Subjects: Sixteen Caltech undergraduate and graduate students were recruited from the Caltech Social Science Experimental Laboratory database to participate in the study (13 males, 3 females). The mean (std. dev.) age was 23.5 years (6.2). Informed consent was obtained using a consent form approved by the Internal Review Board at Caltech. Subjects read written instructions before entering the scanner (included at the end of the supplements). After reading the instructions they completed a quiz to ensure comprehension of how their decisions affected their performance and earnings. They knew that at the end of the experiment, one trial from each of the three treatments would be chosen at random, and their choice on that trial would determine their pay. Their earnings were the total from the three randomly-chosen choices, plus $5 fee for participating.Behavioral task: Stimuli were presented through MRI compatible goggles (Resonance Technology). Choices were made using an MRI-compatible button box. For each choice, three options were given. Two of the options were bets on either side of a binary choice gamble that carried some uncertainty of paying either a positive sum or zero. The third option was the sure payoff that paid a certain positive amount of money. Subjects were allowed as much time as they desired in making their choice. Responses were made by pressing the button corresponding to the location of the options (left-middle-right) on the screen.The gambles were not played after each trial because then the degree of ambiguity would change over time as subjects learned from feedback about the event probabilities.1 Card-deck treatment: In the Card-Deck treatment, subjects take the sure payoff, or bet on either red or black card. The cards are blue in the presentation because the background was black, but conventional red and black playing cards were used to determine the actual payoff after the subject came out of the scanner. Subjects knew blue and black were equivalent. Full list of stimuli are presented in Table S1.Knowledge treatment: In the Knowledge treatment, subjects could take the sure payoff, or bet on whether the answer was Yes or No to the statement presented. Full list of stimuli are presented in Table S2. Informed Opponents treatment:In the Informed opponents treatment, subjects either take the sure payoff, or bet that a red or black card would be drawn. If they choose the bet, they play against an opponent that will sample from the an ambiguous deck the number of cards indicated on the screen.If the colors of the cards chosen by the subject and his/her opponent match, the bet does not take place and both earn the sure payoff instead. If the colors mismatch, the bet takes place, and the subject whose card matches the color of the card randomly chosen from the deck, wins the amount indicated on the screen, with the other subject earning 0.Note that because the opponent chooses a color after seeing a sample of cards, the opponent always has more information than the subject, in the "low-information...
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). JEL C70, C91.
The management and manipulation of our own social image in the minds of others requires difficult and poorly understood computations. One computation useful in social image management is strategic deception: our ability and willingness to manipulate other people's beliefs about ourselves for gain. We used an interpersonal bargaining game to probe the capacity of players to manage their partner's beliefs about them. This probe parsed the group of subjects into three behavioral types according to their revealed level of strategic deception; these types were also distinguished by neural data measured during the game. The most deceptive subjects emitted behavioral signals that mimicked a more benign behavioral type, and their brains showed differential activation in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left Brodmann area 10 at the time of this deception. In addition, strategic types showed a significant correlation between activation in the right temporoparietal junction and expected payoff that was absent in the other groups. The neurobehavioral types identified by the game raise the possibility of identifying quantitative biomarkers for the capacity to manipulate and maintain a social image in another person's mind.decision making | individual differences | neuroeconomics W hat do I think about you? What do I think you think about me? These basic assessments, underlying human social exchange, constitute crucial computations that all human brains must carry out if they are to navigate the complexities of social life. In larger-scale societies, survival and success hinge on the capacity to calibrate and monitor one's social image in the minds of others. Consequently, the question of how social signals manipulate the minds of others around us poses one of the central and most difficult computational problems underlying all social transactions. Until recently, quantitative neurobehavioral approaches to this problem have been absent.The management of social image represents a refinement of the more thoroughly studied problem of "theory of mind" (1-4). Rather than simply modeling the goals and behavior of others, managing a social image requires that we understand that others also have a theory of our mind along a variety of cognitive dimensions, and therefore they maintain models of our own goals and behavior. The "second-order" belief problem of understanding others' perceptions of our self is at the heart of any strategic interaction, ranging from a simple game of cards to a complex business negotiation. To manipulate our own reputation in the mind of another agent requires that we estimate the depth to which our partner models our own mental state and the dimensions along which such modeling is likely to occur. These computations are particularly difficult because estimating another individual's model of oneself is an inherently recursive process-it requires keeping in mind my model of you, my model of your model of me, and so on (5-7).One important case of a second-order belief computation is strategic deceptio...
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