The role of social cognition in decision making

Successful decision making in a social setting depends on our ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The mirror system allows us to understand other people's motor actions and action intentions. ‘Empathy’ allows us to understand and share emotions and sensations with others. ‘Theory of mind’ allows us to understand more abstract concepts such as beliefs or wishes in others. In all these cases, evidence has accumulated that we use the specific neural networks engaged in processing mental states in ourselves to understand the same mental states in others. However, the magnitude of the brain activity in these shared networks is modulated by contextual appraisal of the situation or the other person. An important feature of decision making in a social setting concerns the interaction of reason and emotion. We consider four domains where such interactions occur: our sense of fairness, altruistic punishment, trust and framing effects. In these cases, social motivations and emotions compete with each other, while higher-level control processes modulate the interactions of these low-level biases

Independent neural computation of value from other people's confidence

Expectation of reward can be shaped by the observation of actions and expressions of other people in one's environment. A person's apparent confidence in the likely reward of an action, for instance, makes qualities of their evidence, not observed directly, socially accessible. This strategy is computationally distinguished from associative learning methods that rely on direct observation, by its use of inference from indirect evidence. In twenty-three healthy human subjects, we isolated effects of first-hand experience, other people's choices, and the mediating effect of their confidence, on decision-making and neural correlates of value within ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Value derived from first hand experience and other people's choices (regardless of confidence) were indiscriminately represented across vmPFC. However, value computed from agent choices weighted by their associated confidence was represented with specificity for ventromedial area 10. This pattern corresponds to shifts of connectivity and overlapping cognitive processes along a posterior-anterior vmPFC axis. Task behavior and self-reported self-reliance for decision-making in other social contexts correlated. The tendency to conform in other social contexts corresponded to increased activation in cortical regions previously shown to respond to social conflict in proportion to subsequent conformity (Campbell-Meiklejohn et al., 2010). The tendency to self-monitor predicted a selectively enhanced response to accordance with others in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). The findings anatomically decompose vmPFC value representations according to computational requirements and provide biological insight into the social transmission of preference and reassurance gained from the confidence of others. Significance Statement: Decades of research have provided evidence that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) signals the satisfaction we expect from imminent actions. However, we have a surprisingly modest understanding of the organization of value across this substantial and varied region. This study finds that using cues of the reliability of other peoples'; knowledge to enhance expectation of personal success generates value correlates that are anatomically distinct from those concurrently computed from direct, personal experience. This suggests that representation of decision values in vmPFC is suborganized according to the underlying computation, consistent with what we know about the anatomical heterogeneity of the region. These results also provide insight into the observational learning process by which someone else's confidence can sway and reassure our choices

What makes us social and what does it tell us about mental disorders?

Our new book, “What Makes Us Social?” (Frith & Frith, Citation2023 published open access), started with four lectures on our joint topic of social cognitive neuroscience. We gave these lectures at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 2014 with the understanding that we would publish them as part of the Jean Nicod lecture series. We first planned for seven chapters. However, over the years this book grew to 20 chapters reflecting the rapid growth of the field. We were pleased to have been asked to comment on our book’s implications for mental disorders. We welcomed this task since our interest in social cognition stems from our involvement in research in autism and schizophrenia, conditions where problems with social communication and interaction loom large

Frontal alpha oscillations distinguish leaders from followers: Multivariate decoding of mutually interacting brains

Successful social interactions rely upon the abilities of two or more people to mutually exchange information in real-time, while simultaneously adapting to one another. The neural basis of social cognition has mostly been investigated in isolated individuals, and more recently using two-person paradigms to quantify the neuronal dynamics underlying social interaction. While several studies have shown the relevance of understanding complementary and mutually adaptive processes, the neural mechanisms underlying such coordinative behavioral patterns during joint action remain largely unknown. Here, we employed a synchronized finger-tapping task while measuring dual-EEG from pairs of human participants who either mutually adjusted to each other in an interactive task or followed a computer metronome. Neurophysiologically, the interactive condition was characterized by a stronger suppression of alpha and low-beta oscillations over motor and frontal areas in contrast to the non-interactive computer condition. A multivariate analysis of two-brain activity to classify interactive versus non-interactive trials revealed asymmetric patterns of the frontal alpha-suppression in each pair, during both task anticipation and execution, such that only one member showed the frontal component. Analysis of the behavioral data showed that this distinction coincided with the leader–follower relationship in 8/9 pairs, with the leaders characterized by the stronger frontal alpha-suppression. This suggests that leaders invest more resources in prospective planning and control. Hence our results show that the spontaneous emergence of leader–follower relationships in dyadic interactions can be predicted from EEG recordings of brain activity prior to and during interaction. Furthermore, this emphasizes the importance of investigating complementarity in joint action

The mystery of the brain-culture interface

Nature and culture work together to shape who we are. We are embedded in culture and are profoundly influenced by what those around us say and do. The interface between minds occurs at the level of explicit metacognition, which is at the top of our brain's control hierarchy. But how do our brains do this

Hyper- and hypo-mentalizing in patients with first-episode schizophrenia: fMRI and behavioural studies

Background: Historically, research investigating neural correlates of mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia has focused on patients who have been ill for several years with lengthy exposure to medication. Little is known about the neural and behavioural presentations of theory-of-mind deficits in schizophrenia, shortly after the first episode of psychosis. Methods: We investigated social cognition in seventeen recently diagnosed first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients with little or no exposure to antipsychotic medication and 1:1 matched healthy controls. We recorded behavioural and neural responses to the Animated Triangles Task (ATT), which is a non-verbal validated mentalizing task that measures the ascription of intentionality to the movements of objects. Results: FES patients under-interpreted social cues and over-interpreted non-social cues. These effects were influenced by current intelligence (IQ). Control group and FES neural responses replicated earlier findings in healthy adults. However, a region of anterior medial prefrontal cortex (amPFC) of FES patients showed a different response pattern to that of controls. Unlike healthy controls, patients increased activity in this social cognition region while studying ‘random’ movements of shapes, as compared to the study of movements normally interpreted as ‘intentional’. Conclusions: Mentalizing deficits in FES consists of hypo- and hyper-mentalizing. The neural pattern of FES patients is consistent with deficits in the ability to switch off mentalizing processes in potentially social contexts, instead increasing them when intentionality is not forthcoming. Overall, results demonstrate complexities of theory of mind deficits in schizophrenia that should be considered when offering social cognitive training programs

Unconvincing statistical and functional inferences : reply to Catmur

A commentary on Unconvincing support for role of mirror neurons in “action understanding”: com-mentary on Michael et al. (2014) by Catmur, C. (2014). Front. Hum

Consciousness, (meta)cognition, and culture

Our conscious experience is determined by a combination of top-down processes (e.g., prior beliefs) and bottom-up processes (e.g., sensations). The balance between these two processes depends on estimates of their reliability (precision), so that the estimate considered more reliable is given more weight. We can modify these estimates at the metacognitive level, changing the relative weights of priors and sensations. This enables us, for example, to direct our attention to weak stimuli. But there is a cost to this malleability. For example, excessive weighting of top-down processes, as in schizophrenia, can lead to perceiving things that are not there and believing things that are not true. It is only at the top of the brain’s cognitive hierarchy that metacognitive control becomes conscious. At this level, our beliefs concern complex, abstract entities with which we have limited direct experience. Estimates of the precision of such beliefs are more uncertain and more malleable. However, at this level, we do not need to rely on our own limited experience. We can rely instead on the experiences of others. Explicit metacognition plays a unique role, enabling us to share our experiences. We acquire our beliefs about the world from our immediate social group and from our wider culture. And the same sources provide us with better estimates of the precision of these beliefs. Our confidence in our high-level beliefs is heavily influenced by culture at the expense of direct experience