Carolyn H. Declerck

Oxytocin and cooperation under conditions of uncertainty: the modulating role of incentives and social information.

The neuropeptide Oxytocin (OT) has been implicated in many aspects of mammalian social behavior. This study investigates how OT interacts with two well-studied determinants of cooperative behavior: incentives and social information. Participants received OT or a placebo and played two economic games: a Coordination Game (with strong incentives to cooperate) and a Prisoners Dilemma (with weak cooperative incentives). OT enhanced cooperation only when social information was present, and this effect was significantly more pronounced in the Coordination Game. When social information was lacking, OT surprisingly decreased cooperation. Consistent with the well-established role of OT in trust-building and in social cognition, social information appears to be crucial for OT to boost cooperative expectations in an interdependent social interaction that provides incentives to cooperate. When these cues are absent, OT appears to instead elicit a risk-averse strategy.

When Do People Cooperate? The Neuroeconomics of Prosocial Decision Making.

Understanding the roots of prosocial behavior is an interdisciplinary research endeavor that has generated an abundance of empirical data across many disciplines. This review integrates research findings from different fields into a novel theoretical framework that can account for when prosocial behavior is likely to occur. Specifically, we propose that the motivation to cooperate (or not), generated by the reward system in the brain (extending from the striatum to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex), is modulated by two neural networks: a cognitive control system (centered on the lateral prefrontal cortex) that processes extrinsic cooperative incentives, and/or a social cognition system (including the temporo-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala) that processes trust and/or threat signals. The independent modulatory influence of incentives and trust on the decision to cooperate is substantiated by a growing body of neuroimaging data and reconciles the apparent paradox between economic versus social rationality in the literature, suggesting that we are in fact wired for both. Furthermore, the theoretical framework can account for substantial behavioral heterogeneity in prosocial behavior. Based on the existing data, we postulate that self-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt an economically rational strategy) are more responsive to extrinsic cooperative incentives and therefore rely relatively more on cognitive control to make (un)cooperative decisions, whereas other-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt a socially rational strategy) are more sensitive to trust signals to avoid betrayal and recruit relatively more brain activity in the social cognition system. Several additional hypotheses with respect to the neural roots of social preferences are derived from the model and suggested for future research.

Inducing Cooperative Behavior among Proselfs versus Prosocials: The Moderating Role of Incentives and Trust

This study investigates how an individual’s social value orientation (SVO) interacts with explicit cooperative incentives on one hand, and intrinsic and extraneously induced trust on the other hand, to affect cooperative behavior. In three experiments, subjects (n = 322) played a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma (PD; with weak cooperative incentives) and an assurance game (AG; with strong cooperative incentives) in conditions with or without trust signals. The authors found, as expected, that cooperative behavior is strongly spurred by explicit incentives, but not by trust, among people with a proself value orientation. Conversely, trust is very important to enhance cooperative behavior of participants with a prosocial value orientation, whereas explicit incentives are less important compared to proselfs. The authors conclude that this study reveals two fundamentally different logics of cooperative behavior: one based on extrinsic incentives and the other on trust.

Social Value Orientation: Related to Empathy and the Ability to Read the Mind in the Eyes

This study explores correlates of social value orientation, a personality trait that reflects a stable individual difference in the way people evaluate outcomes for themselves and others in situations of interdependence. Previous findings (e.g., the triangle hypothesis) have indicated that people with a prosocial orientation tend to view their interacting partners as having heterogeneous social motives, whereas people with a proself orientation tend to believe all people are alike and selfish. Consistent with this idea that people vary in their perception of others social motives, the data in this study indicate that a prosocial orientation correlated positively with the ability to adopt another persons point of view and infer mental states from eye gazes. These social skills correlated negatively with an individualistic orientation.

Establishing cooperation in a mixed-motive social dilemma. An fMRI study investigating the role of social value orientation and dispositional trust

When people are confronted with social dilemmas, their decision-making strategies tend to be associated with individual social preferences; prosocials have an intrinsic willingness to cooperate, while proselfs need extrinsic motivators signaling personal gain. In this study, the biological roots for the proselfs/prosocials concept are explored by investigating the neural correlates of cooperative versus defect decisions when participants engage in a series of one-shot, anonymous prisoner’s dilemma situations. Our data are in line with previous studies showing that prosocials activate several social cognition regions of the brain more than proselfs (here: medial prefrontal cortex, temporo–parietal junction, and precuneus BA 7 (Brodmann area 7), and that dispositional trust positively affects prosocials’ decisions to cooperate. At the neural level, however, dispositional trust appears to exert a greater marginal effect on brain activity of proselfs in three social cognition regions, which does not translate into an increase in cooperation. An event-related analysis shows that cooperating prosocials show significantly more activation in the precuneus (BA 7) than proselfs. Based on previous research, we interpret this result to be consistent with prosocials’ enhanced tendency to infer the intentions of others in social dilemma games, and the importance of establishing norm congruence when they decide to cooperate.

The cognitive demands on cooperation in social dilemmas: an fMRI study.

This study uses fMRI to investigate the cognitive demands of decision-making in two types of cooperation games: a prisoners dilemma (PD) eliciting a temptation to free-ride, leading to a dominant, self-interested response, and a stag hunt (SH) that has no dominant response but offers pay-off incentives that make mutual cooperation collectively beneficial but risky. Consequently, the PD poses greater conflict between self- and collective interest, greater demands for computational reasoning to derive the optimal solution, and greater demands for mentalizing to infer the intentions of others. Consistent with these differences between the two games, the results indicate that the PD is associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, and temporoparietal junction. With less conflict, the demands for computation and mentalizing are reduced in the SH, and cooperation levels increase dramatically. The differences in brain activation elicited by the different incentive structures of the PD and the SH appear to be independent of individual differences in revealed social preferences.

Oxytocin does not make a face appear more trustworthy but improves the accuracy of trustworthiness judgments

Previous research on the relation between oxytocin and trustworthiness evaluations has yielded inconsistent results. The current study reports an experiment using artificial faces which allows manipulating the dimension of trustworthiness without changing factors like emotions or face symmetry. We investigate whether (1) oxytocin increases the average trustworthiness evaluation of faces (level effect), and/or whether (2) oxytocin improves the discriminatory ability of trustworthiness perception so that people become more accurate in distinguishing faces that vary along a gradient of trustworthiness. In a double blind oxytocin/placebo experiment (N=106) participants conducted two judgement tasks. First they evaluated the trustworthiness of a series of pictures of artificially generated faces, neutral in the trustworthiness dimension. Next they compared neutral faces with artificially generated faces that were manipulated to vary in trustworthiness. The results indicate that oxytocin (relative to a placebo) does not affect the evaluation of trustworthiness in the first task. However, in the second task, misclassification of untrustworthy faces as trustworthy occurred significantly less in the oxytocin group. Furthermore, oxytocin improved the discriminatory ability of untrustworthy, but not trustworthy faces. We conclude that oxytocin does not increase trustworthiness judgments on average, but that it helps people to more accurately recognize an untrustworthy face.

Locus of Control, Marital Status and Predictors of Early Relapse in Primary Breast Cancer Patients

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between two psychosocial factors and early relapse in breast cancer patients. Specifically, we investigated how the personality trait locus of control interacts with marital status to predict medical pathology and distress in 49 primary breast cancer patients. Patient data were obtained from clinical files, personal interviews, and a reduced version of Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Based on Rotters generalized I-E locus of control scale, patients were categorized into three personality types: internals, externals, and intermediates. Analysis of the data showed that being married correlated with a reduced history of pathology and lower levels of distress, but only in those patients with an intermediate locus of control. Ratings of interviews showed that intermediates seemed to gain more satisfaction from family support, and that unmarried intermediates suffered more from loss of control after the diagnosis than married intermediates. An explanatory model suggesting that intermediates benefit from being married because they are more sensitive to social support is proposed and evaluated with respect to predicting health, distress and biological risk for breast cancer relapse.

No place to hide: When shame causes proselfs to cooperate

Shame is considered a social emotion with action tendencies that elicit socially beneficial behavior. Yet, unlike other social emotions, prior experimental studies do not indicate that incidental shame boosts prosocial behavior. Based on the affect as information theory, we hypothesize that incidental feelings of shame can increase cooperation, but only for self-interested individuals, and only in a context where shame is relevant with regards to its action tendency. To test this hypothesis, cooperation levels are compared between a simultaneous prisoners dilemma (where “defect” may result from multiple motives) and a sequential prisoners dilemma (where “second player defect” is the result of intentional greediness). As hypothesized, shame positively affected proselfs in a sequential prisoners dilemma. Hence ashamed proselfs become inclined to cooperate when they believe they have no way to hide their greediness, and not necessarily because they want to make up for earlier wrong-doing.

Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates vary according to individual differences in generalized control perception.

This study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in generalized control perception for 43 undergraduate adults may be reflected in Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates during conversation in an interview. Control perception was assessed by means of Rotters internal-external Locus of Control questionnaires, while Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates were computed from filmed videos of interviews consisting of a series of questions which could presumably have triggered different mental states. Pearson correlations and linear regression analyses indicated that the individual differences in Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates did not differ significantly across different questions, but that Spontaneous Eye Blink Rates measured over the entire interview correlated positively and significantly with an internal Locus of Control (r = .26). This could be interpreted as modest but corroborative evidence that a personality trait reflecting control perception may have a biological component. The possible roles of dopamine neurotransmission and frontal cortex involvement in higher cognition and Locus of Control are discussed.