Carlson Ryan W, Aknin Lara B, Liotti Mario
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2016 Jul;11(7):1121-9. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsv077. Epub 2015 Jun 17.
Human prosociality is often assumed to emerge from exerting reflective control over initial, selfish impulses. However, recent findings suggest that prosocial actions can also stem from processes that are fast, automatic and intuitive. Here, we attempt to clarify when prosocial behavior may be intuitive by examining prosociality as a form of reward seeking. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we explored whether a neural signature that rapidly encodes the motivational salience of an event-the P300-can predict intuitive prosocial motivation. Participants allocated varying amounts of money between themselves and charities they initially labelled as high- or low-empathy targets under conditions that promoted intuitive or reflective decision making. Consistent with our predictions, P300 amplitude over centroparietal regions was greater when giving involved high-empathy targets than low-empathy targets, but only when deciding under intuitive conditions. Reflective conditions, alternatively, elicited an earlier frontocentral positivity related to response inhibition, regardless of target. Our findings suggest that during prosocial decision making, larger P300 amplitude could (i) signal intuitive prosocial motivation and (ii) predict subsequent engagement in prosocial behavior. This work offers novel insight into when prosociality may be driven by intuitive processes and the roots of such behaviors.
人们通常认为人类的亲社会行为源于对最初的自私冲动施加反思性控制。然而，最近的研究结果表明，亲社会行为也可能源于快速、自动和直观的过程。在这里，我们试图通过将亲社会行为视为一种寻求奖励的形式来阐明何时亲社会行为可能是直观的。使用事件相关电位（ERP），我们探讨了一种快速编码事件动机显著性的神经特征——P300——是否能够预测直观的亲社会动机。参与者在促进直观或反思性决策的条件下，在自己和他们最初标记为高同理心或低同理心目标的慈善机构之间分配不同数量的金钱。与我们的预测一致，当给予涉及高同理心目标而非低同理心目标时，中央顶叶区域的P300波幅更大，但仅在直观条件下做出决策时如此。相反，反思性条件会引发与反应抑制相关的更早的额中央正波，与目标无关。我们的研究结果表明，在亲社会决策过程中，更大的P300波幅可能（i）表明直观的亲社会动机，以及（ii）预测随后参与亲社会行为。这项工作为亲社会行为何时可能由直观过程驱动以及此类行为的根源提供了新的见解。
