Complex Social Decisions Research Articles

Expert adoption of composite indices: a randomized experiment on migrant resettlement decisions in Bangladesh

In settings where complex social decisions are made, information is often aggregated into indices to facilitate decision making. The value added of such composite indices depends, inter alia, on the extent to which decision makers trust and make use of them. This paper presents a randomized experiment on the use of an index designed to inform migrant resettlement decisions, using 410 graduate students in Bangladesh as respondents. Respondents were randomly assigned to control and treatment conditions. In the control group, respondents faced a discrete choice experiment where they were asked to allocate 1000 migrants between two locations described by five attributes (availability of cropland, distance to hospital, distance to school, poverty incidence, frequency of floods, droughts and cyclones). In the treatment group, respondents also had access to the migrant resettlement index for the two locations. Results show that the resettlement index is used by the respondents, and mechanism analyses suggest this is due to perceptions of improved benefits to costs from using the index to make decisions. Results from the control group also suggest that past adverse environmental events are particularly important for resettlement decisions, but less so for respondents who grew up in areas where such events were frequent.

Insecure and insensitive: Avoidant and anxious attachment predict less concern for others in sacrificial moral dilemmas

Developmentally calibrated, adult attachment guides social decision making. We examined how insecure attachment styles relate to complex social decisions—moral dilemmas. Prior work failed to dissociate deontological (harm-rejecting) from utilitarian (outcome-maximizing) decisions, treating them as inversely related. Using process dissociation, we found avoidant attachment predicted less harm rejection—partially through lower empathic concern—whereas anxious attachment was not associated with moral responses across two samples (Study 1). Measuring attachment via inclusive multi-scale composites, we replicated the finding that people high in avoidance rejected harm less often, and also found that people high in anxious attachment rejected harm and maximized wellbeing less often (Study 2, preregistered). These relationships were mediated by lower empathic concern, lower desire to help others, and higher need to belong. Insecure attachment, whether avoidant or anxious, may distract from the emotional and moral concerns involved in avoiding harming others and increasing their wellbeing.

Participatory design and qualitative evaluation of a decision guide for workplace human immunodeficiency virus self-disclosure: The importance of a socio-ecological perspective.

BackgroundDisclosure of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)‐positive status in a workplace can be a complex social decision for a person living with HIV.ObjectiveTo design a Decision Guide to support people living with HIV in assessing contexts, risks and benefits of workplace disclosure in choosing whether or not, or to what extent, to disclose. In this report, we review the participatory design of a Decision Guide prototype and focus on its evaluation.MethodsWe began with stakeholder input through an environmental scan and community consultation that informed the development of an online Decision Guide prototype. To evaluate the comprehensiveness, acceptability and usability of the prototype, we used qualitative methodology involving individual interviews and the think‐aloud technique. Interviews were transcribed and analysed qualitatively.ResultsFourteen people, including people living with HIV and service providers, participated. We identified benefits of the Decision Guide related to comprehensiveness, acceptability and usability. Additional interview themes focused on disclosure concerns, mitigating risks associated with disclosure and additional considerations for the Decision Guide.ConclusionsThe Decision Guide was perceived to be acceptable, comprehensive and useful. The findings endorse the application of a socio‐ecological perspective when designing decision support aids for complex social decisions.Patient or public contributionPeople with lived experience of HIV were involved in the prototype design phases as research team members. They, along with community leaders and service providers, also participated in a community forum and were key informants for the evaluation of the Workplace Disclosure Decision Guide prototype.

The neural underpinnings of allocentric thinking in a novel signaling task

The ability to adopt the perspectives of others is fundamental to effective communication in social interactions. However, the neural correlates of allocentric thinking in communicative signaling remain unclear. We adapted a novel signaling task in which the signaler was given the target word and must choose a one-word signal to help the receiver guess the target. Behavioral results suggest that speakers can use allocentric thinking to choose signals that are salient from the perspective of the receiver rather than their own point of view. At the neural level, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data reveal that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), ventral striatum, and temporal-parietal junction are more activated when signalers engage in allocentric than egocentric thinking. Moreover, functional connectivity between the mPFC and ventral striatum predicted individuals’ perspective-taking ability during successful communication. These findings reveal that neural representations in the mPFC-striatum network support perspective-taking in complex social decision making, providing a new perspective on how the brain arbitrates between allocentric thinking and egocentric thinking in communication and social coordination.

Computing Social Value Conversion in the Human Brain.

Social signals play powerful roles in shaping self-oriented reward valuation and decision making. These signals activate social and valuation/decision areas, but the core computation for their integration into the self-oriented decision machinery remains unclear. Here, we study how a fundamental social signal, social value (others' reward value), is converted into self-oriented decision making in the human brain. Using behavioral analysis, modeling, and neuroimaging, we show three-stage processing of social value conversion from the offer to the effective value and then to the final decision value. First, a value of others' bonus on offer, called offered value, was encoded uniquely in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) and also in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (ldlPFC), which is commonly activated by offered self-bonus value. The effective value, an intermediate value representing the effective influence of the offer on the decision, was represented in the right anterior insula (rAI), and the final decision value was encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Second, using psychophysiological interaction and dynamic causal modeling analyses, we demonstrated three-stage feedforward processing from the rTPJ and ldPFC to the rAI and then from rAI to the mPFC. Further, we showed that these characteristics of social conversion underlie distinct sociobehavioral phenotypes. We demonstrate that the variability in the conversion underlies the difference between prosocial and selfish subjects, as seen from the differential strength of the rAI and ldlPFC coupling to the mPFC responses, respectively. Together, these findings identified fundamental neural computation processes for social value conversion underlying complex social decision making behaviors.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In daily life, we make decisions based on self-interest, but also in consideration for others' status. These social influences modulate valuation and decision signals in the brain, suggesting a fundamental process called value conversion that translates social information into self-referenced decisions. However, little is known about the conversion process and its underlying brain mechanisms. We investigated value conversion using human fMRI with computational modeling and found three essential stages in a progressive brain circuit from social to empathic and decision areas. Interestingly, the brain mechanism of conversion differed between prosocial and individualistic subjects. These findings reveal how the brain processes and merges social information into the elemental flow of self-interested decision making.

Losing without Fighting - Simple Aversive Stimulation Induces Submissiveness Typical for Social Defeat via the Action of Nitric Oxide, but Only When Preceded by an Aggression Priming Stimulus.

Losing a fight (social defeat) induces submissiveness and behavioral depression in many animals, but the mechanisms are unclear. Here we investigate how the social defeat syndrome can be established as a result of experiencing aversive stimuli and the roles of neuromodulators in the process. While biogenic amines and nitric oxide (NO) are associated with reduced aggression in mammals and insects, their specific actions during conflict are unknown. Although the social defeat syndrome normally results from complex interactions, we could induce it in male crickets simply by applying aversive stimuli (AS) in an aggressive context. Aggressive crickets became immediately submissive and behaved like losers after experiencing two brief AS (light wind puffs to the cerci), but only when preceded by a priming stimulus (PS, stroking the antenna with another male antenna). Notably, submissiveness was not induced when the PS preceded the AS by more than 1 min, or when the PS followed the AS, or using a female antenna as the preceding stimulus. These findings suggest that any potentially detrimental stimulus can acquire the attribute of an aversive agonistic signal when experienced in an aggressive context. Crickets, it seems, need only to evaluate their net sensory impact rather than the qualities of a variety of complex agonistic signals. Selective drug treatments revealed that NO, but not serotonin, dopamine or octopamine, is necessary to establish the submissive status following pairing of the priming and aversive stimuli. Moreover, treatment with an NO donor also induced the social defeat syndrome, but only when combined with the PS. This confirms our hypothesis that aversive agonistic experiences accumulated by crickets during fighting invoke social defeat via the action of NO and illustrates that a relatively simple mechanism underlies the seemingly complex social decision to flee. The simple stimulus regime described here for inducing social defeat opens new avenues for investigating the cellular control of subordinate behavior and post-conflict depression.

The cost of social punishment and high-lethality suicide attempts in the second half of life.

Age-related cognitive changes may contribute to impairments in making complex social decisions. Interpersonal conflict is a key factor behind suicidal behavior in old age, with suicidal motivations ranging from escape to revenge. Such conflicts may prove catastrophic for people prone to suicide, in part because of their tendency to make disadvantageous decisions. Yet, little is known about social decision making in older suicidal individuals. We assessed economic bargaining behavior using the Ultimatum Game, where players decide whether to accept or punish (reject) unfair monetary offers from another player. Our sample included depressed older adults with a history of high-medical-lethality suicide attempts, low-medical-lethality suicide attempts, nonsuicidal depressed older adults, and those with no psychiatric history who served as control groups. Participants in all groups punished their counterparts in response to unfair offers. However, low-lethality attempters, nonsuicidal depressed, and nonpsychiatric controls punished less as the cost of punishment increased, accepting more unfair offers as the stakes grew large. High-lethality attempters did not adjust their choices based on stake magnitude, punishing unfair offers without regard to the cost. Two thirds of the difference between the high-lethality attempters and nonpsychiatric controls was explained by individual differences in fairness judgments: the comparison group judged offer fairness as a joint function of inequality and magnitude, whereas the high-lethality attempter participants judged offer fairness on the basis of inequality. In real life, high-lethality attempters' relative insensitivity to the cost of retaliation may lead to uncompromising, catastrophic responses to conflict.

Neural Mechanisms of Belief Inference during Cooperative Games

Humans have the arguably unique ability to understand the mental representations of others. For success in both competitive and cooperative interactions, however, this ability must be extended to include representations of others' belief about our intentions, their model about our belief about their intentions, and so on. We developed a "stag hunt" game in which human subjects interacted with a computerized agent using different degrees of sophistication (recursive inferences) and applied an ecologically valid computational model of dynamic belief inference. We show that rostral medial prefrontal (paracingulate) cortex, a brain region consistently identified in psychological tasks requiring mentalizing, has a specific role in encoding the uncertainty of inference about the other's strategy. In contrast, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex encodes the depth of recursion of the strategy being used, an index of executive sophistication. These findings reveal putative computational representations within prefrontal cortex regions, supporting the maintenance of cooperation in complex social decision making.

Value Computations in Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex during Charitable Decision Making Incorporate Input from Regions Involved in Social Cognition

Little is known about the neural networks supporting value computation during complex social decisions. We investigated this question using functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects made donations to different charities. We found that the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal in ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) correlated with the subjective value of voluntary donations. Furthermore, the region of the VMPFC identified showed considerable overlap with regions that have been shown to encode for the value of basic rewards at the time of choice, suggesting that it might serve as a common valuation system during decision making. In addition, functional connectivity analyses indicated that the value signal in VMPFC might integrate inputs from networks, including the anterior insula and posterior superior temporal cortex, that are thought to be involved in social cognition.

Preferential Amygdala Reactivity to the Negative Assessment of Neutral Faces

Prior studies suggest that the amygdala shapes complex behavioral responses to socially ambiguous cues. We explored human amygdala function during explicit behavioral decision making about discrete emotional facial expressions that can represent socially unambiguous and ambiguous cues. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, 43 healthy adults were required to make complex social decisions (i.e., approach or avoid) about either relatively unambiguous (i.e., angry, fearful, happy) or ambiguous (i.e., neutral) facial expressions. Amygdala activation during this task was compared with that elicited by simple, perceptual decisions (sex discrimination) about the identical facial stimuli. Angry and fearful expressions were more frequently judged as avoidable and happy expressions most often as approachable. Neutral expressions were equally judged as avoidable and approachable. Reaction times to neutral expressions were longer than those to angry, fearful, and happy expressions during social judgment only. Imaging data on stimuli judged to be avoided revealed a significant task by emotion interaction in the amygdala. Here, only neutral facial expressions elicited greater activity during social judgment than during sex discrimination. Furthermore, during social judgment only, neutral faces judged to be avoided were associated with greater amygdala activity relative to neutral faces that were judged as approachable. Moreover, functional coupling between the amygdala and both dorsolateral prefrontal (social judgment > sex discrimination) and cingulate (sex discrimination > social judgment) cortices was differentially modulated by task during processing of neutral faces. Our results suggest that increased amygdala reactivity and differential functional coupling with prefrontal circuitries may shape complex decisions and behavioral responses to socially ambiguous cues.

Game theory and neural basis of social decision making

Decision making in a social group has two distinguishing features. First, humans and other animals routinely alter their behavior in response to changes in their physical and social environment. As a result, the outcomes of decisions that depend on the behavior of multiple decision makers are difficult to predict and require highly adaptive decision-making strategies. Second, decision makers may have preferences regarding consequences to other individuals and therefore choose their actions to improve or reduce the well-being of others. Many neurobiological studies have exploited game theory to probe the neural basis of decision making and suggested that these features of social decision making might be reflected in the functions of brain areas involved in reward evaluation and reinforcement learning. Molecular genetic studies have also begun to identify genetic mechanisms for personal traits related to reinforcement learning and complex social decision making, further illuminating the biological basis of social behavior.

Complex social decision scheme models

Expressions are developed for the probability that a group chooses a particular course of action in each of four complex social decision scheme models: majority with proportionality, majority with equiprobability, plurality with proportionality and plurality with equiprobability. A method of discriminating by experiment among a number of social decision scheme models is suggested involving, where feasible, experimenter manipulation of individual member preference probabilities.

The physical and the social foundations of technology

A conceptual framework for the analysis of various aspects of technology is indicated. The following points are discussed in succession: Science and technology, the transformation of input variables into output variables, technology as a means, the quasi-autonomy of technological progress. The analysis of the various factors delimiting the given technological possibilities and the investigation of the processes leading to the realization of a certain selection of these possibilities brings the technical and the social aspect together. In this way the assessment implied in the choice among alternative ways of instrumental action becomes evident, and the application of a certain technology can be reconstructed as resulting from a complex social decision.

Changing Responsibilities of the Professional Engineer in Public Works

Public works as a subject covers planning, well as construction. Professional engineers in public works must broaden their base of knowledge to participate in complex social decisions. Value engineering and innovation are a key to meeting today’s demands. Waste, pollution, and concern for the environment are growing public problems. For the engineer to continue work and deal successfully with critics, leadership and communication are vital. Motivation of skilled people to be creative and to innovate is a high priority need. Value engineering practice to establish goals and to reward results is a sound policy in public works. The news media, legislators, voters organizations, and other sectors of society are becoming an increasing force in the development of public works programs.