Social discounting involves modulation of neural value signals by temporoparietal junction.

ABSTRACT: Most people are generous, but not toward everyone alike: generosity usually declines with social distance between individuals, a phenomenon called social discounting. Despite the pervasiveness of social discounting, social distance between actors has been surprisingly neglected in economic theory and neuroscientific research. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural basis of this process to understand the neural underpinnings of social decision making. Participants chose between selfish and generous alternatives, yielding either a large reward for the participant alone, or smaller rewards for the participant and another individual at a particular social distance. We found that generous choices engaged the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In particular, the TP

SUBMITTER: Strombach T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4321268 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature