of the social tasks, such as trust, power, or reactions to unfairness and provocation shed light on the inconsistent relations of decisions in experimental situations and psychopathy. On the other side, studies analyzing decision outcomes with respect to the distinct psychopathy subcomponents revealed nuanced interference effects with the social decision tasks. The review encourages a differentiated perspective to the psychopathy construct and social decision-making processes alike.
... The current study investigates this postulated neural asymmetry of social alignment by examining the effect of generous versus selfish descriptive norms in a charitable donations task. Participants (N = 50, 10 males, age [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] decide how much of a 50 € endowment to donate to a real charity and how much to keep for themselves in 120 trials (see Fig. 1 for the sequence of events in one trial). There are three (within-subject) conditions: in the generous-and selfish norm conditions participants always receive information of what other people had donated, on average, to that particular charity. ...
... incoming information and one's own previously held beliefs, as well as increased activation in IFG to initiate re-alignment in case a gap is detected (Fig. 3a). We next conduct ROI analyses on the amygdala and the anterior insula (aInsula)-two hubs in the saliency network of the brain specifically involved in emotional processing 17,18 and implicated in processing fairness violations during money allocation tasks (see [19][20][21][22][23] for the aInsula and 24-26 for the right amygdala). While both generous and selfish descriptive norms are in principle departures of an "equal split" heuristic, only selfishness conflicts with charitable giving and is therefore more likely to elicit an emotional response. ...
Social alignment is supported by the brain’s reward system (ventral striatum), presumably because attaining synchrony generates feelings of connectedness. However, this may hold only for aligning with generous others, while aligning with selfishness might threaten social connectedness. We investigated this postulated asymmetry in an incentivized fMRI charitable donation task. Participants decided how much of their endowment to donate to real charities, and how much to keep for themselves. Compared to a baseline condition, donations significantly increased or decreased in function of the presence of descriptive norms. The fMRI data reveal that processing selfish norms (more than generous ones) recruited the amygdala and anterior insula. Aligning with selfish norms correlated on average with reduced activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and, at the individual level, with decreasing activity in the ventral striatum (VS). Conversely, as participants aligned more with generous norms, they showed increasing activity in the LPFC and, on average, increased activity in the VS. This increase occurred beyond the increased VS activity which was also observed in the baseline condition. Taken together, this suggests that aligning with generosity, while effortful, provides a “warm glow of herding” associated with collective giving, but that aligning with selfishness does not.
... Bu olgu, erken dönemlerde beynin hayatta kalmaya odaklı evrimleşme sürecinin zamanla medeniyetin getirdiği çeşitli normlara uyum sağlamaya yönelik dönüşümünü ifade etmektedir (Buckholtz ve Marois, 2012). Nitekim insanın sosyal olarak karmaşık bir ortamda yaşaması, bireysel karar verme sürecine eş anlı olarak sosyal etkileşimleri dahil etmesini gerektirmektedir (Sanfey, 2007). Bu yüzden nörofinans sadece beynin bireysel bağlamdaki davranışlarını değil, ayrıca ödül/ceza ve öğrenme /pekiştirme, zihinselleştirme, hazzı erteleme, duygu modülasyonu, acı ve haz gibi bağlamlarda güven, karşılıklılık, alturizm, adalet, intikam, sosyal ceza, sosyal norm uyumu, sosyal öğrenme ve rekabet gibi unsurların da yer aldığı sinirsel bağlantıların anlaşılmasını da amaçlamaktadır (Rilling ve Sanfey, 2011). ...
... Ayrıca ödül ve cezanın işlendiği merkezi alanlardan striatum, sosyal oyunların zihinsel olarak bir ödül-ceza niteliğinde olması dolayısıyla önem taşır. Bu açıdan sosyal kararlar için de merkezi bir nokta olarak kabul edilen striatum aynı miktarda bir kazancın olması durumda ödül için gösterdiği biçimde aktivasyon gösterirken, karşılıksızlık halinde ise hipoaktivasyon sergiler (Sanfey, 2007). ...
Bu çalışmada ekonomik ve finansal olarak algı, tutum ve davranışta, bireysel ve sosyal karar vermede, ödül-ceza, kayıp-kazanç ve risk durumlarında yer alan nöral devrelere yönelik rapor edilmiş kanıtların gözden geçirilmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Beklenti Teorisinin nörobiyolojik bir temelini oluşturmayı hedefleyen nöroekonomi ve nörofinans araştırmalarının bulguları ışığında spesifik beyin bölgelerinin tanıtılması ve çoklu sinirsel devrelerin betimsel olarak haritalandırılması yoluyla literatüre katkıda bulunulması hedeflenmektedir. İlgili alana ilişkin çalışmalar bir bütün olarak nöro-psiko-farmakolojik araştırmalar şeklinde adlandırılmakta olup nörobiyolojik, nörokimyasal ve psikolojik mekanizmaların bir entegrasyonunu gerektirmektedir. Araştırmalar nörogörüntüleme, hayvan deneyleri, beyin lezyonları, nörotransmitter ve nöroendokrin sistem ile psikopatolojik kohortlara kadar geniş bir alana yayılmaktadır. Öte yandan söz konusu disiplinlerin ve yöntemlerin net biçimde birbirinden soyutlanarak ele alınması mümkün olmamakla birlikte, bu çalışmada, özelinde, nörolojik bulguların ön planda tutularak, ilgili noktalarda psikiyatriden ve farmakolojiden gerekli açıklamalar yapılarak ve nörolojik dil mümkün olduğunca nöroekonomi ve nörofinansa indirgenerek ve sadeleştirilerek yorumlanmaya çalışılmıştır.
... Activity in the AI and TPJ is greater in people who experience stronger empathic feelings when observing another person's pain (Decety and Jackson, 2006;Decety and Lamm, 2007;Timmers et al., 2018). These findings have been replicated in individuals who tend to make altruistic decisions in economic games that do not involve pain (Sanfey, 2007;Cornelissen et al., 2011;Eimontaite et al., 2019). ...
... Our study highlights the altruism-egoism dilemma and counterdynamic processes in social helping decisions, a process that previous studies have described as complex (Sanfey, 2007;Ramsøy et al., 2014). In conclusion, the results of this study provide a social understanding of how helping decisions are made by balancing the costs and benefits according to oneself, and why some people do help while others do not. ...
Recent psychological and neuroimaging studies on altruism–egoism dilemmas have promoted our understanding of the processes underlying altruistic motivation; however, little attention has been paid to the egoistic counter-dynamics that prompt hesitancy to help. These counter-dynamics may involve the construction of reasons not to help based on contextual elaboration and explain individual differences in the tendency to help others in daily life. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we explored the neural correlates of altruism–egoism dilemmas during empathy-driven helping decisions, with particular attention to the counter-dynamics related to individual helping tendency traits. We used two context-rich helping decision scenarios. In the empathy dilemma (Emp) scenario, empathy-driven motivation to help a poor person was associated with a cost, whereas in the economic-dilemma (Eco) scenario, self-beneficial motivation to help a non-poor person was associated with a cost. Our results showed activation of the right anterior prefrontal cortices, supramarginal gyrus, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) for the altruism–egoism dilemma (i.e., Emp > Eco). A significant negative effect of the helping tendency trait score was observed on PCC activation; interestingly, this effect was observed for both Emp and Eco dilemmas. The identified neural correlates of altruism–egoism dilemmas appear to be related to the construction of decision reasons based on contextual elaboration in naturalistic situations. In contrast to the classical view, our results suggest a two-stage model that includes an altruistic helping decision followed by counter-dynamics to determine the individual helping tendency.
... However, empirical evidence does not support this prediction and rather suggests that people actively and spontaneously share acquired goods (Koch, 2008;Muehlbacher and Kirchler, 2009;Hernandez-Lallement et al., 2013) and care about others (Bernhard et al., 2006). Furthermore, people are adept in detecting and responding to unfairness (Sanfey et al., 2003) and inequity (Sanfey, 2007), and engage in costly behaviors to punish social norm-violation and enforce social norm compliance (De Quervain et al., 2004). ...
Pro-sociality, i.e., the preference for outcomes that produce benefits for other individuals, is ubiquitous in humans. Recently, cross-species comparisons of social behavior have offered important new insights into the evolution of pro-sociality. Here, we present a rodent analog of the Pro-social Choice Task that controls strategic components, de-confounds other-regarding choice motives from the animals' natural tendencies to maximize own food access and directly tests the effect of social context on choice allocation. We trained pairs of rats—an actor and a partner rat—in a double T-maze task where actors decided between two alternatives only differing in the reward delivered to the partner. The “own reward” choice yielded a reward only accessible to the actor whereas the “both reward” choice produced an additional reward for a partner (partner condition) or an inanimate toy (toy Condition), located in an adjacent compartment. We found that actors chose “both reward” at levels above chance and more often in the partner than in the toy condition. Moreover, we show that this choice pattern adapts to the current social context and that the observed behavior is stable over time.
... Taking this into account, exploring studies with perceptual approaches appears to be an essential starting point for understanding the empathic processes and how different ERP components are involved. Studies focused on tasks such as decision-making or gambling involve more cognitive and complex processes [15,29], which are dependent on the earlier perceptual empathic processes we are looking to explore. Likewise, research shows that processes such as empathy for pain involve the activation of the cerebral structures as the experience of self-pain [30] and depend on several points of elicitation, such as concrete or abstract stimuli and the social situation in which the participants are included, involving higher processes [31]. ...
Empathy is a crucial component to infer and understand others’ emotions. However, a synthesis of studies regarding empathy and its neuronal correlates in perceptual tasks using event-related potentials (ERPs) has yet to occur. The current systematic review aimed to provide that overview. Upon bibliographic research, 30 studies featuring empathy assessments and at least one perceptual task measuring ERP components in healthy participants were included. Four main focus categories were identified, as follows: Affective Pictures, Facial Stimuli, Mental States, and Social Language. The Late Positive Potential was the most analyzed in Affective Pictures and was reported to be positively correlated with cognitive and affective empathy, along with other late components. In contrast, for Facial Stimuli, early components presented significant correlations with empathy scales. Particularly, the N170 presented negative correlations with cognitive and affective empathy. Finally, augmented N400 was suggested to be associated with higher empathy scores in the Mental States and Social Language categories. These findings highlight the relevance of early perceptual stages of empathic processing and how different EEG/ERP methodologies provide relevant information.
... If a country has both collectivist and individualistic values, young people balance their own thoughts and wishes about their future with social expectations (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018). Confidants' opinions are a significant interpersonal factor that can impact young people's choices (Sanfey, 2007). For instance, students may choose an educational path that they do not like personally due to being strongly influenced by important members of their social circles, such as parents, teachers, and significant others (Guan et al., 2015). ...
Choice is one of the most roughly defined concepts in contemporary social sciences. Previous studies have elucidated the factors that influence young people’s choices in different life situations. However, it is still unclear how young people evaluate these choices and how they integrate them into their biographies. In this study, we examine the narratives of 30 first-year master’s students at HSE University with regard to two categories of life choices: those that they perceive as fortunate and those that they perceive as unfortunate. Using a written online survey, the data was collected in the spring of 2022. To categorize the different decision kinds, thematic analysis was applied. Overall, we discovered that narratives about the life choices made by master students concentrated on education, relationships and place.
... Decision making (DM) is defined as the fundamental skill of identifying and selecting an optimal choice from several competing options based on one's subjective values and preferences (Sanfey, 2007;Schulte-Mecklenbeck et al., 2011). DM develops throughout childhood into adolescence, with an increase in DM ability in early adolescence followed by a final increase in late adolescence (Schiebener & Brand, 2015). ...
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of Cogmed Working Memory Training (Cogmed) in improving working memory (WM) and decision making (DM) in childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI), and any associated increases in functional outcomes such as academic achievement in mathematics, behavior, social skills, and quality of life. Method: A randomized controlled trial of the Cogmed (RM version) intervention for children with TBI. A total of 69 children post-TBI were screened for WM impairments, of which 31 eligible participants (Mage: 10.6 years; male n = 21) were recruited and randomized to either the treatment group (Cogmed, n = 16) or the active-control group (Lexia Reading Core5, n = 15). Both groups completed computerized training for 5 weeks with clinician support via an online video platform. Immediately posttraining and at 6 months follow-up, primary (WM and DM) and secondary functional outcomes were assessed. Results: Immediately postintervention, significant improvement was found in one primary outcome (WM verbal component) for the Cogmed group, but this was not maintained at the 6 months follow-up. No immediate improvements or maintenance gains (small effect sizes) in other primary outcomes of visuospatial WM or DM were reported in the Cogmed group. No other significant group differences were detected for other functional outcomes. Conclusions: Despite the limited benefits observed in this small randomized controlled trial, it will be beneficial to investigate Cogmed’s efficacy in a case-series methodology, to further determine its effectiveness in a pediatric TBI population. Furthermore, a cautious approach in clinical implementation of Cogmed is advised.
... The study of behavioral and neural correlates of social interactions such as trust, altruism, fairness, and bargaining (i.e., prosocial behaviors) (Rilling & Sanfey, 2011) comes from tasks that are rooted in game theory. Game theory utilizes intricate models to assess situations in which individuals must use complex reasoning in order to make decisions and understand the motivations of other individuals (Sanfey, 2007). These tasks reliably activate areas associated with decision-making (e.g., caudate nucleus) in response to errors that guide reciprocal actions, activate areas associated with emotion (e.g., anterior insula) in response to negative interactions (Rilling, King-Casas, & Sanfey, 2008), and activate the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) in response to acceptance of unfair offers (Sanfey, 2003). ...
... This matter encompasses aspects such as the calibre of information utilised, the minimal allocation of resources in the decision-making process, and the expeditious nature of decisions addressing environmental challenges (Kaltoft et al., 2014;Shamim et al., 2019;Vidgen, 2014). Other scholars advocate for the systematic acquisition of information from reliable sources and the judicious utilisation of that information within decision-making processes as a conduit for bolstering decision effectiveness (Lerner and Tetlock, 1999;Loewenstein, 2001;Sanfey, 2007;Tetlock, 2002;Yates et al., 2012). Nonetheless, the nuanced notion of decision quality remains an ongoing inquiry without a definitive resolution. ...
In recent times, there has been a heightened focus from both governments and societies towards evaluating Organisations’ Environmental Performance (OEP). Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) is pivotal in elevating OEP as it offers a holistic perspective to elucidate the environmental impacts and associated costs of diverse business activities. This research delves into the dynamic interplay between EMA information and the OEP. The study entails the administration of a questionnaire to Jordanian organisations listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The research adopts the Resource-Based View Theory. The study establishes statistically significant positive connections between these variables by employing partial least square structural equation modelling (SEM) for data analysis. Central to this investigation is identifying Environmental Decision Quality (EDQ) as a mediating capability. This capability is the mechanism for translating the relationship between EMA information and OEP. This finding underscores the pivotal role of in-formed decision-making in converting such information into tangible improvements in environmental performance. The research makes a notable contribution by expanding the understanding of EMA, highlighting its informational value beyond merely the practice considerations. Moreover, findings provide invaluable guidance for policymakers and regulatory bodies striving to promote sustainable business practices, especially pertinent in the context of developing nations.
... Nuestra conceptualización previa de Toma de Decisiones Complejas (Bernal et al., 2022) permite integrar las decisiones económicas, morales y políticas, entendiendolas como procesos que pueden implicar un mayor procesamiento cognitivo y una reflexión más prolongada, aunque también pueden ser susceptibles de priming (Bernal et al., 2022). La relevancia de estas decisiones ha despertado el interés en diferentes campos, desde la psicología experimental hasta la economía y las ciencias políticas, lo que ha proporcionado una amalgama de estudios muy heterogéneos, con diversos enfoques como el de la Teoría de Juegos (Kahneman, 2011;Morgenstern y Von Neumann, 1953;Sanfey, 2007;Tversky y Kahneman, 1981) o los dilemas morales (Christensen y Gomila, 2012;Greene, 2015), entre otros. Algunos de estos modelos asumen que los agentes decisores son individuos racionales y egoístas. ...
Resumen Este manuscrito tiene como objetivo proporcionar elementos empíricos y teóricos de las ciencias cognitivas que estudian los fenómenos políticos, para reflexionar sobre las contradicciones que abrazan el concepto de "democracia" en el sistema capitalista actual. Si bien las discusiones desarrolladas aquí no se agotan en el caso local, se resaltará en caso de pertinencia las particulares argentinas en el proceso de polarización política y el incremento de sentimientos negativos en relación a los procesos electorales. Es importante alertar al lector de antemano de que no se encontrará con un texto canónico de Ciencias Sociales. Más bien intentará ser un diálogo interdisciplinar entre las neurociencias cognitivas, las ciencias políticas y la filosofía (entre otras disciplinas), y, con el aporte de varios campos teóricos relevantes, esbozar una dimensión cognitiva de los procesos complejos y multifactoriales que implican a las decisiones políticas. Palabras clave: decisiones políticas; polarización ideológica; fake news; efectos cognitivos. Abstract This manuscript aims to provide empirical and theoretical elements of the cognitive sciences that study political phenomena, to reflect on the contradictions that embrace the concept of "democracy" in the current capitalist system. Although the discussions developed here are not exhaustive in the local case, the particular Argentine issues in the process of political polarization and the increase in negative feelings in relation to electoral processes will be highlighted in case of relevance. It is important to alert the reader in advance that they will not encounter a canonical Social Sciences text. Rather, it will attempt to be an interdisciplinary dialogue between cognitive neurosciences, political sciences and philosophy (among other disciplines), and, with the contribution of several relevant theoretical fields, outline a cognitive dimension of the complex and multifactorial processes that involve decisions. policies.
... Numerous studies have shown that the decision-making process is in uenced by a range of factors, such as age, sex, genetics, and Sanfey, 2007). Surprisingly, the social context's crucial moderating effect on decision-making has received relatively less attention. ...
Purpose: Decision-making is a complex process that factors like hormone concentration and social hierarchy can influence. The study underlines the complex interplay between hormones and social hierarchies in decision-making and the important need to consider both to understand the variety of the decision-making process.
Method: The present systematic review summarizes and compares included studies that investigate the effect of sex steroid hormones (testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone) on decision-making (risky, uncertain, and social decision-making), and social hierarchy, as well as the effect of hormones and social hierarchy on decision-making.
Result: The substantial evidence suggests testosterone's influence on decision-making shows gender-related variations. Endogenous testosterone isn't associated with uncertain choices, but Endogenous and exogenous testosterone correlates with riskier decisions, particularly among males. However, a non-negligible proportion of behavioral experiments revealed an inverse or non-significant association. Also, individuals with higher testosterone levels rejected unfair offers. Also, findings showed that testosterone levels, both before and after administration, were linked to social status, and elevated testosterone correlated with improved performance and greater motivation for status competition, especially in males with lower, unstable status.
Conclusion: This review demonstrates the main conclusions, containing findings, hypotheses, and future research recommendations.
... Compared to nonsocial rewarding stimuli, the ventral striatum has been more engaged in rewarding social stimuli [65,66]. In multi-round trust games, increased activity in the ventral striatum has been observed to be related to higher reward prediction error signals [67], suggesting that this region carries information about errors in reward prediction that enable estimations of the co-operative behavior of other partners [68,69]. Thus, our observation of increased striatal activity in the OP might be related to the failure of obtaining support (reward) that was predicted. ...
Group forming behaviors are common in many species to overcome environmental challenges. In humans, bonding, trust, group norms, and a shared past increase consolidation of social groups. Being a part of a social group increases resilience to mental stress; conversely, its loss increases vulnerability to depression. However, our knowledge on how social group support affects brain functions is limited. This study observed that default mode network (DMN) activity reduced with the loss of social group support from real-life friends in a challenging social competition. The loss of support induced anterior temporoparietal activity followed by anterior insula and the dorsal attentional network activity. Being a part of a social group and having support provides an environment for high cognitive functioning of the DMN, while the loss of group support acts as a threat signal and activates the anterior temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and insula regions of salience and attentional networks for individual survival.
... With the rapid development of neuroimaging and brain stimulation technologies, abundant literature has studied issues, such as trust, cooperation and punishment, with the help of these approaches. Extensive related studies have revealed that brain regions, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the orbital frontal cortex (OFC), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), have been implicated in trust behavior (Krueger et al., 2007;Sanfey, 2007;Knoch et al., 2009;Phan et al., 2010;Moretto et al., 2013;Zheng et al., 2016;Cheng et al., 2022). ...
Trust plays an important role in the human economy and people’s social lives. Trust is affected by various factors and is related to many brain regions, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). However, few studies have focused on the impact of the DLPFC on trust through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), although abundant psychology and neuroscience studies have theoretically discussed the possible link between DLPFC activity and trust. In the present study, we aimed to provide evidence of a causal relationship between the rDLPFC and trust behavior by conducting multiple rounds of the classical trust game and applying tDCS over the rDLPFC. We found that overall, anodal stimulation increased trust compared with cathodal stimulation and sham stimulation, while the results in different stages were not completely the same. Our work indicates a causal relationship between rDLPFC excitability and trust behavior and provides a new direction for future research.
... Game theory permits efficient decisions of the economic players in a strategic environment and portrays a valuable resource in markets and sector analysis with multiple actors. Sanfey (2007) discusses social decision-making and combines game theory and neuroscience methodology to examine decision-making in the social arena. The study reveals how the brain mechanisms involve and revolve around achieving optimal decisions on social issues. ...
More than ever, engaging a multidisciplinary approach in decision-making displays an arsenal ofcapacity necessary for success across managerial concerns in all sectors of the economy. Psychology andeconomics capturing human behaviors form part of this interdisciplinary research that spans the years thoughmany are far from this reality. The paper shows the impact of neuro-economics on strategic financialdecisions in multinational enterprises deploying theories of decisions, utility, and expectations across MNCsin the media industry in Nigeria while addressing the effects of emotions affecting advertising outcomes andbranding, and financial decisions building the theoretical framework from resources from Google Scholar andScopus search engines. Utilizing five MNCs as a sample in a population of 15 registered media firms inNigeria, the study uses grounded theory methodology and focus group discussions to uncover the reality ofemotional influence on strategic decisions and multiple regression analysis to test for the statisticalsignificance of independent variables on the dependent variable. The output shows that neuro-economicscontributes significantly to all economic decision-making in all sectors, including the media industry.Although research generalization is challenging due to economic variations in different markets, the reportposts resourceful information for policy-making decisions, productivity, and wealth creation.
... In recent years, the context of games has been used to support research on decision making in different ways. Game theory models and the neuroeconomic approach to the study of social decision-making are combined to study the effect of rewards at the brain level and to "extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment" (Sanfey, 2007). As an example, according to the outcomes of this direction of research, decision making under risk is different from decision making without the risk. ...
Introduction
Point of Equilibrity (PoE) is a narrative game designed and developed with the aim to simulate the COVID-19 pandemic from a government's point of view and offer different perspectives on the complexity of managing a pandemic crisis. The players are called to make important decisions during a health crisis in the simulated environment while considering significant historic and topical events, as well as possible economic, political, and social implications.
Methods
This paper presents the results of a user study with 37 adult participants aiming to examine (1) the effect of PoE gameplay on the players' perspective on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, and (2) the effect of the players' FFM and DMQ personality traits profile on the game experience and the decision-making process. The participants played the game and then were asked to fill in an on-line questionnaire.
Results and discussion
The results suggest that the game design offered an engaging game experience and was effective to promote reflection and perspective taking on different aspects of crisis management, as well as the supporting role of relevant historical information in the decision-making process. The study also reports correlations between specific personality traits, such the DMQ Thoroughness and Principled, the FFM Conscientiousness and Openness to experience with specific aspects of the game experience, such as absorption, perspective taking and the preference for more choices in the gameplay.
... This selection of games provides enough variability to test how learning agents can perform across different contexts, so we avoid problems derived from over-fitting on a specific payoff distribution or related to the possibility of a model to exploit/capitalize on certain features of a game that could not have been predicted beforehand. Moreover, a similar selection of games has been tested in human experiments, proving to be sufficient to classify a reduced set of behavioral phenotypes across games in human players [37,38]. ...
A major challenge in cognitive science and AI has been to understand how intelligent autonomous agents might acquire and predict the behavioral and mental states of other agents in the course of complex social interactions. How does such an agent model the goals, beliefs, and actions of other agents it interacts with? What are the computational principles to model a Theory of Mind (ToM)? Deep learning approaches to address these questions fall short of a better understanding of the problem. In part, this is due to the black-box nature of deep networks, wherein computational mechanisms of ToM are not readily revealed. Here, we consider alternative hypotheses seeking to model how the brain might realize a ToM. In particular, we propose embodied and situated agent models based on distributed adaptive control theory to predict the actions of other agents in five different game-theoretic tasks (Harmony Game, Hawk-Dove, Stag Hunt, Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Battle of the Exes). Our multi-layer control models implement top-down predictions from adaptive to reactive layers of control and bottom-up error feedback from reactive to adaptive layers. We test cooperative and competitive strategies among seven different agent models (cooperative, greedy, tit-for-tat, reinforcement-based, rational, predictive, and internal agents). We show that, compared to pure reinforcement-based strategies, probabilistic learning agents modeled on rational, predictive, and internal phenotypes perform better in game-theoretic metrics across tasks. The outlined autonomous multi-agent models might capture systems-level processes underlying a ToM and suggest architectural principles of ToM from a control-theoretic perspective.
... Decision-making is a crucial and inseparable part of everyone's daily lives (Sanfey, 2007). It is a process that requires cognitive skills and allows people to make choices from a number of available options (Icellioglu & Ozden, 2012;Tomassini et al., 2012). ...
Dark Triad Traits, Adverse Childhood Experience and impulsivity sensation seeking are factors that have significant influence on whether one engages in or avoids various risk behaviours as well as personality throughout life. The present study aimed to investigate negative how Dark Triad Traits, Adverse Childhood Experience and impulsivity sensation influence Risk-taking behaviour personality throughout life. The sample included 222 university students from four universities, 82 males (36.9%) and 140 females (63.1%), and aged between 18 and 51 years. The results showed that adverse childhood experiences, psychopathy, narcissism, impulsivity and sensation-seeking predicted risk-taking. Machiavellianism, on the other hand, did not significantly predict risk taking. Based on results adverse childhood experiences predicted all personality factors and that psychopathy, narcissism, impulsivity and sensationalism indirectly predicted risk taking. The results suggest that early childhood experiences are a significant factor in personality traits and that positive early experiences could lead to minimising risk-taking and reducing levels of impulsivity, sensation-seeking and dark triad traits.
Keywords: Adverse childhood experience, impulsivity, narcissism, psychopath, risk-taking,
... Decision-making is a crucial and inseparable part of everyone's daily lives (Sanfey, 2007). It is a process that requires cognitive skills and allows people to make choices from a number of available options (Icellioglu & Ozden, 2012;Tomassini et al., 2012). ...
... Beyinde bulunan sosyal karar verme mekanizmaları da etkileşimin yoğun olduğu ortamlarda oldukça zengin bir şekilde çalışır. Beyin karar verir ve davranış sergilerken, çoğunlukla karşısındakilerin tutumunu ölçerek genellikle sosyalliğe yönelik davranış ve değerler ortaya koyar (Sanfey, 2007). Bununla beraber beynin sosyal yanına dair yapılan çalışmalarda, beynin sosyal grubun faydasına yönelik davranışlar ürettiği gözlenmiştir. ...
Bu çalışmanın amacı Bertrand Russell’ın eğitim felsefesi görüşleri ile son dönemde giderek önem kazanan nörobilim araştırmalarında ve eğitsel nörobilim alanında ortaya çıkan bulgu ve felsefi görüşleri karşılaştırmaktır. Nörobilim çalışmalarının bulguları ve eğitsel nörobilim tartışmalarına göre öğrenme ve öğrenmenin davranışa dönüşmesini sağlayan en önemli unsurlar biyolojik (fiziksel ve kimyasal), ve sosyal unsurlardır. Bertrand Russell da eğitim hakkındaki görüşlerini bu unsurlara dayandırarak bir eğitim felsefesi geliştirmiştir. Nörobilimsel bulgular öğrenme ve diğer bilişsel faaliyetleri çoklu parametreler üzerinden detaylı şekilde açıklamaktadır. Russell’da özellikle modern toplumların sahip olduğu problemleri bu ayrıntılar ve gündelik dinamikler ile felsefi bir üslüpta tartışmıştır. Yapılan bu karşılaştırmada ortaya çıkan sonuçlara göre; öğrenme ve eylem ilişkisinde, insanın fizyolojik ve duygusal ihtiyaçlarının beraber değerlendirilmesinin önemi, eğitimde özerklik ve serbestinin rolü, cinsel eğitimi, sosyal güç dengeleri ve oyun temaları ön plana çıkan konu başlıkları olmuştur. Ortaya çıkan bu bulgulara göre biyolojik, duygusal ve sosyal unsurların iç içe geçmesi öğrenme ve bilişsel faaliyetler için temel oluşturmaktadır. Bu biyolojik, duygusal ve sosyal unsurların ortaya çıkardığı sosyal ve bireysel ihtiyaçlar da tartışma kapsamında değerlendirilmiştir.
... In our model, the attackers are restricted by their bounded rationality (Simon 1990), i.e., they have inaccurate prior knowledge about the police (the defender)'s inspection strategy but may learn it via certain ways. In addition, we acknowledge the existence of social knowledge sharing among drivers (DUI-drivers and sober drivers); they may share the current locations of checkpoints for some reasons, e.g., social reputation (Sanfey 2007). Thus, both shall be viewed as attackers though having distinct payoffs. ...
Driving under the influence (DUI) is one of the main causes of traffic accidents, often leading to severe life and property losses. Setting up sobriety checkpoints on certain roads is the most commonly used practice to identify DUI-drivers in many countries worldwide. However, setting up checkpoints according to the police's experiences may not be effective for ignoring the strategic interactions between the police and DUI-drivers, particularly when inspecting resources are limited. To remedy this situation, we adapt the classic Stackelberg security game (SSG) to a new SSG-DUI game to describe the strategic interactions in catching DUI-drivers. SSG-DUI features drivers' bounded rationality and social knowledge sharing among them, thus realizing improved real-world fidelity. With SSG-DUI, we propose OPRADI, a systematic approach for advising better strategies in setting up checkpoints. We perform extensive experiments to evaluate it in both simulated environments and real-world contexts, in collaborating with a Chinese city's police bureau. The results reveal its effectiveness in improving police's real-world operations, thus having significant practical potentials.
... i Simulation and modeling: These are techniques that allow ethical dilemmas to be simulated and modeled, providing insights into the likely outcomes of different ethical decisions Crockett (2013). ii Game theory: This is a mathematical framework that can be used to model and analyze decision-making in social situations, including ethical dilemmas Sanfey (2007). iii Data analytics: This involves the use of statistical methods and machine learning algorithms to analyze data and identify patterns or insights related to ethical questions or dilemmas Someh, Davern, Breidbach and Shanks (2019). ...
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more prevalent, ensuring fairness in their design becomes increasingly important. This survey focuses on the subdomains of social media and healthcare, examining the concepts of fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics (FATE) within the context of AI. We explore existing research on FATE in AI, highlighting the benefits and limitations of current solutions, and provide future research directions. We found that statistical and intersectional fairness can support fairness in healthcare on social media platforms, and transparency in AI is essential for accountability. While solutions like simulation, data analytics, and automated systems are widely used, their effectiveness can vary, and keeping up-to-date with the latest research is crucial.
... 内容时在可解释与可信概念-语义表示、 负责任 AI 服务系统构建、 隐私安全保障等方面面对艰巨挑战。 图 3 DIKWP 图谱化 项目需要突破对 DIKWP 服务语义完整性、一致性、精确性、正确性、客观 性的假设对应的确定性的建模与处理依赖，以满足普遍情形下小微企业个体只 拥有部分数据、部分信息、部分知识、部分智慧、部分意图的企业社群服务组 合与交互场景，并最大程度通过资源转换补偿等消减 DIKWP 不确定性。Duan 等 [59] 借助 DIKW 概念体系将知识图谱扩展为相互关联的 DIKWP 图谱体系(图 3)：数据图谱、信息图谱、知识图谱、智慧图谱、意图图谱，来映射不完整、 不一致、不精确的主客观 DIKWP 资源(图 4)，进行 DIKWP 服务识别与转化 的元模型表达 [60] [61] ，并面向物联网、云计算和边缘计算结合场景 [70] [103] 下的隐私 保护 [61] 进行以 DIKWP 转化 [69] [102] 为机制的服务化。服务发现通常采用基于数据 分析的聚类策略 [11] 等。Yu 等 [110] 基于 DIKW 融合建立了可信服务发现系统。Wen 等 [108]借助活动知识图谱设计了跨工作流的服务发现。何克清等 [76] 设计了面向 异构、自治、动态的服务资源的语义互操作系统。Xue 等 [109] 提出基于价值熵模 型的服务演化度量模型。Brown 等 [40] 设计了主客观服务因素融合的政策服务派 送。Chu 等 [47] 结合主客观服务因素构建了服务发现算法。Eboli 等 [64] 面向运输领 域提出了主客观质量因素融合的服务评估方法。Eyles [66] 基于社会统计学方法给 出了主观客观化模型。 Lu 等 [86] 融合主客观方面给出了云服务可信性的评价模式。 Qu 等 [96]将主客观评估结合提高云服务的可审计性。越来越多的主观客观化 [101] 方法和技术被从数字伦理 [105] 、神经科学 [104] 、元认知 [97] 、元科学 [100] 等领域提出。 图 4 不完整、不一致、不精确的主客观资源与服务 DIKWP 图谱化映射 图 5 客观-主观 DIKWP 服务图谱化语义转换与融合 社会信息服务交互网络中多维度、多模态、多尺度乃至介尺度 DIKWP 服务 资源的加速生成与开放域 DIKWP 服务融合与处理机制发展的相对滞后对小微 服务企业利益相关者的认知-处理平衡形成了巨大的建模及处理过载挑战。企业 个体处理能力成长相对目标 DIKWP 内容增长的下降将导致小微服务企业对自 身决策合理性的确定性的信心下降，及对自身决策主观不确定性 [99] 的忧虑增长。 项目认为基于主观客观化 [33] [36] 的 DIKWP 服务图谱化语义融合与交互(图 5)方 案将有助于小微服务企业建模并应对 DIKWP 不确定性挑战(图 6)。 图 6 DIKWP 资源与服务不确定性映射体系示意 在自然科学基金等组织的资助下，经过多年的持续研究，国内已经有许多单 位如北京邮电大学 [28] ，哈尔滨工业大学 [19] ，南京航空航天大学 [1] ，南京理工大学 [20] ，中国科技大学 [16] ，上海交通大学 [6] ，华南理工大学 [24] ，中国科学院软件研究 所 [21] ，中国科学院自动化研究所 [22] ...
... These social preference games typically share some common features: they are closely based on game-theoretic structures and have clear game-theoretic equilibria; they are deliberately as context-free as possible, in the sense of not incorporating elements that resemble particular real-world contexts; and their outcomes consist in monetary payoffs for the players involved. This approach to social behaviors has been hugely influential and has become one of the benchmarks for the study of human interaction in economics, judgment and decision making, and beyond (e.g., Glimcher and Fehr, 2008;Henrich et al., 2001Henrich et al., , 2004Henrich et al., , 2010Lee, 2008;Mazar and Zhong, 2010;Piff et al., 2010Piff et al., , 2015Rand et al., 2012;Rilling and Sanfey, 2011;Sanfey, 2007;Shariff and Norenzayan, 2007;Zhong et al., 2010). ...
There is growing concern about the extent to which economic games played in the laboratory generalize to social behaviors outside the lab. Here, we show that it is possible to make a game much more predictive of field behavior by bringing contextual elements from the field to the lab. We report three experiments where we present the same participants with different versions of the dictator game and with two different field situations. The games are designed to include elements that make them progressively more similar to the field. We find a dramatic increase in lab–field correlations as contextual elements are incorporated, which has wide-ranging implications for experiments on economic decision making.
... Choices in social situations often depend on our preferences for concepts such as cooperation, altruism, reciprocity, inequity aversion, conformity, or fairness (Konovalov et al., 2018;Lee, 2008;Rhoads, Cutler et al., 2021;Rilling and Sanfey, 2011;Sanfey, 2007). These studies have shown that complex human social preferences can be modeled and tested using economic games such as dictator or ultimatum games [ Fig. 1; (Camerer, 2011)]. ...
Controllability, or the influence one has over their surroundings, is crucial for decision-making and mental health. Traditionally, controllability is operationalized in sensorimotor terms as one's ability to exercise their actions to achieve an intended outcome (also termed "agency"). However, recent social neuroscience research suggests that humans also assess if and how they can exert influence over other people (i.e., their actions, outcomes, beliefs) to achieve desired outcomes ("social controllability"). In this review, we will synthesize empirical findings and neurocomputational frameworks related to social controllability. We first introduce the concepts of contextual and perceived controllability and their respective relevance for decision-making. Then, we outline neurocomputational frameworks that can be used to model social controllability, with a focus on behavioral economic paradigms and reinforcement learning approaches. Finally, we discuss the implications of social controllability for computational psychiatry research, using delusion and obsession-compulsion as examples. Taken together, we propose that social controllability could be a key area of investigation in future social neuroscience and computational psychiatry research.
... For example, many people choose to trade stocks through brokers who get commissions from stock trading [71]. Previous studies found a reduction in risk aversion occurs when people are paid for making choices for others [72][73][74], suggesting that brokers may have a more complicated risk perception process than individual investors. Therefore, the stock investment task can be improved by adding a compensation system and integrating the self-others decision model to further explore the difference in risk perception between brokers and individual investors. ...
Due to the limitations of traditional financial analysis and the non-specificity of laboratory based gambling tasks, it is difficult for researchers to isolate the independent contributions of risk perception and initial investment experience on novice investors' behaviors. Thus, it is still necessary for researchers to describe the process by which investment experience affects the investment behavior of novice investors by employing the methods of psychological experiments that can control and eliminate these confounding variables in the laboratory. The current study created a stock investment task based on the balloon analogy risk task to simulate the stock market in the laboratory. Two hundred and twenty Chinese college students were recruited as participants. Chain intermediary model analysis showed that initial investment experience influences a novice investor's behavior through risk perception. In addition, risk perception displayed the characteristics of continuity , in which the initial risk perception would affect later risk perception. These results indicate that investment experience does influence investment behavior. Different early investment experiences have correspondingly significant effects on the novice investors' investment behavior through their risk perception. The results also suggest that novice investors can partly correct the effects of their initial investment experience through continuous feedback from the stock market.
... Priors and inductive biases are built into IRL algorithms and play an important role in narrowing down the space of reward function candidates. These afford a degree of flexibility for encoding relevant ToM heuristics in an algorithm's design, such as normative assumptions [134,179], neurophysiological correlates [21,180,181], or models of human decision-making [182] and habits [183]. More generally, an observer may include their experiences into the prior over time, and develop different structured priors in a hierarchical model, selecting them based on the agent's perceived "type" [184,185]. ...
Theory of mind (ToM) is the psychological construct by which we model another’s internal mental states. Through ToM, we adjust our own behaviour to best suit a social context, and therefore it is essential to our everyday interactions with others. In adopting an algorithmic (rather than a psychological or neurological) approach to ToM, we gain insights into cognition that will aid us in building more accurate models for the cognitive and behavioural sciences, as well as enable artificial agents to be more proficient in social interactions as they become more embedded in our everyday lives. Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is a class of machine learning methods by which to infer the preferences (rewards as a function of state) of a decision maker from its behaviour (trajectories in a Markov decision process). IRL can provide a computational approach for ToM, as recently outlined by Jara-Ettinger, but this will require a better understanding of the relationship between ToM concepts and existing IRL methods at the algorthmic level. Here, we provide a review of prominent IRL algorithms and their formal descriptions, and discuss the applicability of IRL concepts as the algorithmic basis of a ToM in AI.
... Game theory, developed to study strategic interactions in rational decision-makers (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944), offers a powerful framework to investigate dyadic social interactions (Rilling and Sanfey, 2011;Sanfey, 2007;Tremblay et al., 2017) and the evolution of coordination (Brosnan, 2018;Santos and Rosati, 2015;Smith, 1979). In 2×2 games (Rapoport et al., 1976;Rapoport, 1973) each of two agents chooses one of two actions and the outcome depends on the combination of their choices. ...
Many real-world decisions in social contexts are made while observing a partner's actions. To study dynamic interactions during such decisions, we developed a setup where two agents seated face-to-face engage in game-theoretical tasks on a shared transparent touchscreen display ('transparent games'). We compared human and macaque pairs in a transparent version of the coordination game 'Bach-or-Stravinsky', which entails a conflict about which of two individually-preferred opposing options to choose to achieve coordination. Most human pairs developed coordinated behavior and adopted dynamic turn-taking to equalize the payoffs. All macaque pairs converged on simpler, static coordination. Remarkably, two animals learned to coordinate dynamically after training with a human confederate. This pair selected the faster agent's preferred option, exhibiting turn-taking behavior that was captured by modeling the visibility of the partner's action before one's own movement. Such competitive turn-taking was unlike the prosocial turn-taking in humans, who equally often initiated switches to and from their preferred option. Thus, the dynamic coordination is not restricted to humans, but can occur on the background of different social attitudes and cognitive capacities in rhesus monkeys. Overall, our results illustrate how action visibility promotes emergence and maintenance of coordination when agents can observe and time their mutual actions.
... A good body of evidence revealed that the administration of intranasal oxytocin (IN-OXT) has beneficial properties on empathy and prosocial behaviors both in human (MacDonald and MacDonald, 2010;Geng et al., 2018;Leng and Leng, 2021) and nonhuman animals (Neumann et al., 2013;Huang et al., 2014;Chang et al., 2015;Pisansky et al., 2017;Zoratto et al., 2018). Specifically, studies on healthy human participants performing behavioral tasks readapted from the economic field (Sanfey, 2007) revealed that IN-OXT promotes and likely enhances relevant prosocial manifestations such as trust (Kosfeld et al., 2005), generosity (Domes et al., 2007), cooperation (De Dreu, 2012), altruism (Marsh et al., 2015), and social bonding (Lim and Young, 2006). However, subsequent efforts for replicating these initial results have failed, forcing researchers to downsize or review the claims around IN-OXT and its social properties (Nave et al., 2015;Declerck et al., 2020;Macchia et al., 2022). ...
Social decision-making requires the ability to balance both the interests of the self and the interests of others to survive in social environments. Empathy is essential to the regulation of this type of interaction, and it often sustains relevant prosocial behaviors such as altruism and helping behavior. In the last decade, our capacity to assess affective and empathy-like behaviors in rodents has expanded our understanding of the neurobiological substrates that underly social decision-making processes such as prosocial behaviors. Within this context, oxytocinergic transmission is profoundly implicated in modulating some of the major components of social decision-making. Thus, this review will present evidence of the association between oxytocin and empathy-like and prosocial behaviors in nonhuman animals. Then, we will dissect the involvement of oxytocinergic transmission—across different brain regions and pathways—in some of the key elements of social decision-making such as emotional discrimination, social recognition, emotional contagion, social dominance, and social memory. Evidence of the modulatory role of oxytocin on social decision-making has raised considerable interest in its clinical relevance, therefore we will also discuss the controversial findings on intranasal oxytocin administration.
... Social decision-making is a social neuroscience topic that aims to comprehend the neural mechanisms of choosing between alternatives in a social context (Sanfey, 2007). tDCS and TMS have been adopted in social decision-making to investigate brain areas' causal role (mainly prefrontal) during cooperation or competition situations simulated through simple games derived from behavioral economics. ...
Transcranial brain stimulation (TBS) is a term that denotes different noninvasive techniques which aim to modulate brain cortical activity through an external source, usually an electric or magnetic one. Currently, there are several techniques categorized as TBS. However, two are more used for scientific research, the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which stimulate brain areas with a high-intensity magnetic field or a weak electric current on the scalp, respectively. They represent an enormous contribution to behavioral, cognitive, and social neuroscience since they reveal how delimited brain cortical areas contribute to some behavior or cognition. They have also been proposed as a feasible tool in the clinical setting since they can modulate abnormal cognition or behavior due to brain activity modulation. This chapter will present the standard methods of transcranial stimulation, their contributions to social and affective neuroscience through a few main topics, and the studies that adopted those techniques, also summing their findings.
Understanding the impact of stress on cognitive processes, particularly decision-making, is crucial as it underpins behaviors essential for survival. However, research in this domain has yielded disparate results, with inconsistencies evident across stress-induction paradigms and drug administration protocols designed to investigate specific stress pathways or neuromodulators. Building upon empirical studies, this research identifies a multifaceted matrix of variables contributing to the divergent findings. This matrix encompasses factors such as the temporal proximity between stressors and decision tasks, the nature of stressors and decision contexts, individual characteristics including psychobiological profiles and affective states at the time of decision-making and even cultural influences. In response to these complexities, we propose a comprehensive model that integrates these relevant factors and their intricate interplay to elucidate the mechanisms governing decision-making during stressful events. By synthesizing these insights, our model not only refines existing paradigms but also provides a framework for future study designs, offering avenues for theoretical advancements and translational developments in the field of stress's impact on cognitive functions. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the nuanced relationship between stress and decision-making, ultimately advancing our knowledge of cognitive processes under challenging conditions.
Excessively criticizing a perceived unfair decision is considered to be common behavior among people seeking to restore fairness. However, the effectiveness of this strategy remains unclear. Using an ecological environment where excessive criticism is rampant—Major League Baseball—we assess the impact of verbal aggression on subsequent home-plate umpire decision making during the 2010 to 2019 seasons ( N = 153,255 pitches). Results suggest a two-sided benefit of resorting to verbal abuse. After being excessively criticized, home-plate umpires ( N = 110 adults, employed in the United States) were less likely to call strikes to batters from the complaining team and more prone to call strikes to batters on the opposing team. A series of additional analyses lead us to reject an alternative hypothesis, namely that umpires, after ejecting the aggressor, seek to compensate for the negative consequences brought on by the loss of a teammate. Rather, our findings support the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, verbal aggression may offer an advantage to complainants.
In our daily lives, we are continually involved in decision‐making situations, many of which take place in the context of social interaction. Despite the ubiquity of such situations, there remains a gap in our understanding of how decision‐making unfolds in social contexts, and how communicative signals, such as social cues and feedback, impact the choices we make. Interestingly, there is a new social context to which humans are recently increasingly more frequently exposed—social interaction with not only other humans but also artificial agents, such as robots or avatars. Given these new technological developments, it is of great interest to address the question of whether—and in what way—social signals exhibited by non‐human agents influence decision‐making. The present study aimed to examine whether robot non‐verbal communicative behavior has an effect on human decision‐making. To this end, we implemented a two‐alternative‐choice task where participants were to guess which of two presented cups was covering a ball. This game was an adaptation of a “Shell Game.” A robot avatar acted as a game partner producing social cues and feedback. We manipulated robot's cues (pointing toward one of the cups) before the participant's decision and the robot's feedback (“thumb up” or no feedback) after the decision. We found that participants were slower (compared to other conditions) when cues were mostly invalid and the robot reacted positively to wins. We argue that this was due to the incongruence of the signals (cue vs. feedback), and thus violation of expectations. In sum, our findings show that incongruence in pre‐ and post‐decision social signals from a robot significantly influences task performance, highlighting the importance of understanding expectations toward social robots for effective human–robot interactions.
Mutual prediction is crucial for understanding the mediation of bodily actions in social interactions. Despite this importance, limited studies have investigated neurobehavioral patterns under the mutual prediction hypothesis in natural competitive scenarios. To address this gap, our study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning to examine the dynamics of real-time rock-paper-scissors games using a computerized paradigm with 54 participants. Firstly, our results revealed activations in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and bilateral frontopolar cortex, each displaying distinct temporal profiles indicative of diverse cognitive processes during the task. Subsequently, a task-related increase in inter-brain synchrony was explicitly identified in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which supported the mutual prediction hypothesis across the two brains. Moreover, our investigation uncovered a close association between the coherence value in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the dynamic predictive performances of dyads using inter-subject representational similarity analysis. Finally, heightened inter-brain synchrony values were observed in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex before a draw compared to a no-draw scenario in the second block, suggesting that cross-brain signal patterns could be ref lected in behavioral responses during competition. In summary, these findings provided initial support for expanding the understanding of cognitive processes underpinning natural competitive engagements.
Safety is the key to airline operations. The premise for ensuring safety is valid classification and scientific assessment of hazardous sources. The airlines, however, are deficient in an overall mastery and effective analysis of the hazardous sources currently. Here, we propose a model for a safety risk assessment in airline operations based on constant-sum games, with a comprehensive analysis of hazardous sources identified by airlines. The subjective and objective weights of the hazardous source indicators are balanced depending on the optimal coefficients, which are determined by deriving the countermeasure model through the constant-sum game theory. The comparative analysis of safety risks and weaknesses in management for airlines or secondary departments is then conducted. Meanwhile, a long-term reward mechanism is introduced into the model to eliminate the negative effect of a sudden increase in safety risk indices caused by the newly added hazardous sources. This method provides airlines with an accurate assessment of the safety status and an estimation of safety development which trends to make targeted decisions and realize prevention beforehand.
Нейронаука активно развивается и проникает в области социальных научных исследований. По сравнению с другими областями социальных наук нейроисследования в меньшей степени затронули международные отношения и мировую политику, поскольку проведение эксперимента, являющегося основным методом нейронауки, здесь ограничено. Исследовательский вопрос статьи заключается в следующем: какие возможности открываются для изучения мировой политики и, в частности, для исследований международных переговоров при использовании нейронауки? Авторы выделяют четыре направления нейроисследований в области международных отношений и мировой политики: 1) роль когнитивных и эмоциональных процессов, проблема лидерства, сотрудничества и конфликта в международных отношениях и мировой политике при принятии решений и взаимодействии; 2) различия в протекании нейропроцессов у представителей разных культур; 3) возможность переноса данных, полученных нейробиологией, на международные отношения и мировую политику; 4) ограничения и открывающиеся преимущества применения нейронауки в международных исследованиях.
In this research we have developed experimental designs of the ultimatum game with supervised agents. This agents have unbiased and biased thinking depending on the case. We used Reinforcement Learning and Bucket Brigade to program the artficial agentes. We used simulations and behavior comparison to answer the following questions: Does artificial intelligence reach a perfect subgame equilibrium in the ultimatum game experiment? How would Artificial Intelligence behave in the Ultimatum Game experiment if biased thinking is included in it? This exploratory analysis showed one important result: artificial inteligence by itself doesn´t reach a perfect subgame equilibrium. Whereas, the experimental designs with biased thinking agents quickly converge to an equilibrium. Finally, we demonstrated that the agents with envy bias behaves the same as the ones with altruistic bias.
https://theconversation.com/why-most-of-us-lean-to-the-right-when-we-kiss-81347
The spaceflight environment exposes crew members to a host of environmental and psychological stressors that can negatively affect cognitive performance. Over the past half century of human spaceflight, scientific focus has shifted from the acute neurophysiological adaptation to microgravity exposure toward long-term cognitive functioning of astronauts in response to the multi-stress environment of the upcoming exploration class missions. In this chapter, we will review the findings of spaceflight-related changes in cognition. We discuss the methods used to detect such changes and the ongoing efforts to identify underlying brain regions in both space and analog environments. We also examine the implications of cognitive impairment and challenges for future exploration missions, and what countermeasures could be implemented to maintain optimal cognitive performance in space.
Decisions, including social decisions, are ultimately expressed through actions. However, very little is known about the kinematics of social decisions, and whether movements might reveal important aspects of social decision-making. We addressed this question by developing a motor version of a widely used behavioral economic game - the Ultimatum Game - and using a multivariate kinematic decoding approach to map parameters of social decisions to the single-trial kinematics of individual responders. Using this approach, we demonstrated that movement contains predictive information about both the fairness of a proposed offer and the choice to either accept or reject that offer. This information is expressed in personalized kinematic patterns that are consistent within a given responder, but that vary from one responder to another. These results provide insights on the relationship between decision-making and sensorimotor control, as they suggest that hand kinematics can reveal hidden parameters of complex, social interactive, choice.
This article presents an analysis of 35 years of published experiments testing decision making in prisoners' dilemmas. The objective is to begin to reconnect the theory and the evidence of rational behavior by accumulating the experience of the laboratory and examining this record for those factors that consistently altered subjects' choices. It is shown that a model of pure self-interest is usually inconsistent with the results of experimental decision making, predicting either the wrong sign, as in the case of monetary stakes, or ignoring influential variables, such as the content of instructions. This incongruity is widest with respect to the role of language in encouraging cooperation.
Mentalising is assumed to be involved in decision-making that is necessary to social interaction. We investigated the relationship between mentalising and three types of strategic games – Prisoners’ Dilemma, Dictator and Ultimatum – in children with and without autistic spectrum disorders. Overall, the results revealed less dramatic differences than expected among the normally developing age groups and the children with autism, suggesting that in these laboratory tasks, mentalising skills are not always necessary. There were, nonetheless, some important findings. Young children were more cautious about initiating cooperation than their older peers and, in bargaining situations, they were less generous in their opening unilateral grants and over-solicitous of an empowered receiver. Participants with autism did have a harder time shifting strategy between versions of the Prisoners’ Dilemma, and they were much more likely to accept low initial offers in the Ultimatum game and to refuse fair proposals. In addition, participants’ measured mentalising abilities explain intentional and strategic behaviour within the prisoners’ dilemma and the avoidance of unsuccessful ultimatum proposals.
Cooperation between individuals requires the ability to infer each other's mental states to form shared expectations over mutual gains and make cooperative choices that realize these gains. From evidence that the ability for mental state attribution involves the use of prefrontal cortex, we hypothesize that this area is involved in integrating theory-of-mind processing with cooperative actions. We report data from a functional MRI experiment designed to test this hypothesis. Subjects in a scanner played standard two-person "trust and reciprocity" games with both human and computer counterparts for cash rewards. Behavioral data shows that seven subjects consistently attempted cooperation with their human counterpart. Within this group prefrontal regions are more active when subjects are playing a human than when they are playing a computer following a fixed (and known) probabilistic strategy. Within the group of five noncooperators, there are no significant differences in prefrontal activation between computer and human conditions.
There is strong evidence that people exploit their bargaining power in competitive markets but not in bilateral bargaining
situations. There is also strong evidence that people exploit free-riding opportunities in voluntary cooperation games. Yet,
when they are given the opportunity to punish free riders, stable cooperation is maintained, although punishment is costly
for those who punish. This paper asks whether there is a simple common principle that can explain this puzzling evidence. We show that if some people care about equity the puzzles can be resolved. It turns
out that the economic environment determines whether the fair types or the selfish types dominate equilibrium behavior.
Central feedback of peripheral states of arousal influences motivational behavior and decision making. The sympathetic skin conductance response (SCR) is one index of autonomic arousal. The precise functional neuroanatomy underlying generation and representation of SCR during motivational behavior is undetermined, although it is impaired by discrete brain lesions to ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parietal lobe. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity associated with spontaneous fluctuations in amplitude of SCR, and activity corresponding to generation and afferent representation of discrete SCR events. Regions that covaried with increased SCR included right orbitofrontal cortex, right anterior insula, left lingual gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, and left cerebellum. At a less stringent level of significance, predicted areas in bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and right inferior parietal lobule covaried with SCR. Generation of discrete SCR events was associated with significant activity in left medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral extrastriate visual cortices, and cerebellum. Activity in right medial prefrontal cortex related to afferent representation of SCR events. Activity in bilateral medial prefrontal lobe, right orbitofrontal cortex, and bilateral extrastriate visual cortices was common to both generation and afferent representation of discrete SCR events identified in a conjunction analysis. Our results suggest that areas implicated in emotion and attention are differentially involved in generation and representation of peripheral SCR responses. We propose that this functional arrangement enables integration of adaptive bodily responses with ongoing emotional and attentional states of the organism.
In the Ultimatum Game, two players are offered a chance to win a certain sum of money. All they must do is divide it. The proposer suggests how to split the sum. The responder can accept or reject the deal. If the deal is rejected, neither player gets anything. The rational solution, suggested by game theory, is for the proposer to offer the smallest possible share and for the responder to accept it. If humans play the game, however, the most frequent outcome is a fair share. In this paper, we develop an evolutionary approach to the Ultimatum Game. We show that fairness will evolve if the proposer can obtain some information on what deals the responder has accepted in the past. Hence, the evolution of fairness, similarly to the evolution of cooperation, is linked to reputation.
Our ability to explain and predict other people's behaviour by attributing to them independent mental states, such as beliefs and desires, is known as having a 'theory of mind'. Interest in this very human ability has engendered a growing body of evidence concerning its evolution and development and the biological basis of the mechanisms underpinning it. Functional imaging has played a key role in seeking to isolate brain regions specific to this ability. Three areas are consistently activated in association with theory of mind. These are the anterior paracingulate cortex, the superior temporal sulci and the temporal poles bilaterally. This review discusses the functional significance of each of these areas within a social cognitive network.
The mentalizing (theory of mind) system of the brain is probably in operation from ca. 18 months of age, allowing implicit attribution of intentions and other mental states. Between the ages of 4 and 6 years explicit mentalizing becomes possible, and from this age children are able to explain the misleading reasons that have given rise to a false belief. Neuroimaging studies of mentalizing have so far only been carried out in adults. They reveal a system with three components consistently activated during both implicit and explicit mentalizing tasks: medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), temporal poles and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). The functions of these components can be elucidated, to some extent, from their role in other tasks used in neuroimaging studies. Thus, the MPFC region is probably the basis of the decoupling mechanism that distinguishes mental state representations from physical state representations; the STS region is probably the basis of the detection of agency, and the temporal poles might be involved in access to social knowledge in the form of scripts. The activation of these components in concert appears to be critical to mentalizing.
Using a multiround version of an economic exchange (trust game), we report that reciprocity expressed by one player strongly predicts future trust expressed by their partner-a behavioral finding mirrored by neural responses in the dorsal striatum. Here, analyses within and between brains revealed two signals-one encoded by response magnitude, and the other by response timing. Response magnitude correlated with the "intention to trust" on the next play of the game, and the peak of these "intention to trust" responses shifted its time of occurrence by 14 seconds as player reputations developed. This temporal transfer resembles a similar shift of reward prediction errors common to reinforcement learning models, but in the context of a social exchange. These data extend previous model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging studies into the social domain and broaden our view of the spectrum of functions implemented by the dorsal striatum.
To make adaptive decisions, animals must evaluate the costs and benefits of available options. The nascent field of neuroeconomics has set itself the ambitious goal of understanding the brain mechanisms that are responsible for these evaluative processes. A series of recent neurophysiological studies in monkeys has begun to address this challenge using novel methods to manipulate and measure an animal's internal valuation of competing alternatives. By emphasizing the behavioural mechanisms and neural signals that mediate decision making under conditions of uncertainty, these studies might lay the foundation for an emerging neurobiology of choice behaviour.
Anticipated reward magnitude and probability comprise dual components of expected value (EV), a cornerstone of economic and psychological theory. However, the neural mechanisms that compute EV have not been characterized. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined neural activation as subjects anticipated monetary gains and losses that varied in magnitude and probability. Group analyses indicated that, although the subcortical nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activated proportional to anticipated gain magnitude, the cortical mesial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) additionally activated according to anticipated gain probability. Individual difference analyses indicated that, although NAcc activation correlated with self-reported positive arousal, MPFC activation correlated with probability estimates. These findings suggest that mesolimbic brain regions support the computation of EV in an ascending and distributed manner: whereas subcortical regions represent an affective component, cortical regions also represent a probabilistic component, and, furthermore, may integrate the two.
Trust pervades human societies. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success. Little is known, however, about the biological basis of trust among humans. Here we show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. We also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. On the contrary, oxytocin specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of prosocial approach behaviour.
Technical and conceptual advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging now allow visualization of real-time changes in oxygenation of deep subcortical regions, leading to rapid advances in scientific characterization of the neural substrates that underlie reward prediction in humans.
Neuroimaging research over the past year has focused on determining the necessary neural substrates for reward prediction.
While the orbitofrontal cortex has long been implicated in modality-specific reward representation, the ventral striatum (particularly the nucleus accumbens) may play a role in modality-independent representations of predicted reward. On the other hand, the mesial prefrontal cortex appears to play a role in representing reward prediction error and the dorsal caudate in linking reward to behavior. Theoretically, future studies will need to establish the specificity of these responses to reward versus punishment and anticipation versus outcome. Clinically, current findings suggest that patients can predict reward without a prefrontal cortex, but should experience difficulty correcting their behavior when reward predictions are violated.
The neural processes underlying empathy are a subject of intense interest within the social neurosciences. However, very little is known about how brain empathic responses are modulated by the affective link between individuals. We show here that empathic responses are modulated by learned preferences, a result consistent with economic models of social preferences. We engaged male and female volunteers in an economic game, in which two confederates played fairly or unfairly, and then measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while these same volunteers observed the confederates receiving pain. Both sexes exhibited empathy-related activation in pain-related brain areas (fronto-insular and anterior cingulate cortices) towards fair players. However, these empathy-related responses were significantly reduced in males when observing an unfair person receiving pain. This effect was accompanied by increased activation in reward-related areas, correlated with an expressed desire for revenge. We conclude that in men (at least) empathic responses are shaped by valuation of other people's social behaviour, such that they empathize with fair opponents while favouring the physical punishment of unfair opponents, a finding that echoes recent evidence for altruistic punishment.
The emerging field of neuroeconomics has provided evidence that emotional as well as cognitive processes may contribute to economic decision-making. Indeed, activation of the anterior insula, a brain area involved in emotional processing, has been shown to predict decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. However, as the insula has also been implicated in other brain functions, converging evidence on the role of emotion in the Ultimatum Game is needed. In the present study, 30 healthy undergraduate students played the Ultimatum Game while their skin conductance responses were measured as an autonomic index of affective state. The results revealed that skin conductance activity was higher for unfair offers and was associated with the rejection of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game. Interestingly, this pattern was only observed for offers proposed by human conspecifics, but not for offers generated by computers. This provides direct support for economic models that acknowledge the role of emotional brain systems in everyday decision-making.
Economic choice is the behaviour observed when individuals select one among many available options. There is no intrinsically 'correct' answer: economic choice depends on subjective preferences. This behaviour is traditionally the object of economic analysis and is also of primary interest in psychology. However, the underlying mental processes and neuronal mechanisms are not well understood. Theories of human and animal choice have a cornerstone in the concept of 'value'. Consider, for example, a monkey offered one raisin versus one piece of apple: behavioural evidence suggests that the animal chooses by assigning values to the two options. But where and how values are represented in the brain is unclear. Here we show that, during economic choice, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) encode the value of offered and chosen goods. Notably, OFC neurons encode value independently of visuospatial factors and motor responses. If a monkey chooses between A and B, neurons in the OFC encode the value of the two goods independently of whether A is presented on the right and B on the left, or vice versa. This trait distinguishes the OFC from other brain areas in which value modulates activity related to sensory or motor processes. Our results have broad implications for possible psychological models, suggesting that economic choice is essentially choice between goods rather than choice between actions. In this framework, neurons in the OFC seem to be a good candidate network for value assignment underlying economic choice.
Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values. They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness, which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors, even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocal fairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, where players often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers. Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known about how the human brain limits the impact of selfish motives and implements fair behavior. Here we show that disruption of the right, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation substantially reduces subjects' willingness to reject their partners' intentionally unfair offers, which suggests that subjects are less able to resist the economic temptation to accept these offers. Importantly, however, subjects still judge such offers as very unfair, which indicates that the right DLPFC plays a key role in the implementation of fairness-related behaviors.
Humans often sacrifice material benefits to endorse or to oppose societal causes based on moral beliefs. Charitable donation behavior, which has been the target of recent experimental economics studies, is an outstanding contemporary manifestation of this ability. Yet the neural bases of this unique aspect of human altruism, which extends beyond interpersonal interactions, remain obscure. In this article, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants anonymously donated to or opposed real charitable organizations related to major societal causes. We show that the mesolimbic reward system is engaged by donations in the same way as when monetary rewards are obtained. Furthermore, medial orbitofrontal-subgenual and lateral orbitofrontal areas, which also play key roles in more primitive mechanisms of social attachment and aversion, specifically mediate decisions to donate or to oppose societal causes. Remarkably, more anterior sectors of the prefrontal cortex are distinctively recruited when altruistic choices prevail over selfish material interests.
Despite evidence pointing to a ubiquitous tendency of human minds to wander, little is known about the neural operations that
support this core component of human cognition. Using both thought sampling and brain imaging, the current investigation demonstrated
that mind-wandering is associated with activity in a default network of cortical regions that are active when the brain is
“at rest.” In addition, individuals' reports of the tendency of their minds to wander were correlated with activity in this
network.
Emotion regulation is often critical for adaptive decision making. Here, we investigate whether emotion regulation defects following focal prefrontal brain damage are associated with exceptionally irrational economic decision making in situations of unfair treatment. In the Ultimatum Game, two players are given one opportunity to split a sum of money. One player (the proposer) offers a portion of the money to the second player (the responder) and keeps the rest. The responder can either accept the offer (in which case both players split the money as proposed) or reject the offer (in which case both players get nothing). Relatively low Ultimatum offers are often rejected, and this "irrational" behavior has been attributed to an emotional reaction to unfair treatment. Using the lesion method, we tested the hypothesis that damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), an area critical for the modulation of emotional reactions, would result in exaggerated irrational economic decisions. Subjects acted as the responder to 22 different proposers who offered various splits of 10 dollars. Offers ranged from fair (give 5 dollars, keep 5 dollars) to extremely unfair (give 1 dollar, keep 9 dollars). The rejection rate of the VMPC group was higher than the rejection rates of the comparison groups for each of the most unfair offers (7 dollars/3 dollars, 8 dollars/2 dollars, 9 dollars/1 dollars). These results suggest that emotion regulation processes subserved by VMPC are a critical component of normal economic decision making.
Civil societies function because people pay taxes and make charitable contributions to provide public goods. One possible
motive for charitable contributions, called “pure altruism,” is satisfied by increases in the public good no matter the source
or intent. Another possible motive, “warm glow,” is only fulfilled by an individual's own voluntary donations. Consistent
with pure altruism, we find that even mandatory, tax-like transfers to a charity elicit neural activity in areas linked to
reward processing. Moreover, neural responses to the charity's financial gains predict voluntary giving. However, consistent
with warm glow, neural activity further increases when people make transfers voluntarily. Both pure altruism and warm-glow
motives appear to determine the hedonic consequences of financial transfers to the public good.
Sixteen subjects' brain activity were scanned using fMRI as they made choices, expressed beliefs, and expressed iterated 2nd-order beliefs (what they think others believe they will do) in eight games. Cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas (active in “theory of mind” and social reasoning) are differentially activated in making choices versus expressing beliefs. Forming self-referential 2nd-order beliefs about what others think you will do seems to be a mixture of processes used to make choices and form beliefs. In equilibrium, there is little difference in neural activity across choice and belief tasks; there is a purely neural definition of equilibrium as a “state of mind.” “Strategic IQ,” actual earnings from choices and accurate beliefs, is negatively correlated with activity in the insula, suggesting poor strategic thinkers are too self-focused, and is positively correlated with ventral striatal activity (suggesting that high IQ subjects are spending more mental energy predicting rewards).
Many experimental studies indicate that people are motivated by reciprocity. Rabin [Amer. Econ. Rev. 83 (1993) 1281] develops techniques for incorporating such concerns into game theory and economics. His theory is developed for normal form games, and he abstracts from information about the sequential structure of a strategic situation. We develop a theory of reciprocity for extensive games in which the sequential structure of a strategic situation is made explicit, and propose a new solution concept—sequential reciprocity equilibrium—for which we prove an equilibrium existence result. The model is applied in several examples, and it is shown that it captures very well the intuitive meaning of reciprocity as well as certain qualitative features of experimental evidence.
Modern economic theory ignores the influence of emotions on decision-making. Emerging neuroscience evidence suggests that sound and rational decision making, in fact, depends on prior accurate emotional processing. The somatic marker hypothesis provides a systems-level neuroanatomical and cognitive framework for decision-making and its influence by emotion. The key idea of this hypothesis is that decision-making is a process that is influenced by marker signals that arise in bioregulatory processes, including those that express themselves in emotions and feelings. This influence can occur at multiple levels of operation, some of which occur consciously, and some of which occur non-consciously. Here we review studies that confirm various predictions from the hypothesis, and propose a neural model for economic decision, in which emotions are a major factor in the interaction between environmental conditions and human decision processes, with these emotional systems providing valuable implicit or explicit knowledge for making fast and advantageous decisions.
We designed an experiment to study trust and reciprocity in an investment setting. This design controls for alternative explanations of behavior including repeat game reputation effects, contractual precommitments, and punishment threats. Observed decisions suggest that reciprocity exists as a basic element of human behavior and that this is accounted for in the trust extended to an anonymous counterpart. A second treatment, social history, identifies conditions which strengthen the relationship between trust and reciprocity.
One may define a concept of an n-person game in which each player has a finite set of pure strategies and in which a definite set of payments to the n players corresponds to each n-tuple of pure strategies, one strategy being taken for each player. For mixed strategies, which are probability distributions over the pure strategies, the pay-off functions are the expectations of the players, thus becoming polylinear forms …
Despite substantial advances, the question of how we make decisions and judgments continues to pose important challenges for scientific research. Historically, different disciplines have approached this problem using different techniques and assumptions, with few unifying efforts made. However, the field of neuroeconomics has recently emerged as an inter-disciplinary effort to bridge this gap. Research in neuroscience and psychology has begun to investigate neural bases of decision predictability and value, central parameters in the economic theory of expected utility. Economics, in turn, is being increasingly influenced by a multiple-systems approach to decision-making, a perspective strongly rooted in psychology and neuroscience. The integration of these disparate theoretical approaches and methodologies offers exciting potential for the construction of more accurate models of decision-making.
Mesencephalic dopamine neurons are believed to facilitate reward-dependent learning by computing errors in reward predictions. We used fMRI to test whether this system was activated as expected in response to errors in predictions about whether a social partner would reciprocate an act of altruism. Nineteen subjects received fMRI scans as they played a series of single-shot Prisoner's Dilemma games with partners who were outside the scanner. In both ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum, reciprocated and unreciprocated cooperation were associated with positive and negative BOLD responses, respectively. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that mesencephalic dopamine projection sites carry information about errors in reward prediction that allow us to learn who can and cannot be trusted to reciprocate favors.
People deviate from the predictions of game theory in two systematic ways. They are not purely self-interested (they care about fairness and try to cooperate with others), and they do not always consider what other players will do before making choices. However, with experience, these deviations sometimes disappear. People learn when they can afford to be unfair and what others will do; their behavior often converges to a game-theoretic equilibrium. A behavioral game theory that explains the initial deviations (and their disappearance) could be useful, especially if the learning process is modeled carefully and better data are gathered.
For over 60 years, ideas about emotion in neuroscience and psychology have been dominated by a debate on whether emotion can be encompassed within a single, unifying model. In neuroscience, this approach is epitomized by the limbic system theory and, in psychology, by dimensional models of emotion. Comparative research has gradually eroded the limbic model, and some scientists have proposed that certain individual emotions are represented separately in the brain. Evidence from humans consistent with this approach has recently been obtained by studies indicating that signals of fear and disgust are processed by distinct neural substrates. We review this research and its implications for theories of emotion.
Previous functional imaging studies have demonstrated a number of discrete brain structures that increase activity with noxious stimulation. Of the commonly identified central structures, only the anterior cingulate cortex shows a consistent response during the experience of pain. The insula and thalamus demonstrate reasonable consistency while all other regions, including the lentiform nucleus, somatosensory cortex and prefrontal cortex, are active in no more than half the current studies. The reason for such discrepancy is likely to be due in part to methodological variability and in part to individual variability. One aspect of the methodology which is likely to contribute is the stimulus intensity. Studies vary considerably regarding the intensity of the noxious and non-noxious stimuli delivered. This is likely to produce varying activation of central structures coding for the intensity, affective and cognitive components of pain. Using twelve healthy volunteers and positron emission tomography (PET), the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) responses to four intensities of stimulation were recorded. The stimulation was delivered by a CO2 laser and was described subjectively as either warm (not painful), pain threshold just painful), mildly painful or moderately painful. The following group subtractions were made to examine the changing cerebral responses as the stimulus intensity increased: (1) just painful - warm; (2) mild pain - warm; and (3) moderate pain - warm. In addition, rCBF changes were correlated with the subjective stimulus ratings. The results for comparison '1' indicated activity in the contralateral prefrontal (area 10/46/44), bilateral inferior parietal (area 40) and ipsilateral premotor cortices (area 6), possibly reflecting initial orientation and plans for movement. The latter comparisons and correlation analysis indicated a wide range of active regions including bilateral prefrontal, inferior parietal and premotor cortices and thalamic responses, contralateral hippocampus, insula and primary somatosensory cortex and ipsilateral perigenual cingulate cortex (area 24) and medial frontal cortex (area 32). Decreased rCBF was observed in the amygdala region. These responses were interpreted with respect to their contribution to the multidimensional aspects of pain including fear avoidance, affect, sensation and motivation or motor initiation. It is suggested that future studies examine the precise roles of each particular region during the central processing of pain.
Cooperation based on reciprocal altruism has evolved in only a small number of species, yet it constitutes the core behavioral principle of human social life. The iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game has been used to model this form of cooperation. We used fMRI to scan 36 women as they played an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game with another woman to investigate the neurobiological basis of cooperative social behavior. Mutual cooperation was associated with consistent activation in brain areas that have been linked with reward processing: nucleus accumbens, the caudate nucleus, ventromedial frontal/orbitofrontal cortex, and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. We propose that activation of this neural network positively reinforces reciprocal altruism, thereby motivating subjects to resist the temptation to selfishly accept but not reciprocate favors.
Recent neurophysiological studies reveal that neurons in certain brain structures carry specific signals about past and future rewards. Dopamine neurons display a short-latency, phasic reward signal indicating the difference between actual and predicted rewards. The signal is useful for enhancing neuronal processing and learning behavioral reactions. It is distinctly different from dopamine's tonic enabling of numerous behavioral processes. Neurons in the striatum, frontal cortex, and amygdala also process reward information but provide more differentiated information for identifying and anticipating rewards and organizing goal-directed behavior. The different reward signals have complementary functions, and the optimal use of rewards in voluntary behavior would benefit from interactions between the signals. Addictive psychostimulant drugs may exert their action by amplifying the dopamine reward signal.
In behavioral science, it is well known that humans and nonhuman animals are highly sensitive to differences in reward magnitude when choosing an outcome from a set of alternatives. We know that a realm of behavioral reactions is altered when animals begin to expect different levels of reward outcome. Our present aim was to investigate how the expectation for different magnitudes of reward influences behavior-related neurophysiology in the anterior striatum. In a spatial delayed response task, different instruction pictures are presented to the monkey. Each image represents a different magnitude of juice. By reaching to the spatial location where an instruction picture was presented, animals could receive the particular liquid amount designated by the stimulus. Reliable preferences in reward choice trials and differences in anticipatory licks, performance errors, and reaction times indicated that animals differentially expected the various reward amounts predicted by the instruction cues. A total of 374 of 2,000 neurons in the anterior parts of the caudate nucleus, putamen, and ventral striatum showed five forms of task-related activation during the preparation or execution of movement and activations preceding or following the liquid drop delivery. Approximately one-half of these striatal neurons showed differing response levels dependent on the magnitude of liquid to be received. Results of a linear regression analysis showed that reward magnitude and single cell discharge rate were related in a subset of neurons by a monotonic positive or negative relationship. Overall, these data support the idea that the striatum utilizes expectancies that contain precise information concerning the predicted, forthcoming level of reward in directing general behavioral reactions.
The nascent field of neuroeconomics seeks to ground economic decisionmaking in the biological substrate of the brain. We used
functional magnetic resonance imaging of Ultimatum Game players to investigate neural substrates of cognitive and emotional
processes involved in economic decision-making. In this game, two players split a sum of money;one player proposes a division
and the other can accept or reject this. We scanned players as they responded to fair and unfair proposals. Unfair offers
elicited activity in brain areas related to both emotion (anterior insula) and cognition (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).
Further, significantly heightened activity in anterior insula for rejected unfair offers suggests an important role for emotions
in decision-making.
During the evolution of cooperation it may have become critical for individuals to compare their own efforts and pay-offs with those of others. Negative reactions may occur when expectations are violated. One theory proposes that aversion to inequity can explain human cooperation within the bounds of the rational choice model, and may in fact be more inclusive than previous explanations. Although there exists substantial cultural variation in its particulars, this 'sense of fairness' is probably a human universal that has been shown to prevail in a wide variety of circumstances. However, we are not the only cooperative animals, hence inequity aversion may not be uniquely human. Many highly cooperative nonhuman species seem guided by a set of expectations about the outcome of cooperation and the division of resources. Here we demonstrate that a nonhuman primate, the brown capuchin monkey (Cebus apella), responds negatively to unequal reward distribution in exchanges with a human experimenter. Monkeys refused to participate if they witnessed a conspecific obtain a more attractive reward for equal effort, an effect amplified if the partner received such a reward without any effort at all. These reactions support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion.
The discipline of affective neuroscience is concerned with the neural bases of emotion and mood. The past 30 years have witnessed an explosion of research in affective neuroscience that has addressed questions such as: which brain systems underlie emotions? How do differences in these systems relate to differences in the emotional experience of individuals? Do different regions underlie different emotions, or are all emotions a function of the same basic brain circuitry? How does emotion processing in the brain relate to bodily changes associated with emotion? And, how does emotion processing in the brain interact with cognition, motor behaviour, language and motivation?
Tasks that engage a theory of mind seem to activate a consistent set of brain areas. In this study, we sought to determine whether two different interactive tasks, both of which involve receiving consequential feedback from social partners that can be used to infer intent, similarly engaged the putative theory of mind neural network. Participants were scanned using fMRI as they played the Ultimatum Game (UG) and the Prisoner's Dilemma Game (PDG) with both alleged human and computer partners who were outside the scanner. We observed a remarkable degree of overlap in brain areas that activated to partner decisions in the two games, including commonly observed theory of mind areas, as well as several brain areas that have not been reported previously and may relate to immersion of participants in real social interactions that have personally meaningful consequences. Although computer partners elicited activation in some of the same areas activated by human partners, most of these activations were stronger for human partners.
Many people voluntarily incur costs to punish violations of social norms. Evolutionary models and empirical evidence indicate that such altruistic punishment has been a decisive force in the evolution of human cooperation. We used H2 15O positron emission tomography to examine the neural basis for altruistic punishment of defectors in an economic exchange. Subjects could punish defection either symbolically or effectively. Symbolic punishment did not reduce the defector's economic payoff, whereas effective punishment did reduce the payoff. We scanned the subjects' brains while they learned about the defector's abuse of trust and determined the punishment. Effective punishment, as compared with symbolic punishment, activated the dorsal striatum, which has been implicated in the processing of rewards that accrue as a result of goal-directed actions. Moreover, subjects with stronger activations in the dorsal striatum were willing to incur greater costs in order to punish. Our findings support the hypothesis that people derive satisfaction from punishing norm violations and that the activation in the dorsal striatum reflects the anticipated satisfaction from punishing defectors.
Behavioral studies suggest that making a decision involves representing the overall desirability of all available actions and then selecting that action that is most desirable. Physiological studies have proposed that neurons in the parietal cortex play a role in selecting movements for execution. To test the hypothesis that these parietal neurons encode the subjective desirability of making particular movements, we exploited Nash's game theoretic equilibrium, during which the subjective desirability of multiple actions should be equal for human players. Behavior measured during a strategic game suggests that monkeys' choices, like those of humans, are guided by subjective desirability. Under these conditions, activity in the parietal cortex was correlated with the relative subjective desirability of actions irrespective of the specific combination of reward magnitude, reward probability, and response probability associated with each action. These observations may help place many recent findings regarding the posterior parietal cortex into a common conceptual framework.
Animals living in a dynamic environment must adjust their decision-making strategies through experience. To gain insights into the neural basis of such adaptive decision-making processes, we trained monkeys to play a competitive game against a computer in an oculomotor free-choice task. The animal selected one of two visual targets in each trial and was rewarded only when it selected the same target as the computer opponent. To determine how the animal's decision-making strategy can be affected by the opponent's strategy, the computer opponent was programmed with three different algorithms that exploited different aspects of the animal's choice and reward history. When the computer selected its targets randomly with equal probabilities, animals selected one of the targets more often, violating the prediction of probability matching, and their choices were systematically influenced by the choice history of the two players. When the computer exploited only the animal's choice history but not its reward history, animal's choice became more independent of its own choice history but was still related to the choice history of the opponent. This bias was substantially reduced, but not completely eliminated, when the computer used the choice history of both players in making its predictions. These biases were consistent with the predictions of reinforcement learning, suggesting that the animals sought optimal decision-making strategies using reinforcement learning algorithms.
This review outlines recent findings from human neuroimaging concerning the role of a highly interconnected network of brain areas including orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, striatum and dopaminergic mid-brain in reward processing. Distinct reward-related functions can be attributed to different components of this network. Orbitofrontal cortex is involved in coding stimulus reward value and in concert with the amygdala and ventral striatum is implicated in representing predicted future reward. Such representations can be used to guide action selection for reward, a process that depends, at least in part, on orbital and medial prefrontal cortex as well as dorsal striatum.
Studies of reward learning have implicated the striatum as part of a neural circuit that guides and adjusts future behavior on the basis of reward feedback. Here we investigate whether prior social and moral information about potential trading partners affects this neural circuitry. Participants made risky choices about whether to trust hypothetical trading partners after having read vivid descriptions of life events indicating praiseworthy, neutral or suspect moral character. Despite equivalent reinforcement rates for all partners, participants were persistently more likely to make risky choices with the 'good' partner. As expected from previous studies, activation of the caudate nucleus differentiated between positive and negative feedback, but only for the 'neutral' partner. Notably, it did not do so for the 'good' partner and did so only weakly for the 'bad' partner, suggesting that prior social and moral perceptions can diminish reliance on feedback mechanisms in the neural circuitry of trial-and-error reward learning.
Although decision-making is typically seen as a rational process, emotions play a role in tasks that include unfairness. Recently, activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during offers experienced as unfair in the Ultimatum Game was suggested to subserve goal maintenance in this task. This is restricted to correlational evidence, however, and it remains unclear whether the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is crucial for strategic decision-making. The present study used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in order to investigate the causal role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in strategic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. The results showed that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex resulted in an altered decision-making strategy compared with sham stimulation. We conclude that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is causally implicated in strategic decision-making in healthy human study participants.
Recent data identify distinct components of social cognition associated with five brain regions. In posterior temporal cortex, the extrastriate body area is associated with perceiving the form of other human bodies. A nearby region in the posterior superior temporal sulcus is involved in interpreting the motions of a human body in terms of goals. A distinct region at the temporo-parietal junction supports the uniquely human ability to reason about the contents of mental states. Medial prefrontal cortex is divided into at least two subregions. Ventral medial prefrontal cortex is implicated in emotional empathy, whereas dorsal medial prefrontal cortex is implicated in the uniquely human representation of triadic relations between two minds and an object, supporting shared attention and collaborative goals.
Interactions with other responsive agents lie at the core of all social exchange. During a social exchange with a partner, one fundamental variable that must be computed correctly is who gets credit for a shared outcome; this assignment is crucial for deciding on an optimal level of cooperation that avoids simple exploitation. We carried out an iterated, two-person economic exchange and made simultaneous hemodynamic measurements from each player's brain. These joint measurements revealed agent-specific responses in the social domain ("me" and "not me") arranged in a systematic spatial pattern along the cingulate cortex. This systematic response pattern did not depend on metrical aspects of the exchange, and it disappeared completely in the absence of a responding partner.
In a multi-agent environment, where the outcomes of one's actions change dynamically because they are related to the behavior of other beings, it becomes difficult to make an optimal decision about how to act. Although game theory provides normative solutions for decision making in groups, how such decision-making strategies are altered by experience is poorly understood. These adaptive processes might resemble reinforcement learning algorithms, which provide a general framework for finding optimal strategies in a dynamic environment. Here we investigated the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in dynamic decision making in monkeys. As in reinforcement learning, the animal's choice during a competitive game was biased by its choice and reward history, as well as by the strategies of its opponent. Furthermore, neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) encoded the animal's past decisions and payoffs, as well as the conjunction between the two, providing signals necessary to update the estimates of expected reward. Thus, PFC might have a key role in optimizing decision-making strategies.
There are many experimental studies of bargaining behavior, but suprisingly enough nearly no attempt has been made to investigate the so-called ultimatum bargaining behavior experimentally. The special property of ultimatum bargaining games is that on every stage of the bargaining process only one player has to decide and that before the last stage the set of outcomes is already restricted to only two results. To make the ultimatum aspect obvious we concentrated on situations with two players and two stages. In the ‘easy games’ a given amount c has to be distributed among the two players, whereas in the ‘complicated games’ the players have to allocate a bundle of black and white chips with different values for both players. We performed two main experiments for easy games as well as for complicated games. By a special experiment it was investigated how the demands of subjects as player 1 are related to their acceptance decisions as player 2.
Curb sets [Basu and Weibull, Econ. Letters 36 (1991), 141-146] are product sets of pure strategies containing all individual best-responses against beliefs restricted to the recommendations to the remaining players. The concept of minimal curb sets is a set-theoretic coarsening of the notion of strict Nash equilibrium. We introduce the concept of minimal strong curb sets which is a set-theoretic coarsening of the notion of strong Nash equilibrium. Strong curb sets are product sets of pure strategies such that each player's set of recommended strategies must contain all coalitional best-responses of each coalition to whatever belief each coalition member may have that is consistent with the recommendations to the other players. Minimal strong curb sets are shown to exist and are compared with other well known solution concepts. We also provide a dynamic learning process leading the players to playing strategies from a minimal strong curb set.