Neural bases of ingroup altruistic motivation in soccer fans

Abstract

Humans have a strong need to belong to social groups and a natural inclination to benefit ingroup members. Although the psychological mechanisms behind human prosociality have extensively been studied, the specific neural systems bridging group belongingness and altruistic motivation remain to be identified. Here, we used soccer fandom as an ecological framing of group membership to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying ingroup altruistic behaviour in male fans using event-related functional magnetic resonance. We designed an effort measure based on handgrip strength to assess the motivation to earn money (i) for oneself, (ii) for anonymous ingroup fans, or (iii) for a neutral group of anonymous non-fans. While overlapping valuation signals in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) were observed for the three conditions, the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC) exhibited increased functional connectivity with the mOFC as well as stronger hemodynamic responses for ingroup versus outgroup decisions. These findings indicate a key role for the SCC, a region previously implicated in altruistic decisions and group affiliation, in dovetailing altruistic motivations with neural valuation systems in real-life ingroup behaviour.

An Adaptation of Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) Methodology to Examine the Energizing Effects of Reward-Predicting Cues on Behavior in Young Adults

“…This response modality was selected to quantify participants' physiological effort. Motivation, as expressed in behavior, has been characterized as engaging in effortful action to obtain desirable outcomes (Chong et al, 2016;Bortolini et al, 2017). Compared to other response modalities, such as speeded repeated responses on keys or buttons, the force requirement provides clearer evidence of effortful responding/behavioral invigoration.…”

“…Instrumental responding required behavioral invigoration, i.e., effort. Motivated behavior has been characterized as effortful action to obtain desirable outcomes (Chong et al, 2016;Bortolini et al, 2017). Thus, grip strength and grip frequency were both used as measures of instrumental responding.…”

Social domain based modulation of neural responses to threat: The different roles of romantic partners versus friends

“…Therefore, our findings of increased subgenual cingulate cortex for participants in the presence of partners versus friends whilst receiving threatening stimuli, may have wider implications than safety-signalling. Notably, the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex has also been shown to be involved in a range of social processes including altruistic decision-making (FeldmanHall, Dalgleish, Evans, & Mobbs, 2015), and group belongingness (Bortolini et al, 2017;Rüsch et al, 2014), and in modulation of affiliative behavior, in part through the effects of oxytocin and arginine vasopressin (McCall & Singer, 2012). This suggests a tight fit between emotion regulatory and affiliative processes in the demarcation of partner and friends domains.…”

Ventral Caudate and Anterior Insula Recruitment During Value Estimation of Passionate Rewarding Cues

“…These regions included the medial prefrontal cortex, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. The type of value estimation studied here was quite unique due to involving an ingroup belongingness-related cue that was experimentally established in previous studies (Bortolini et al, 2017;Duarte et al, 2017Duarte et al, , 2018. The estimation of a tradeoff between the expected hedonic value and the monetary cost, reflecting some kind of emotional decision utility, is quite present in the life of the selected participants, who often make similar decisions on a weekly basis.…”