1. Value-based neural representations predict social decision preferences.
- Author
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Guassi Moreira JF, Méndez Leal AS, Waizman YH, Tashjian SM, Galván A, and Silvers JA
- Subjects
- Humans, Friends, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Decision Making, Social Behavior
- Abstract
Social decision-making is omnipresent in everyday life, carrying the potential for both positive and negative consequences for the decision-maker and those closest to them. While evidence suggests that decision-makers use value-based heuristics to guide choice behavior, very little is known about how decision-makers' representations of other agents influence social choice behavior. We used multivariate pattern expression analyses on fMRI data to understand how value-based processes shape neural representations of those affected by one's social decisions and whether value-based encoding is associated with social decision preferences. We found that stronger value-based encoding of a given close other (e.g. parent) relative to a second close other (e.g. friend) was associated with a greater propensity to favor the former during subsequent social decision-making. These results are the first to our knowledge to explicitly show that value-based processes affect decision behavior via representations of close others., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Published
- 2023
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