Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St., London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Apr 20;12(1):6477. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-10115-0.
Peer presence can elicit maladaptive adolescent decision-making, potentially by increasing sensitivity to the rewards one receives. It remains unknown whether peer presence also increases adolescents' sensitivity to others' outcomes, which could have an adaptive effect in contexts allowing pro-social behaviors. Here, we combine social utility modeling and real-time decision process modeling to characterize how peer presence alters adolescents' processing of self and other outcomes. We found that adolescents behaved selfishly when privately allocating monetary rewards for themselves and a peer in an incentive-compatible task. In peer presence, however, adolescents became more altruistic. Real-time decision process estimates collected using computer mouse tracking showed that altruistic behavior was associated with relatively earlier influence of peer-outcomes relative to self-outcomes, and that peer presence sped the influence of peer-outcomes without altering the time at which self-outcomes began to influence the decision process. Our results indicate a mechanism through which peer presence prompts greater prosocial behavior by altering how adolescents process prosocial outcomes.
同伴在场可能会诱发青少年做出适应不良的决策，这可能是因为他们对所获得奖励的敏感性增加了。目前尚不清楚同伴在场是否也会增加青少年对他人结果的敏感性，而在允许亲社会行为的情况下，这可能具有适应性效应。在这里，我们结合社会效用建模和实时决策过程建模来描述同伴在场如何改变青少年对自我和他人结果的处理方式。我们发现，青少年在私人分配金钱奖励给自己和同伴的激励相容任务中表现出自私。然而，在同伴在场的情况下，青少年变得更加利他了。使用计算机鼠标跟踪收集的实时决策过程估计表明，利他行为与同伴结果相对较早地影响决策过程有关，而同伴在场加速了同伴结果的影响，而不会改变自我结果开始影响决策过程的时间。我们的研究结果表明，同伴在场通过改变青少年对亲社会结果的处理方式，促使他们表现出更多的亲社会行为。
