Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern

Social norms are a cornerstone of human society. When social norms are violated (e.g., fairness) people can either help the victim or punish the violator in order to restore justice. Recent research has shown that empathic concern influences this decision to help or punish. Using functional magnetic...

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Main Authors:	Hu, Yang, Strang, Sabrina, Weber, Bernd
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4332347/

id	pubmed-4332347
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-43323472015-03-04 Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern Hu, Yang Strang, Sabrina Weber, Bernd Neuroscience Social norms are a cornerstone of human society. When social norms are violated (e.g., fairness) people can either help the victim or punish the violator in order to restore justice. Recent research has shown that empathic concern influences this decision to help or punish. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated the neural underpinnings of third-party help and punishment and the involvement of empathic concern. Participants saw a person violating a social norm, i.e., proposing unfair offers in a dictator game, at the expense of another person. The participants could then decide to either punish the violator or help the victim. Our results revealed that both third-party helping as well as third-party punishing activated the bilateral striatum, a region strongly related with reward processing, indicating that both altruistic decisions share a common neuronal basis. In addition, also different networks were involved in the two processes compared with control conditions; bilateral striatum and the right lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) during helping and bilateral striatum as well as left lPFC and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during punishment. Further we found that individual differences in empathic concern influenced whether people prefer to help or to punish. People with high empathic concern helped more frequently, were faster in their decision and showed higher activation in frontoparietal regions during helping compared with punishing. Our findings provide insights into the neuronal basis of human altruistic behavior and social norm enforcement mechanism. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-02-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4332347/ /pubmed/25741254 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00024 Text en Copyright © 2015 Hu, Strang and Weber. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Hu, Yang Strang, Sabrina Weber, Bernd
spellingShingle	Hu, Yang Strang, Sabrina Weber, Bernd Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
author_facet	Hu, Yang Strang, Sabrina Weber, Bernd
author_sort	Hu, Yang
title	Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
title_short	Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
title_full	Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
title_fullStr	Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
title_full_unstemmed	Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
title_sort	helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern
description	Social norms are a cornerstone of human society. When social norms are violated (e.g., fairness) people can either help the victim or punish the violator in order to restore justice. Recent research has shown that empathic concern influences this decision to help or punish. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated the neural underpinnings of third-party help and punishment and the involvement of empathic concern. Participants saw a person violating a social norm, i.e., proposing unfair offers in a dictator game, at the expense of another person. The participants could then decide to either punish the violator or help the victim. Our results revealed that both third-party helping as well as third-party punishing activated the bilateral striatum, a region strongly related with reward processing, indicating that both altruistic decisions share a common neuronal basis. In addition, also different networks were involved in the two processes compared with control conditions; bilateral striatum and the right lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) during helping and bilateral striatum as well as left lPFC and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during punishment. Further we found that individual differences in empathic concern influenced whether people prefer to help or to punish. People with high empathic concern helped more frequently, were faster in their decision and showed higher activation in frontoparietal regions during helping compared with punishing. Our findings provide insights into the neuronal basis of human altruistic behavior and social norm enforcement mechanism.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4332347/
_version_	1613189775793061888

Helping or punishing strangers: neural correlates of altruistic decisions as third-party and of its relation to empathic concern

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