Distinct behavioral effects and neural mechanisms of reciprocal reputation on cooperative decision-making in gain and loss context

Cooperation is essential for society’s functioning, while reciprocity is one of the most critical factors for establishing and maintaining cooperative social relationships. Until now, however, the majority of studies exploring human social cooperation were in a sharing gain frame. The present study investigates the behavioral effects and neural correlates of other people’s prior history of reciprocal reputation on cooperative decisions in both gain and loss contexts. 39 Chinese adult subjects participated in the study. Participants first played a Trust Game as Trustee to understand how we quantify the reciprocal reputation and then joined a modified Public Goods Game framed in gain and loss contexts with partners with various reciprocity levels. Behaviorally, individuals tended to be more cooperative with higher reciprocal reputation partners than lower ones, contributing a higher percentage of gain and a lower percentage of loss to the public pool. This effect was robust, especially in the gain context. Trial-wise mixed-effect regression results further demonstrated that the reciprocal reputation on cooperative decisions was more salient in the gain context than the loss context. Neurally, trial-wise parametric modulation analysis revealed two distinct neural systems that right anterior insula in the gain context and bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL, including precuneus), left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), bilateral superior frontal gyrus (SFG), are positively correlated with partner’s reciprocal reputation. Based on the behavioral and neural results, we propose that individuals use a social heuristic preference-based mechanism in the gain context while involving more strategic or reasoning concerns in the loss context in processing others’ social reputation when making cooperative decisions in PGG. Furthermore, during the decision phase, cooperating with higher reputation individuals in the gain context increased the bilateral striatum activation, and the activation in the bilateral striatum function as a neural modulator of this effect only in the gain context. Finally, parametric modulation analysis using contribution as the modulator revealed the dorsal anterior cingulate context (dACC) in the gain context that suggested that the prefrontal cortex plays a vital role in computing the action values while making decisions in PGG. The current results contribute empirical evidence to our understanding of human cooperation from a new angle, through social interactions in a loss frame.

Graded Empathy: A Neuro-Phenomenological Hypothesis

The neuroscience of empathy has enormously expanded in the past two decades, thereby making instrumental progress for the understanding of neural substrates involved in affective and cognitive aspects of empathy. Yet, these conclusions have relied on ultrasimplified tasks resulting in the affective/cognitive dichotomy that was often modeled and overemphasized in pathological, developmental, and genetic studies of empathy. As such, the affective/cognitive model of empathy could not straightforwardly accommodate and explain the recent surge of neuroscientific data obtained from studies employing naturalistic approaches and intergroup conditions. Inspired by phenomenological philosophy, this article paves the way for a new scientific perspective on empathy that breaks thorough the affective/cognitive dichotomy. This neuro-phenomenological account leans on phenomenological analyses and can straightforwardly explain recent neuroscience data. It emphasizes the dynamic, subjective, and piecemeal features of empathic experiences and unpicks the graded nature of empathy. The graded empathy hypothesis postulates that attending to others' expressions always facilitates empathy, but the parametric modulation in the levels of the empathic experience varies as a function of one's social interest (e.g., via intergroup or inter-personal cues) in the observed other. Drawing on multiple resources that integrate neuroscience with phenomenology, we describe the potential of this graded framework in an era of real-life experimentation. By wearing lenses of neuro-phenomenology, this original perspective can change the way empathy is considered.