Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Human Movement Science, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg 20146, Germany; Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria.
Queen's Neuroeconomics Laboratory, Departments of Psychology and Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada.
Neuroimage. 2023 Oct 1;279:120315. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120315. Epub 2023 Aug 7.
Socioeconomic status (SES), a concept related to an individual's economic and social position relative to others, can shape social interactions like altruistic behaviors. However, little is known about the exact neurocognitive mechanisms that link SES with altruism. Our study aimed to provide a comprehensive account of the sociocognitive and neural mechanisms through which SES affects charitable giving - an important variant of human altruism. To this end, participants completed a charitable donation task while their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We also assessed participants' socio-cognitive ability to infer other people's mental states (i.e., mentalizing) - a driver of prosocial behavior - in an independent social task. Behaviorally, we found that both charitable giving and social cognition were status-dependent, as subjective SES positively predicted donations and mentalizing capacity. Moreover, the link between SES and charitable giving was mediated by individuals' mentalizing capacity. At the neural level, a multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data revealed that higher subjective SES was associated with stronger value coding in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). The strength of this value representation predicted charitable giving and was linked to mentalizing. Furthermore, we observed an increased negative functional coupling between rTPJ and left putamen with higher SES. Together, increased charitable giving in higher-status individuals could be explained by status-dependent recruitment of mentalizing-related value coding and altered functional connectivity in the brain. Our findings provide insights into the socio- and neurocognitive mechanisms explaining why and when higher SES leads to prosociality, which might ultimately inform targeted interventions to promote prosocial behavior in human societies.
社会经济地位（SES）是一个与个体相对于他人的经济和社会地位相关的概念，它可以塑造社会互动，如利他行为。然而，人们对 SES 与利他主义相关的确切神经认知机制知之甚少。我们的研究旨在全面描述 SES 影响慈善捐赠的社会认知和神经机制，慈善捐赠是人类利他主义的一个重要变体。为此，参与者在完成慈善捐赠任务的同时，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量他们的大脑活动。我们还评估了参与者在独立的社会任务中推断他人心理状态（即心理化）的社会认知能力，心理化是亲社会行为的驱动因素。行为上，我们发现慈善捐赠和社会认知都是依赖于地位的，因为主观 SES 积极预测捐赠和心理化能力。此外，SES 和慈善捐赠之间的联系是通过个体的心理化能力来介导的。在神经水平上，对 fMRI 数据的多元模式分析显示，更高的主观 SES 与右颞顶联合区（rTPJ）更强的价值编码相关。这种价值表示的强度预测了慈善捐赠，并与心理化相关。此外，我们观察到随着 SES 的增加，rTPJ 和左壳核之间的负功能耦合增加。总之，高 SES 个体的慈善捐赠增加可以用依赖于地位的心理化相关价值编码的募集和大脑中功能连接的改变来解释。我们的发现为解释为什么和何时更高的 SES 导致亲社会行为提供了社会认知和神经认知机制的见解，这可能最终为人类社会中促进亲社会行为的有针对性干预提供信息。
