An fMRI Study on Fairness in Social Interaction under Competitive and Cooperative conditions
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Lee, Po-Yih
Abstract
Competition and cooperation are two fundamental social interactions for obtaining resources. In both interactions, the self-other abilities are involved and affected by different fairness in resource distribution. In this research, competitive and cooperative interactions are implemented in the interactive on-line Tetris game (reciprocal Tetris game) and two initial bonus scores are manipulated for creating different fairness in resources distribution for competitive and cooperative conditions. In addition, the advantage unfairness, which means the participants are advantageous than their opponents in terms of resources, is introduced in this study and compared with traditional unfairness (i.e. disadvantage unfairness).
Sixteen participants are involved in this study. According to their behavioral result, the performance of the participants is positively correlated with medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The cooperative accomplishment generated by the cooperation of the participants and their opponents are positively correlated with left orbital frontal cortex (LOFC). These results suggest that the performance in competition and the cooperative accomplishment in cooperation are related to different regions in brain.
The activations of the brain regions related to the self-other abilities including MPFC and right inferior parietal lobe (RIPL) are shown in both competitive and cooperative conditions. Greater activations of the brain regions above are shown in the contrast of “Unfair versus Fair” in competition but not significant in cooperation. This result suggests that people uses more self-other abilities for competing resources in the unfair condition than the fair condition. In addition, the greater activations of same brain regions are shown in the contrast of “Advantage versus Disadvantage” in unfair competition. This result suggests that people uses more self-other abilities for competing resources in the advantageous condition than the disadvantageous condition. The advantageous degree of the participants, represented by the difference between the participants and their opponents in scores and monetary rewards, are positively correlated with MPFC. This result suggests that people uses more mentalizing ability in the advantageous condition than the disadvantageous condition.
Subjects
fMRI
fairness
competition
cooperation
mentalizing
rewarding
Tetris game
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-100-R98945044-1.pdf
Size
23.32 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):0002f013e1f9c244f713f8a96462b83d