Common and distinct neural correlates of self‐serving and prosocial dishonesty

Abstract

People often anticipate certain benefits when making dishonest decisions. In this article, we aim to dissociate the neural-cognitive processes of (1) dishonest decisions that focus on overall benefits of being dishonest (regardless of whether the benefits are self-serving or prosocial) from (2) those that distinguish between self-serving and prosocial benefits. Thirty-one participants had the opportunity to maximize their monetary benefits by voluntarily making dishonest decisions while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In each trial, the monetary benefit of being dishonest was either self-serving or prosocial. Behaviorally, we found dissociable patterns of dishonest decisions: some participants were dishonest for overall benefits, while others were primarily dishonest for self-serving (compared with prosocial) benefits. When provided an opportunity to be dishonest for either self-serving or prosocial benefits, participants with a stronger overall tendency to be dishonest had stronger vmPFC activity, as well as stronger functional connectivity between the vmPFC and dlPFC. Furthermore, vmPFC activity was associated with decisions to be dishonest both when the benefits of being dishonest were self-serving and prosocial. Conversely, high self-serving-biased participants had stronger striatum activity and stronger functional connectivity between the striatum and middle-mPFC when they had a chance to be dishonest for self-serving (compared with prosocial) benefits. Altogether, we showed that activity in (and functional connectivity between) regions in the valuation (e.g., vmPFC and Str) and executive control (e.g., dlPFC and mmPFC) systems play a key role in registering the social-related goal of dishonest decisions.

I lie, why don't you: Neural mechanisms of individual differences in self‐serving lying

“…These regions might show general effects caused by the process of lying, but we also found some other regions which are sensitive to individual differences in lying. As mentioned in Section 1, the dlPFC and IFG were commonly found activated in studies about lying (Ding et al, 2012;Farah et al, 2014;Pornpattananangkul et al, 2018;. However, the findings from direct comparisons of lying versus truth-telling in these two regions, especially in the dlPFC are not always consistent.…”

“…In a study about neural responses toward beneficial and harmful lies and truth, only beneficial truth elicited positive activity in the NAcc while beneficial lies and harmful truth exhibited different patterns (low level of activity) in the NAcc (Yin & Weber, ). The vmPFC and the caudate code not only the monetary values but also subjective values of decisions (Pornpattananangkul et al, ). Therefore, the psychological cost of lying might be weighed against the additional monetary benefits brought by lying.…”

“…Individuals with stronger NAcc responses in anticipating rewards showed a stronger dlPFC response when refraining from lying to get higher monetary gains (Abe & Greene, ). High self‐serving‐biased individuals had stronger striatum activity when they had a chance to lie for themselves compared to lie for others (Pornpattananangkul, Zhen, & Yu, ).…”

“…Our study aims to investigate lying decision-making from the neural perspectives, and in particular bridge the connection between lying frequencies and neural patterns, and furthermore predict lying frequencies from neural patterns. In previous studies, differences in neural correlates were found between lying for oneself and lying for others (Cui et al, 2017;Pornpattananangkul et al, 2018;Yin et al, 2017). Given that there are many different types of lies, we would like to restrict our research topic to selfserving lies, which are one of the most common types of lies.…”

Neural mechanisms of deception in a social context: an fMRI replication study

“…In particular, deception is usually accompanied by increased activity in the frontal and parietal areas, which are associated with a combination of processes. All of these processes can explain higher cognitive load of deception: conflict monitoring, working memory, action selection, and inhibition 2,8,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . Another reported neural correlate of deception is the error detection mechanism 25,26 .…”