Telzer Eva H, Ichien Nicolas, Qu Yang
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA; Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Neuroimage. 2015 Jul 15;115:42-51. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.04.035. Epub 2015 Apr 23.
Across species, including non-human primates, rodents, and humans, prosocial behavior, the act of helping others, is preferentially provided to members of one's own group. Whereas a particularly ubiquitous example of this is kinship, whereby humans and animals expend greater resources and take more risks for their own kin, in-group prosocial behavior has been demonstrated among diverse shared social groups, including race and culture. In the current study, we made group membership salient by recruiting Chinese and American participants to engage in a prosocial decision-making task during fMRI with an American and Chinese confederate. We found across all participants that donations to the in-group relative to out-group was associated with increased activation in the ventral striatum. Moreover, participants with a greater sense of group identity and Chinese participants relative to American participants, showed heightened activation in self-control (VLPFC, ACC) and mentalizing (TPJ, DMPFC) regions when contributing to the out-group relative to in-group. Our findings provide novel evidence about the neural mechanisms involved in intergroup prosocial behavior.
在包括非人类灵长类动物、啮齿动物和人类在内的所有物种中，亲社会行为，即帮助他人的行为，优先给予自己群体的成员。虽然一个特别普遍的例子是亲属关系，即人类和动物为自己的亲属花费更多资源并承担更多风险，但在包括种族和文化在内的各种共享社会群体中，也已证明存在群体内亲社会行为。在当前的研究中，我们通过招募中国和美国参与者，让他们在功能磁共振成像（fMRI）期间与一名美国和一名中国同谋一起参与一项亲社会决策任务，从而使群体成员身份变得显著。我们发现，在所有参与者中，相对于向群体外捐赠，向群体内捐赠与腹侧纹状体激活增加有关。此外，相对于美国参与者，群体认同感更强的参与者以及中国参与者，在相对于群体内向群体外捐赠时，自我控制（腹外侧前额叶皮层、前扣带回）和心理化（颞顶联合区、背内侧前额叶皮层）区域的激活增强。我们的研究结果为群体间亲社会行为所涉及的神经机制提供了新的证据。
