Psychophysiological correlates of interpersonal cooperation and aggression

Event‐related potentials in response to cheating and cooperation in a social dilemma game

“…Thus, cheating in the last round of a repeated social dilemma game may be particularly diagnostic of a partner's character, which may explain why participants paid special attention to this information. This finding corroborates previous conclusions (Wang et al, ) that the feedback P300 is not only determined by expectancy violation, but is also sensitive to the affective and motivational implications of social dilemma situations. Considering that the P300 did not differ between feedback about cooperation and feedback about cheating in Round 1, the general pattern of results suggests that people do not always prioritize negative over positive social information, but instead flexibly allocate their attention to whatever information seems more relevant to evaluate another person (i.e., is more diagnostic about a partner's character) in a specific context.…”

“…Interestingly, a partner's unexpected cooperation elicited a similar feedback negativity as cheating, despite the fact that it was associated with a monetary reward. This is consistent with recent studies suggesting that, in social situations, the feedback negativity is more determined by the social implications of an outcome than by its monetary consequences (Boksem & De Cremer, ; Polezzi et al, ; Wang et al, ). In particular, it has been argued that defecting against a cooperative partner is perceived as aversive (Rilling et al, ).…”

“…This literature is guided by the assumption that the feedback about another person's cheating or cooperation elicits ERPs from the same brain systems that monitor outcomes in other performance domains (see also Sanfey, ; Sanfey, Rilling, Aronson, Nystrom, & Cohen, ). Wang and colleagues () have postulated that two ERP components should be particularly sensitive to the valence and motivational relevance of outcomes in social dilemma games: the feedback negativity and the feedback P300. The feedback negativity is a negative deflection in the ERP at anterior and central electrodes between 250 and 300 ms after feedback onset.…”

“…Wang and colleagues () used psychophysiological measures to examine cognitive processing in the chicken game, which is used as a game‐theoretical model of social competition. In this two‐person social dilemma game, one receives the highest outcome when choosing to aggress while the other player chooses the cooperative option.…”

Resting high frequency heart rate variability selectively predicts cooperative behavior

“…We used a customized version of previous hawk-dove tasks reliable for payoff manipulation and physiological investigation (Feltovich, 2011;Ito & Yoshimura, 2015;Y. Wang et al, 2013).…”