Department of Social Psychology and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Oct 15;40(15):4508-4517. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24717. Epub 2019 Jul 16.
Contributing to and maintaining public goods are important for a functioning society. In reality, however, we see large variations in contribution behavior. While some individuals are not cooperative, others are highly so. Still others cooperate only to the extent they believe others will. Although these distinct behavioral types clearly have a divergent social impact, the sources of heterogeneity are poorly understood. We used source-localized resting electroencephalography in combination with a model-free clustering approach to participants' behavior in the Public Goods Game to explain heterogeneity. Findings revealed that compared to noncooperators, both conditional cooperators and unconditional cooperators are characterized by higher baseline activation in the right temporo-parietal junction, an area involved in social cognition. Interestingly, conditional cooperators were further characterized by higher baseline activation in the left lateral prefrontal cortex, an area involved in behavioral control. Our findings suggest that conditional cooperators' better capacities for behavioral control enable them to control their propensity to cooperate and thus to minimize the risk of exploitation by noncooperators.
为公共产品做贡献和维护公共产品对一个正常运转的社会很重要。然而，在现实中，我们看到人们的贡献行为存在很大差异。一些人不合作，而另一些人则非常合作。还有一些人只在他们认为别人会合作的程度上合作。尽管这些不同的行为类型显然对社会有不同的影响，但它们的异质性来源还知之甚少。我们使用基于源的静息态脑电图，并结合无模型聚类方法，对公共物品游戏中参与者的行为进行分析，以解释这种异质性。研究结果表明，与不合作者相比，条件合作者和无条件合作者的右侧颞顶联合区的基线激活水平更高，该区域与社会认知有关。有趣的是，条件合作者的左侧外侧前额叶皮层的基线激活水平更高，该区域与行为控制有关。我们的研究结果表明，条件合作者更好的行为控制能力使他们能够控制自己合作的倾向，从而最大限度地降低被不合作者剥削的风险。
