The influence of group membership and individual differences in psychopathy and perspective taking on neural responses when punishing and rewarding others

Abstract

Understanding how neural processes involved in punishing and rewarding others are altered by group membership and personality traits is critical in order to gain a better understanding of how socially important phenomena such as racial and group biases develop. Participants in an fMRI study (n = 48) gave rewards (money) or punishments (electroshocks) to in-group or out-group members. The results show that when participants rewarded others, greater activation was found in regions typically associated with receiving rewards such as the striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex, bilaterally. Activation in those regions increased when participants rewarded in-group compared to out-group members. Punishment led to increased activation in regions typically associated with Theory of Mind including the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior superior temporal sulcus, as well as regions typically associated with perceiving others in pain such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Interestingly, in contrast to the findings regarding reward, activity in these regions was not moderated by whether the target of the punishment was an in- or out-group member. Additional regression analysis revealed that participants who have low perspective taking skills and higher levels of psychopathy showed less activation in the brain regions identified when punishing others, especially when they were out-group members. In sum, when an individual is personally responsible for delivering rewards and punishments to others, in-group bias is stronger for reward allocation than punishments, marking the first neuroscientific evidence of this dissociation.

The ties that bind: Group membership shapes the neural correlates of in-group favoritism

“…Prior work has consistently found that decisions to donate to others, including charities, strangers, and family members, recruits the ventral striatum (Harbaugh et al, 2007;Izuma et al, 2010;Moll et al, 2006;Telzer et al, 2010;Molenberghs et al, 2014). We build upon this work and show that striatal response when donating to unfamiliar others is modulated by group membership.…”

“…Given that individuals feel good when their own-group is doing well and that it is rewarding to belong to a social group (Tajfel, 1974), we hypothesized that prosocial decisions to help in-group members relative to out-group members would be associated with heightened rewardrelated activation. Indeed, prior work has shown that rewarding in-group members leads to increased activation in the ventral striatum and mOFC compared to rewarding out-group members (Molenberghs et al, 2014).…”

Frontal and striatal alterations associated with psychopathic traits in adolescents

“…The insula has long been implicated in empathy, the capability to understand and resonate with the affective experience of another, and is crucial in the inhibition of antisocial, aggressive behavior. Abnormal activation in the insula during empathy-related tasks has been linked to higher levels of psychopathy in several adult studies (Decety et al, 2013; Decety et al, 2014; Molenberghs et al, 2014). For developmental populations, prior studies on children with conduct problems have also demonstrated abnormal neural responses to others in pain in the insula (Sterzer et al, 2007).…”

Common and distinct neural correlates of personal and vicarious reward: A quantitative meta-analysis

“…These studies included the observation of social targets experiencing a variety of reward types, including pleasant touch, tastes, and smells, monetary payoffs, positive social feedback (e.g., praise), and positive emotional events (e.g., getting engaged). Social distance between the participant and target varied across studies, ranging from strangers (Morelli et al, 2014) to friends and ingroup members (e.g., (Braams et al, 2013; Molenberghs et al, 2014; Varnum, Shi, Chen, Qiu, & Han, 2014) to family (Telzer, Fuligni, Lieberman, & Galván, 2013; Telzer, Masten, Berkman, Lieberman, & Fuligni, 2010). …”