The role of social cognition in decision making

Successful decision making in a social setting depends on our ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The mirror system allows us to understand other people's motor actions and action intentions. ‘Empathy’ allows us to understand and share emotions and sensations with others. ‘Theory of mind’ allows us to understand more abstract concepts such as beliefs or wishes in others. In all these cases, evidence has accumulated that we use the specific neural networks engaged in processing mental states in ourselves to understand the same mental states in others. However, the magnitude of the brain activity in these shared networks is modulated by contextual appraisal of the situation or the other person. An important feature of decision making in a social setting concerns the interaction of reason and emotion. We consider four domains where such interactions occur: our sense of fairness, altruistic punishment, trust and framing effects. In these cases, social motivations and emotions compete with each other, while higher-level control processes modulate the interactions of these low-level biases

Spreading order: religion, cooperative niche construction, and risky coordination problems

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction

The cognitive basis of social behavior: cognitive reflection overrides antisocial but not always prosocial motives

Even though human social behavior has received considerable scientific attention in the last decades, its cognitive underpinnings are still poorly understood. Applying a dual-process framework to the study of social preferences, we show in two studies that individuals with a more reflective/deliberative cognitive style, as measured by scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), are more likely to make choices consistent with “mild” altruism in simple non-strategic decisions. Such choices increase social welfare by increasing the other person's payoff at very low or no cost for the individual. The choices of less reflective individuals (i.e., those who rely more heavily on intuition), on the other hand, are more likely to be associated with either egalitarian or spiteful motives. We also identify a negative link between reflection and choices characterized by “strong” altruism, but this result holds only in Study 2. Moreover, we provide evidence that the relationship between social preferences and CRT scores is not driven by general intelligence. We discuss how our results can reconcile some previous conflicting findings on the cognitive basis of social behavior

The cognitive basis of social behavior: cognitive reflection overrides antisocial but not always prosocial motives

Even though human social behavior has received considerable scientific attention in the last decades, its cognitive underpinnings are still poorly understood. Applying a dual-process framework to the study of social preferences, we show in two studies that individuals with a more reflective/deliberative cognitive style, as measured by scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), are more likely to make choices consistent with “mild” altruism in simple non-strategic decisions. Such choices increase social welfare by increasing the other person's payoff at very low or no cost for the individual. The choices of less reflective individuals (i.e., those who rely more heavily on intuition), on the other hand, are more likely to be associated with either egalitarian or spiteful motives. We also identify a negative link between reflection and choices characterized by “strong” altruism, but this result holds only in Study 2. Moreover, we provide evidence that the relationship between social preferences and CRT scores is not driven by general intelligence. We discuss how our results can reconcile some previous conflicting findings on the cognitive basis of social behavior

Computational behavioral models in public goods games with migration between groups

In this study we have simulated numerically two models of linear public goods games where players are equally distributed among a given number of groups. Agents play in their group by using two simple sets of rules, called ‘blind’ and ‘rational’ model, respectively, that are inspired by the observed behavior of human participants in laboratory experiments. In addition, unsatisfied agents have the option of leaving their group and migrating to a new random one through probabilistic choices. Stochasticity, and the introduction of two types of players in the blind model, help simulate the heterogeneous behavior that is often observed in experimental work. Our numerical simulations of the corresponding dynamical systems show that being able to leave a group when unsatisfied favors contribution and avoids free-riding to a good extent in a range of the enhancement factor where defection would prevail without migration. Our numerical simulation presents results that are qualitatively in line with known experimental data when human agents are given the same kind of information about themselves and the other players in the group. This is usually not the case with customary mathematical models based on replicator dynamics or stochastic approaches. As a consequence, models like the ones described here may be useful for understanding experimental results and also for designing new experiments by first running cheap computational simulations instead of doing costly preliminary laboratory work. The downside is that models and their simulation tend to be less general than standard mathematical approaches.A A acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the Grant No. IJC2019-040967-I

Voluntary contributions to public goods:A multi-disciplinary examination of prosocial behavior and its antecedents

The four essays collected in this Ph.D. dissertation concern prosocial motivations in different social contexts, applying conceptual, experimental, and survey methodologies to investigate how the complex and diverse interaction between psychological attributes and the social environment shapes prosocial behaviors. The first essay provides a conceptual framework on how cognition links relevant stimuli with innate moralities to construct Public Service Motivation (PSM) and guild various social behaviors. The second essay builds on the first essay and provides empirical evidence for the essential role of innate moralities in shaping Public Service Motivation and affecting behavioral consequences. The third and fourth essay apply methods from experimental economics to investigate the role of contextual stimuli in affecting prosocial motivation in a lab experiment of the volunteer’s dilemma game. The third essay first extends the classic volunteer’s dilemma game and develops novel treatments to examine pro-social risk-taking and competitive behavior in a lab experiment. The fourth essay then incorporates the PSM theory in the extended volunteer’s dilemma game to explore the role of PSM in self-sacrifice behavior and its relationships with external contextual factors

How can neuroscience contribute to moral philosophy, psychology and education based on Aristotelian virtue ethics?

The present essay discusses the relationship between moral philosophy, psychology and education based on virtue ethics, contemporary neuroscience, and how neuroscientific methods can contribute to studies of moral virtue and character. First, the present essay considers whether the mechanism of moral motivation and developmental model of virtue and character are well supported by neuroscientific evidence. Particularly, it examines whether the evidence provided by neuroscientific studies can support the core argument of virtue ethics, that is, motivational externalism. Second, it discusses how experimental methods of neuroscience can be applied to studies in human morality. Particularly, the present essay examines how functional and structural neuroimaging methods can contribute to the development of the fields by reviewing the findings of recent social and developmental neuroimaging experiments. Meanwhile, the present essay also considers some limitations embedded in such discussions regarding the relationship between the fields and suggests directions for future studies to address these limitations

Synchrony and Physiological Arousal Increase Cohesion and Cooperation in Large Naturalistic Groups

Separate research streams have identified synchrony and arousal as two factors that might contribute to the effects of human rituals on social cohesion and cooperation. But no research has manipulated these variables in the field to investigate their causal – and potentially interactive – effects on prosocial behaviour. Across four experimental sessions involving large samples of strangers, we manipulated the synchronous and physiologically arousing affordances of a group marching task within a sports stadium. We observed participants’ subsequent movement, grouping, and cooperation via a camera hidden in the stadium’s roof. Synchrony and arousal both showed main effects, predicting larger groups, tighter clustering, and more cooperative behaviour in a free-rider dilemma. However, synchrony and arousal interacted on measures of clustering and cooperation: such that synchrony only encouraged closer clustering — and encouraged greater cooperation—when paired with physiological arousal. The research has implications for understanding the nature and co-occurrence of synchrony and physiological arousal in rituals around the world. It also represents the first use of real-time spatial tracking as a precise and naturalistic method of simulating collective rituals