Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment
Empirical evidence indicates that people are inequity averse. However, it is unclear whether and how suffering unfairness impacts subsequent behavior. We investigated the consequences of unfair treatment in subsequent interactions with new interaction partners and the associated neural mechanisms. P...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350402/ |
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pubmed-43504022015-03-20 Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment Wu, Yan Zang, Yufeng Yuan, Binke Tian, Xuehong Neuroscience Empirical evidence indicates that people are inequity averse. However, it is unclear whether and how suffering unfairness impacts subsequent behavior. We investigated the consequences of unfair treatment in subsequent interactions with new interaction partners and the associated neural mechanisms. Participants were experimentally manipulated to experience fair or unfair treatment in the ultimatum game (UG), and subsequently, they were given the opportunity to retaliate in the dictator game (DG) in their interactions with players who had not played a role in the previous fair or unfair treatment. The results showed that participants dictated less money to unrelated partners after frequently receiving unfair offers in the previous UG (vs. frequently receiving fair offers in the previous UG), but only when they were first exposed to unfair UG/DG. Stronger activation in the right dorsal anterior insula was found during receiving unfair offers and during the subsequent offer-considering phase. The regional homogeneity (ReHo), a measure of the local synchronization of neighboring voxels in resting-state brain activity, in the left ventral anterior insula and left superior temporal pole was positively correlated with the behavior change. These findings suggest that unfair treatment may encourage a spread of unfairness, and that the anterior insula may be not only engaged in signaling social norm violations, but also recruited in guiding subsequent adaptive behaviors. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-03-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4350402/ /pubmed/25798102 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00123 Text en Copyright © 2015 Wu, Zang, Yuan and Tian. 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 |
Wu, Yan Zang, Yufeng Yuan, Binke Tian, Xuehong |
| spellingShingle |
Wu, Yan Zang, Yufeng Yuan, Binke Tian, Xuehong Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| author_facet |
Wu, Yan Zang, Yufeng Yuan, Binke Tian, Xuehong |
| author_sort |
Wu, Yan |
| title |
Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| title_short |
Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| title_full |
Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| title_fullStr |
Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| title_sort |
neural correlates of decision making after unfair treatment |
| description |
Empirical evidence indicates that people are inequity averse. However, it is unclear whether and how suffering unfairness impacts subsequent behavior. We investigated the consequences of unfair treatment in subsequent interactions with new interaction partners and the associated neural mechanisms. Participants were experimentally manipulated to experience fair or unfair treatment in the ultimatum game (UG), and subsequently, they were given the opportunity to retaliate in the dictator game (DG) in their interactions with players who had not played a role in the previous fair or unfair treatment. The results showed that participants dictated less money to unrelated partners after frequently receiving unfair offers in the previous UG (vs. frequently receiving fair offers in the previous UG), but only when they were first exposed to unfair UG/DG. Stronger activation in the right dorsal anterior insula was found during receiving unfair offers and during the subsequent offer-considering phase. The regional homogeneity (ReHo), a measure of the local synchronization of neighboring voxels in resting-state brain activity, in the left ventral anterior insula and left superior temporal pole was positively correlated with the behavior change. These findings suggest that unfair treatment may encourage a spread of unfairness, and that the anterior insula may be not only engaged in signaling social norm violations, but also recruited in guiding subsequent adaptive behaviors. |
| publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350402/ |
| _version_ |
1613195496332984320 |