Abstract
The field of social neuroscience has made considerable progress in unraveling the neural correlates of human cooperation by making use of brain imaging methods. Within this field, neuroeconomic research has drawn on paradigms from experimental economics, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) and the Trust Game. These paradigms capture the topic of conflict in cooperation, while focusing strongly on outcome-related decision processes. Cooperation, however, does not equate with that perspective, but relies on additional psychological processes and events, including shared intentions and mutually coordinated joint action. These additional facets of cooperation have been successfully addressed by research in developmental psychology, cognitive science, and social philosophy. Corresponding neuroimaging data, however, is still sparse. Therefore, in this paper, we present a juxtaposition of these mutually related but mostly independent trends in cooperation research. We propose that the neuroscientific study of cooperation could benefit from paradigms and concepts employed in developmental psychology and social philosophy. Bringing both to a neuroimaging environment might allow studying the neural correlates of cooperation by using formal models of decision-making as well as capturing the neural responses that underlie joint action scenarios, thus, promising to advance our understanding of the nature of human cooperation.
Highlights
Human cultural knowledge and social institutions are unique features that cannot be found in other species
We propose that the neuroscientific study of cooperation could benefit from paradigms and concepts employed in developmental psychology and social philosophy
NEUROECONOMICS AND SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE Neuroeconomics has emerged as a multi-disciplinary field in which psychologists, biologists, economists, and neuroscientists join their efforts to investigate the neural basis of decision-making processes that come into play during social interaction
Summary
From a neurobiological perspective, accumulating evidence suggests that the comparatively large human brain did not evolve driven mainly by the need to explore and exploit the inert physical environment, but much rather the dynamic social environment (Humphrey, 1976) In support of this “social brain hypothesis,” the relative size of the neocortex in primates statistically correlates with the complexity of their social systems, that is, the social group or grooming clique size, the frequency of coalitions, and strategic deception (Dunbar, 1993; Dunbar and Shultz, 2007). NEUROECONOMICS AND SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE Neuroeconomics has emerged as a multi-disciplinary field in which psychologists, biologists, economists, and neuroscientists join their efforts to investigate the neural basis of decision-making processes that come into play during social interaction In this context, “social” neuroeconomics have employed paradigms that are often borrowed from behavioral game theory, which provides formal accounts of strategic interaction. Healthy subjects were compared with subjects suffering from psychiatric conditions, e.g., autism-spectrum disorder (Sally and Hill, 2006), borderline-personality disorders (King-Casas et al, 2008), and conduct disorder (Rilling et al, 2007)
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