The neural computation of human prosocial choices in complex motivational states

Saulin, Anne; Horn, Ulrike; Lotze, Martín; Kaiser, Jochen; Hein, Grit

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118827

Cited by 17 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In summary, we have provided compelling evidence that prosocial group behavior in humans emerges out of a combination of seeking and maintaining larger group sizes, while possibly balancing self-interest and group-interest. These results qualitatively agree with recent neuroscience evidence which suggests that having multiple motives (especially social-related) increases prosocial behavior over having a single motive or goal (Saulin et al, 2021). Specifically, both the RT and choice analyses show complementary group size-modulated effects, providing converging evidence that group-oriented prosocial behavior emerges as subjects transition from dyads to larger groups (Figure 2 and 3).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Emergent Prosocial Behavior During Dynamic Human Group Formation

2021

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For scientists, policy makers, and the general population, there is increasing interest in how humans form cooperative groups. Probing the changes that emerge in cognition as group sizes increase is one important direction for understanding the evolution of large cooperative societies. However, capturing real-world dynamics of group size growth has been a historical challenge for laboratory studies. We hypothesize that humans will exhibit emergent prosocial behavior as their immediate group size increases. Using a new network-embedded-dyad prisoner dilemma task, with periodic opportunities to retain or remove group members, we find subjects consistently follow a well-performing reciprocal base policy (tit-for-tat-like) across the experimental session. However, subjects' strategies also became more forgiving and less exploitative as group size increased, with a default preference shift to cooperation. Thus, human cooperation may emerge from a desire to create and maintain larger and more cooperative groups, and multiscale strategies that consider both self-interest and group-interest.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Emergent Prosocial Behavior During Dynamic Human Group Formation

2021

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“…Overall, the small size of the imaging group made it difficult to realize the interactions with methodologically highly advanced groups. However, in some projects—without external funding for the Greifswald group—this could be partially realized [ 43 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional MRI in Radiology—A Personal Review

et al. 2022

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We, here, provide a personal review article on the development of a functional MRI in the radiology departments of two German university medicine units. Although the international community for human brain mapping has met since 1995, the researchers fascinated by human brain function are still young and innovative. However, the impact of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on prognosis and treatment decisions is restricted, even though standardized methods have been developed. The tradeoff between the groundbreaking studies on brain function and the attempt to provide reliable biomarkers for clinical decisions is large. By describing some historical developments in the field of fMRI, from a personal view, the rise of this method in clinical neuroscience during the last 25 years might be understandable. We aim to provide some background for (a) the historical developments of fMRI, (b) the establishment of two research units for fMRI in the departments of radiology in Germany, and (c) a description of some contributions within the selected fields of systems neuroscience, clinical neurology, and behavioral psychology.

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“…Recent studies have started to use neuroscientific methods to distinguish different motives that result in the same behavior and to investigate multi-motive interactions ( 21 , 22 , 35 – 37 ). On a conceptual level, models of multi-motive interactions and their neural computation help to understand their impact on prosocial decisions.…”

Section: Why Is It Important To Compare Different Motives (In the Bra...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Tusche and colleagues ( 37 ) identified empathy and perspective taking as motives for generous behavior and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to disentangle differential neural responses associated with each motive. Hein et al ( 35 ) and Saulin et al ( 22 ) showed that two different motives, i.e., empathy and reciprocity, incite a comparable frequency of prosocial decisions. However, based on the patterns of brain connectivity ( 35 ) and neural decision parameters ( 22 ), the authors were able to distinguish between the two motives and their interrelation.…”

Section: Advantages and Disadvantages Of Egoism-based Compared To Emp...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is assumed that both, affective and cognitive empathy can incite prosocial behaviors (13,17,18), i.e., behaviors that maximize the outcome of another person at costs to oneself (19,20). This claim is bolstered by many studies showing a consistent relationship between individual differences in empathy ratings and individual difference in prosocial decisions (19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Based on this evidence, an influential social psychology model has proposed that empathy motivates prosocial behavior, because it induces an "altruistic motivation" (24,25).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The bright and dark sides of egoism

et al. 2022

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Despite its negative reputation, egoism – the excessive concern for one’s own welfare – can incite prosocial behavior. So far, however, egoism-based prosociality has received little attention. Here, we first provide an overview of the conditions under which egoism turns into a prosocial motive, review the benefits and limitations of egoism-based prosociality, and compare them with empathy-driven prosocial behavior. Second, we summarize studies investigating the neural processing of egoism-based prosocial decisions, studies investigating the neural processing of empathy-based prosocial decisions, and the small number of studies that compared the neural processing of prosocial decisions elicited by the different motives. We conclude that there is evidence for differential neural networks involved in egoism and empathy-based prosocial decisions. However, this evidence is not yet conclusive, because it is mainly based on the comparison of different experimental paradigms which may exaggerate or overshadow the effect of the different motivational states. Finally, we propose paradigms and research questions that should be tackled in future research that could help to specify how egoism can be used to enhance other prosocial behavior and motivation, and the how it could be tamed.

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The neural computation of human prosocial choices in complex motivational states

Cited by 17 publications

References 66 publications

Emergent Prosocial Behavior During Dynamic Human Group Formation

Emergent Prosocial Behavior During Dynamic Human Group Formation

Functional MRI in Radiology—A Personal Review

The bright and dark sides of egoism

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