Abstract

We aimed to differentiate the neural responses to cooperative and competitive contexts, which are the two of the most important social contexts in human society. Healthy male college students were asked to complete a Tetris-like task requiring mental rotation skills under individual, cooperative, and competitive contexts in an fMRI scanner. While the participants completed the task, pictures of others experiencing pain evoking emotional empathy randomly appeared to capture contextual effects on empathic neural responses. Behavioral results indicated that, in the presence of cooperation, participants solved the tasks more accurately and quickly than what they did when in the presence of competition. The fMRI results revealed activations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) related to executive functions and theory of mind when participants performed the task under both cooperative and competitive contexts, whereas no activation of such areas was observed in the individual context. Cooperation condition exhibited stronger neural responses in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dmPFC than competition condition. Competition condition, however, showed marginal neural responses in the cerebellum and anterior insular cortex (AIC). The two social contexts involved stronger empathic neural responses to other’s pain than the individual context, but no substantial differences between cooperation and competition were present. Regions of interest analyses revealed that individual’s trait empathy modulated the neural activity in the state empathy network, the AIC, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) depending on the social context. These results suggest that cooperation improves task performance and activates neural responses associated with reward and mentalizing. Furthermore, the interaction between trait- and state-empathy was explored by correlation analyses between individual’s trait empathy score and changing empathic brain activations along with the exposure to the cooperative and competitive social contexts.

Highlights

  • Cooperation and competition are the two of the most important social behaviors in human society

  • We found that our hypotheses about the modulation of trait empathy in different contextual effects on neural responses were partially supported in the empathic brain activations during the pain stimuli phase, but not in the brain activations during the task phase

  • We found a marginal correlation between activation in the amygdala and pain ratings while participants were helping the opposite player during the cooperative version of the task

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Summary

Introduction

Cooperation and competition are the two of the most important social behaviors in human society. From a traditional evolutionary perspective, cooperation involves the sharing of resources in order to enhance group security and to ensure reliable access to important resources (Trivers, 1971). Competition involves the monopolization of resources to maximize individual advantages based on the survival of the fittest (Freeman, 1974). A great deal of research has shown that the social interactions associated with cooperation and competition have a lasting effect on human behavior and motivation. Adherents to a humanistic perspective contend that, by leading people toward shared goals, cooperation is more beneficial for human motivation and productivity (e.g., Johnson et al, 1981; Deci and Ryan, 1985; Kohn, 1986). In the face of competition, individuals tend to maximize their potential to overcome their opponents

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