Social Intelligence and Altruism

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-185
Author(s):  
Daeyeol Lee
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Social Decision Making

According to the social intelligence hypothesis, the unusual enlargement of primate brains, including the human brain, was driven by the complexity of social decision-making primates face in their societies. Social decision-making is fundamentally more complex due to the recursive nature of social reasoning. This chapter begins with the review of game theory and illustrates how game theory has transformed neuroscience research on social decision-making. Some of the topics covered include the supposed death of game theory, altruism and its dark side, cooperation, the theory of the mind, the prisoner’s dilemma, the recursive mind, and the social brain.

scholarly journals Cooperation and the evolution of intelligence

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1740) ◽  
pp. 3027-3034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke McNally ◽  
Sam P. Brown ◽  
Andrew L. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Artificial Neural Network Model ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Selection Pressures ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Selection For

The high levels of intelligence seen in humans, other primates, certain cetaceans and birds remain a major puzzle for evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists. It has long been held that social interactions provide the selection pressures necessary for the evolution of advanced cognitive abilities (the ‘social intelligence hypothesis’), and in recent years decision-making in the context of cooperative social interactions has been conjectured to be of particular importance. Here we use an artificial neural network model to show that selection for efficient decision-making in cooperative dilemmas can give rise to selection pressures for greater cognitive abilities, and that intelligent strategies can themselves select for greater intelligence, leading to a Machiavellian arms race. Our results provide mechanistic support for the social intelligence hypothesis, highlight the potential importance of cooperative behaviour in the evolution of intelligence and may help us to explain the distribution of cooperation with intelligence across taxa.

scholarly journals Pain and social decision-making: New insights from the social framing effect

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruolei Gu ◽  
Jie Liu ◽  
Fang Cui
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Brain Area ◽  
Framing Effect ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Social Emotions ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Decision Making

This paper focuses on the social function of painful experience as revealed by recent studies on social decision-making. Observing others suffering from physical pain evokes empathic reactions that can lead to prosocial behavior (e.g., helping others at a cost to oneself), which might be regarded as the social value of pain derived from evolution. Feelings of guilt may also be elicited when one takes responsibility for another’s pain. These social emotions play a significant role in various cognitive processes and may affect behavioral preferences. In addition, the influence of others’ pain on decision-making is highly sensitive to social context. Combining neuroimaging techniques with a novel decision paradigm, we found that when asking participants to trade-off personal benefits against providing help to other people, verbally describing the causal relationship between their decision and other people’s pain (i.e., framing) significantly changed participants’ preferences. This social framing effect was associated with neural activation in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), which is a brain area that is important in social cognition and in social emotions. Further, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on this region successfully modulated the magnitude of the social framing effect. These findings add to the knowledge about the role of perception of others’ pain in our social life.

scholarly journals Prosocial Influence and Opportunistic Conformity in Adolescents and Young Adults

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (12) ◽  
pp. 1585-1601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Chierchia ◽  
Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer ◽  
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Charitable Donations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Value Of Money

Adolescence is associated with heightened social influence, especially from peers. This can lead to detrimental decision-making in domains such as risky behavior but may also raise opportunities for prosocial behavior. We used an incentivized charitable-donations task to investigate how people revise decisions after learning about the donations of others and how this is affected by age ( N = 220; age range = 11–35 years). Our results showed that the probability of social influence decreased with age within this age range. In addition, whereas previous research has suggested that adults are more likely to conform to the behavior of selfish others than to the behavior of prosocial others, here we observed no evidence of such an asymmetry in midadolescents. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings in relation to the social context of the task, the perceived value of money, and social decision-making across development.

scholarly journals Age and sex differences in oxytocin and vasopressin V1a receptor binding densities in the rat brain: focus on the social decision-making network

2016 ◽  
Vol 222 (2) ◽  
pp. 981-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline J. W. Smith ◽  
Max L. Poehlmann ◽  
Sara Li ◽  
Aarane M. Ratnaseelan ◽  
Remco Bredewold ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sex Differences ◽  
Rat Brain ◽  
Receptor Binding ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
V1a Receptor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vasopressin V1a Receptor ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Age And Sex

Social Decision-Making: Insights from Game Theory and Neuroscience

Science ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 318 (5850) ◽  
pp. 598-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan G. Sanfey
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Affective Factors ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Competitive Games ◽  
Social Decision Making

By combining the models and tasks of Game Theory with modern psychological and neuroscientific methods, the neuroeconomic approach to the study of social decision-making has the potential to extend our knowledge of brain mechanisms involved in social decisions and to advance theoretical models of how we make decisions in a rich, interactive environment. Research has already begun to illustrate how social exchange can act directly on the brain's reward system, how affective factors play an important role in bargaining and competitive games, and how the ability to assess another's intentions is related to strategic play. These findings provide a fruitful starting point for improved models of social decision-making, informed by the formal mathematical approach of economics and constrained by known neural mechanisms.

scholarly journals Pair Bond-Induced Affiliation and Aggression in Male Prairie Voles Elicit Distinct Functional Connectivity in the Social Decision-Making Network

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle R. Gossman ◽  
Benjamin Dykstra ◽  
Byron H. García ◽  
Arielle P. Swopes ◽  
Adam Kimbrough ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Prairie Voles ◽  
Correlation Pattern ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Encounter ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Decision Making

Complex social behaviors are governed by a neural network theorized to be the social decision-making network (SDMN). However, this theoretical network is not tested on functional grounds. Here, we assess the organization of regions in the SDMN using c-Fos, to generate functional connectivity models during specific social interactions in a socially monogamous rodent, the prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). Male voles displayed robust selective affiliation toward a female partner, while exhibiting increased threatening, vigilant, and physically aggressive behaviors toward novel males and females. These social interactions increased c-Fos levels in eight of the thirteen brain regions of the SDMN. Each social encounter generated a distinct correlation pattern between individual brain regions. Thus, hierarchical clustering was used to characterize interrelated regions with similar c-Fos activity resulting in discrete network modules. Functional connectivity maps were constructed to emulate the network dynamics resulting from each social encounter. Our partner functional connectivity network presents similarities to the theoretical SDMN model, along with connections in the network that have been implicated in partner-directed affiliation. However, both stranger female and male networks exhibited distinct architecture from one another and the SDMN. Further, the stranger-evoked networks demonstrated connections associated with threat, physical aggression, and other aversive behaviors. Together, this indicates that distinct patterns of functional connectivity in the SDMN can be detected during select social encounters.

scholarly journals Human and macaque pairs coordinate differently in a dyadic decision game with face-to-face action visibility

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Möller ◽  
Anton M. Unakafov ◽  
Julia Fischer ◽  
Alexander Gail ◽  
Stefan Treue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Real World ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Dynamic Coordination ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Transparent Display ◽  
Social Decision Making

AbstractInteractions of group-living primates with conspecifics range from cooperation to competition. Game theory allows testing the strategies that underlie such interactions, but in classical theory, agents act simultaneously or sequentially. Many real-world decisions, however, are made while directly observing partner’s actions. To investigate social decision-making under conditions of face-to-face action visibility, we developed a setup where two agents observe each other and reach to targets on a shared transparent display, enabling naturalistic interactions we call “transparent games”. Here we compared human and macaque pairs in the transparent version of the coordination game “Bach or Stravinsky”, which rewards coordination but entails the conflict about which of the two individually-preferred coordinated options to choose. Most human pairs developed coordinated behavior, and 53% adopted dynamic coordination via turn-taking to equalize the payoffs. All macaque pairs also converged on coordination, but in a simpler, static way: persistently selecting one of the two coordinated options or one of the two display sides. Two animals that underwent training with a turn-taking human confederate learned to coordinate dynamically. When tested as a pair, they mostly converged on the faster monkey’s preferred option, and a dynamic coordination emerged as animals spontaneously took turns in leading to their respective preferred option and following to the other’s. The observed choices were captured by modeling a probability to see the other’s action before own movement. Importantly, such competitive turn-taking was unlike the benevolent turn-taking in humans, who equally often initiated switches to and from their preferred option. Our findings demonstrate that dynamic coordination is not restricted to humans – although it serves a selfish motivation in macaques – and emphasize the importance of action visibility in the emergence and maintenance of coordination.

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