The neural basis of responsibility attribution in decision-making

PLoS One. 2013 Nov 5;8(11):e80389. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080389. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Social responsibility links personal behavior with societal expectations and plays a key role in affecting an agent's emotional state following a decision. However, the neural basis of responsibility attribution remains unclear. In two previous event-related brain potential (ERP) studies we found that personal responsibility modulated outcome evaluation in gambling tasks. Here we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to identify particular brain regions that mediate responsibility attribution. In a context involving team cooperation, participants completed a task with their teammates and on each trial received feedback about team success and individual success sequentially. We found that brain activity differed between conditions involving team success vs. team failure. Further, different brain regions were associated with reinforcement of behavior by social praise vs. monetary reward. Specifically, right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) was associated with social pride whereas dorsal striatum and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were related to reinforcement of behaviors leading to personal gain. The present study provides evidence that the RTPJ is an important region for determining whether self-generated behaviors are deserving of praise in a social context.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Brain / physiology
  • Decision Making / physiology*
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC31300872, 81171289), and the Special Public-welfare Project of the Ministry of Health (201002003) and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant (RGPIN 312409-05), and MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (13YJC190013). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.