Skip to main content
Log in

The neural signatures of egocentric bias in normative decision-making

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Brain Imaging and Behavior Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Bargaining parties often disagree on what fair is, due to the reason that people are prone to believe that what favors oneself is fair, i.e., an egocentric bias. In this study, we investigated the neural signatures underlying egocentric bias in fairness decision-making, conjoining an adapted ultimatum game (UG) with event-related fMRI and functional connectivity. Participants earned monetary rewards with a partner in a production stage, wherein their contributions to the earnings were manipulated. Afterwards, the joint earnings were randomly divided, and the distribution was presented simultaneously with contribution information to participants, who accepted/rejected distributions of earnings as the same manner in standard UG. We identified an egocentric bias in fairness decisions, such that participants frequently rejected self-contributed disadvantageous outcomes, but much less so in response to other-contributed advantageous outcomes, although both involved mismatch between contribution and payoff. This bias was underpinned by regions involved in representing fairness norms, including the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Furthermore, the thalamus activity was predictive of the bias, such that the level of egocentric bias decreased as a function of the activation level of the thalamus. Finally, our functional-connectivity findings indicated that the thalamus worked together with insula and dACC to modulate behavioral egocentric bias in fairness-related decisions. Our findings uncover the neural basis underlying the modulation of egocentric bias in normative decision-making, and highlight the role of neural circuits associated with norm enforcement in this phenomenon.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Babcock, L., & Loewenstein, G. (1997). Explaining bargaining impasse: The role of self-serving biases. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11(1), 109–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. (2014) 'lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4', R package version, 1(7).

  • Baumgartner, T., Knoch, D., Hotz, P., Eisenegger, C., & Fehr, E. (2011). Dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex orchestrate normative choice. Nature Neuroscience, 14(11), 1468–1474.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Baumgartner, T., Götte, L., Gügler, R., & Fehr, E. (2012). The mentalizing network orchestrates the impact of parochial altruism on social norm enforcement. Human Brain Mapping, 33(6), 1452–1469.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bediou, B., & Scherer, K. R. (2014). Egocentric fairness perception: Emotional reactions and individual differences in overt responses. PLoS One, 9(2), e88432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blake, P., McAuliffe, K., & Warneken, F. (2014). The developmental origins of fairness: The knowledge–behavior gap. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(11), 559–561.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blake, P., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T., Barry, O., Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K., Ross, E., & Vongsachang, H. (2015). The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature, 528, 258.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Boksem, M. A., Kostermans, E., & De Cremer, D. (2011). Failing where others have succeeded: Medial frontal negativity tracks failure in a social context. Psychophysiology, 48(7), 973–979.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Büchel, C., Holmes, A., Rees, G., & Friston, K. (1998). Characterizing stimulus–response functions using nonlinear regressors in parametric fMRI experiments. NeuroImage, 8(2), 140–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buckholtz, J. W., & Marois, R. (2012). The roots of modern justice: Cognitive and neural foundations of social norms and their enforcement. Nature Neuroscience, 15(5), 655–661.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cappelen, A. W., Eichele, T., Hugdahl, K., Specht, K., Sørensen, E. Ø., & Tungodden, B. (2014). Equity theory and fair inequality: A neuroeconomic study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(43), 15368–15372.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, L. J., & Sanfey, A. G. (2013). Great expectations: Neural computations underlying the use of social norms in decision-making. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(3), 277–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, L. J., & Smith, A. (2015). Social emotions and psychological games. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 5, 133–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Civai, C., Crescentini, C., Rustichini, A., & Rumiati, R. I. (2012). Equality versus self-interest in the brain: Differential roles of anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex. NeuroImage, 62(1), 102–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Civai, C., Miniussi, C. & Rumiati, R. I. (2014) Medial prefrontal cortex reacts to unfairness if this damages the self: a tDCS study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, p. nsu154.

  • Corradi-Dell’Acqua, C., Tusche, A., Vuilleumier, P. & Singer, T. (2016) Cross-modal representations of first-hand and vicarious pain, disgust and fairness in insular and cingulate cortex. Nature Communications, 7.

  • Corradi-Dell'Acqua, C., Civai, C., Rumiati, R. I., & Fink, G. R. (2013). Disentangling self-and fairness-related neural mechanisms involved in the ultimatum game: an fMRI study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(4), 424–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eickhoff, S. B., Laird, A. R., Grefkes, C., Wang, L. E., Zilles, K., & Fox, P. T. (2009). Coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of neuroimaging data: A random-effects approach based on empirical estimates of spatial uncertainty. Human Brain Mapping, 30(9), 2907–2926.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eklund, A., Nichols, T. E. & Knutsson, H. (2016) Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 201602413.

  • Falk, A., & Fischbacher, U. (2006). A theory of reciprocity. Games and Economic Behavior, 54(2), 293–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farmer, H., Apps, M., & Tsakiris, M. (2016). Reputation in an economic game modulates premotor cortex activity during action observation. European Journal of Neuroscience, 44(5), 2191–2201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fatfouta, R., Meshi, D., Merkl, A. & Heekeren, H. R. (2016) Accepting unfairness by a significant other is associated with reduced connectivity between medial prefrontal and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Social Neuroscience, 1–13.

  • Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785–791.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Feng, C., Luo, Y., Gu, R., Broster, L. S., Shen, X., Tian, T., Luo, Y.-J., & Krueger, F. (2013). The flexible fairness: Equality, earned entitlement, and self-interest. PLoS One, 8(9), e73106.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Feng, C., Luo, Y. J., & Krueger, F. (2015). Neural signatures of fairness-related normative decision making in the ultimatum game: A coordinate-based meta-analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 36(2), 591–602.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Feng, C., Azarian, B., Ma, Y., Feng, X., Wang, L., Luo, Y. J., & Krueger, F. (2016a). Mortality salience reduces the discrimination between in-group and out-group interactions: A functional MRI investigation using multi-voxel pattern analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 38, 1281–1298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feng, C., Deshpande, G., Liu, C., Gu, R., Luo, Y. J., & Krueger, F. (2016b). Diffusion of responsibility attenuates altruistic punishment: A functional magnetic resonance imaging effective connectivity study. Human Brain Mapping, 37(2), 663–677.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friston, K. J., Buechel, C., Fink, G., Morris, J., Rolls, E., & Dolan, R. (1997). Psychophysiological and modulatory interactions in neuroimaging. NeuroImage, 6(3), 218–229.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gitelman, D. R., Penny, W. D., Ashburner, J., & Friston, K. J. (2003) Modeling regional and psychophysiologic interactions in fMRI: the importance of hemodynamic deconvolution. NeuroImage, 19(1), 200–207

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gospic, K., Mohlin, E., Fransson, P., Petrovic, P., Johannesson, M., & Ingvar, M. (2011). Limbic justice—Amygdala involvement in immediate rejection in the ultimatum game. PLoS Biology, 9(5), e1001054.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gradin, V., Pérez, A., MacFarlane, J., Cavin, I., Waiter, G., Engelmann, J., Dritschel, B., Pomi, A., Matthews, K., & Steele, J. (2015). Abnormal brain responses to social fairness in depression: An fMRI study using the ultimatum game. Psychological Medicine, 45(06), 1241–1251.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Grecucci, A., Giorgetta, C., van't Wout, M., Bonini, N., & Sanfey, A. G. (2013). Reappraising the ultimatum: An fMRI study of emotion regulation and decision making. Cerebral Cortex, 23(2), 399–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, X., Zheng, L., Zhu, L., Li, J., Wang, Q., Dienes, Z., & Yang, Z. (2013). Increased neural responses to unfairness in a loss context. NeuroImage, 77, 246–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, X., Zheng, L., Cheng, X., Chen, M., Zhu, L., Li, J., Chen, L., & Yang, Z. (2014). Neural responses to unfairness and fairness depend on self-contribution to the income. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(10), 1498–1505.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Güroğlu, B., van den Bos, W., Rombouts, S. A., & Crone, E. A. (2010). Unfair? It depends: neural correlates of fairness in social context. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(4), 414–423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Güroğlu, B., van den Bos, W., van Dijk, E., Rombouts, S. A., & Crone, E. A. (2011). Dissociable brain networks involved in development of fairness considerations: understanding intentionality behind unfairness. NeuroImage, 57(2), 634–641.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halko, M.-L., Hlushchuk, Y., Hari, R., & Schürmann, M. (2009). Competing with peers: Mentalizing-related brain activity reflects what is at stake. NeuroImage, 46(2), 542–548.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harlé, K. M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2012). Social economic decision-making across the lifespan: An fMRI investigation. Neuropsychologia, 50(7), 1416–1424.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harlé, K. M., Chang, L. J., van't Wout, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2012). The neural mechanisms of affect infusion in social economic decision-making: A mediating role of the anterior insula. NeuroImage, 61(1), 32–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haruno, M., Kimura, M., & Frith, C. D. (2014). Activity in the nucleus Accumbens and amygdala underlies individual differences in prosocial and individualistic economic choices. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(8), 1861–1870.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., & Henrich, N. (2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312(5781), 1767–1770.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., Shachat, K., & Smith, V. (1994). Preferences, property rights, and anonymity in bargaining games. Games and Economic Behavior, 7(3), 346–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hu, J., Blue, P., Yu, H., Gong, X., Xiang, Y., Jiang, C. & Zhou, X. (2015) 'Social status modulates the neural response to unfairness', Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, p. nsv086.

  • Kirk, U., Downar, J., & Montague, P. R. (2011). Interoception drives increased rational decision-making in meditators playing the ultimatum game. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5, 49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirk, U., Gu, X., Sharp, C., Hula, A., Fonagy, P., & Montague, P. R. (2016). Mindfulness training increases cooperative decision making in economic exchanges: Evidence from fMRI. NeuroImage, 138, 274–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knoch, D., Pascual-Leone, A., Meyer, K., Treyer, V., & Fehr, E. (2006). Diminishing reciprocal fairness by disrupting the right prefrontal cortex. Science, 314(5800), 829–832.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kriss, P. H., Loewenstein, G., Wang, X., & Weber, R. A. (2011). 'Behind the veil of ignorance: Self-serving bias in climate change negotiations. Judgment and Decision making, 6(7), 602.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laird, A. R., Fox, P. M., Price, C. J., Glahn, D. C., Uecker, A. M., Lancaster, J. L., Turkeltaub, P. E., Kochunov, P., & Fox, P. T. (2005). ALE meta-analysis: Controlling the false discovery rate and performing statistical contrasts. Human Brain Mapping, 25(1), 155–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Loewenstein, G., Issacharoff, S., Camerer, C., & Babcock, L. (1993). Self-serving assessments of fairness and pretrial bargaining. The Journal of Legal Studies, 22(1), 135–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McAuliffe, K., Blake, P. R., Kim, G., Wrangham, R. W., & Warneken, F. (2013). Social influences on inequity aversion in children. PLoS One, 8(12), e80966.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLaren, D. G., Ries, M. L., Xu, G., & Johnson, S. C. (2012). A generalized form of context-dependent psychophysiological interactions (gPPI): a comparison to standard approaches. NeuroImage, 61(4), 1277–1286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miltner, W. H., Braun, C. H., & Coles, M. G. (1997). Event-related brain potentials following incorrect feedback in a time-estimation task: Evidence for a “generic” neural system for error detection. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(6), 788–798.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mumford, J. A. & Poldrack, R. A. (2014) 'Adjusting mean activation for reaction time effects in BOLD fMRI', OHBM poster, https://ww4.aievolution.com/hbm1401/files/content/abstracts/43589/2053_Mumford.pdf.

  • Otto, P. E., & Bolle, F. (2015). Exploiting one’s power with a guilty conscience: An experimental investigation of self-serving biases. Journal of Economic Psychology, 51, 79–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phan, K. L., Wager, T., Taylor, S. F., & Liberzon, I. (2002). Functional neuroanatomy of emotion: a meta-analysis of emotion activation studies in PET and fMRI. NeuroImage, 16(2), 331–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poldrack, R. A., Mumford, J. A., & Nichols, T. E. (2011). Handbook of functional MRI data analysis. Cambridge University Press.

  • Roalf, D. R. (2010) 'It's not fair!: behavioral and neural evidence that equity influences social economic decisions in healthy older adults', Student Scholar Archive, Paper 516.

  • Rodriguez-Lara, I., & Moreno-Garrido, L. (2012). Self-interest and fairness: Self-serving choices of justice principles. Experimental Economics, 15(1), 158–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutström, E. E., & Williams, M. B. (2000). 'Entitlements and fairness:: an experimental study of distributive preferences. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 43(1), 75–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science, 300(5626), 1755–1758.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Servaas, M. N., Aleman, A., Marsman, J.-B. C., Renken, R. J., Riese, H. & Ormel, J. (2015) Lower dorsal striatum activation in association with neuroticism during the acceptance of unfair offers. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, pp. 1–16.

  • Silani, G., Hartmann, H., Hitz, H., Stepnicka, P. & Lengersdorff, L. (2017) 'Emotional egocentric Bias in autism Spectrum disorder: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence', Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, Taylor & Francis.

  • Tabibnia, G., Satpute, A. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). The sunny side of fairness preference for fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry). Psychological Science, 19(4), 339–347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, L., & Loewenstein, G. (1992). Egocentric interpretations of fairness and interpersonal conflict. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 51(2), 176–197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turkeltaub, P. E., Eden, G. F., Jones, K. M., & Zeffiro, T. A. (2002). Meta-analysis of the functional neuroanatomy of single-word reading: method and validation. NeuroImage, 16(3), 765–780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Verdejo-García, A., Verdejo-Román, J., Rio-Valle, J. S., Lacomba, J. A., Lagos, F. M. & Soriano-Mas, C. (2015a) 'Dysfunctional involvement of emotion and reward brain regions on social decision making in excess weight adolescents', Human Brain Mapping, 36(1), pp. 226–237

  • Verdejo-García, A., Verdejo-Román, J., Albein-Urios, N., Martínez-González, J. M. & Soriano-Mas, C. (2015b) Brain substrates of social decision-making in dual diagnosis: cocaine dependence and personality disorders. Addiction Biology.

  • White, S. F., Brislin, S. J., Meffert, H., Sinclair, S., & Blair, R. J. R. (2013). Callous-unemotional traits modulate the neural response associated with punishing another individual during social exchange: a preliminary investigation. Journal of Personality Disorders, 27(1), 99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, S. F., Brislin, S. J., Sinclair, S., & Blair, J. R. (2014). Punishing unfairness: Rewarding or the organization of a reactively aggressive response? Human Brain Mapping, 35(5), 2137–2147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woo, C.-W., Krishnan, A., & Wager, T. D. (2014). Cluster-extent based thresholding in fMRI analyses: Pitfalls and recommendations. NeuroImage, 91, 412–419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woolrich, M. W., Ripley, B. D., Brady, M., & Smith, S. M. (2001). Temporal autocorrelation in univariate linear modeling of FMRI data. NeuroImage, 14(6), 1370–1386.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, Y., Yu, H., Shen, B., Yu, R., Zhou, Z., Zhang, G., Jiang, Y. & Zhou, X. (2014) 'Neural basis of increased costly norm enforcement under adversity', Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Epub ahead of print, p. nst187.

  • Xiang, T., Lohrenz, T., & Montague, P. R. (2013). Computational substrates of norms and their violations during social exchange. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(3), 1099–1108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yu, R., Calder, A. J., & Mobbs, D. (2014). Overlapping and distinct representations of advantageous and disadvantageous inequality. Human Brain Mapping, 35(7), 3290–3301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zheng, L., Guo, X., Zhu, L., Li, J., Chen, L. & Dienes, Z. (2014) 'Whether Others Were Treated Equally or Not Affects Neural Responses to Unfairness in the Ultimatum Game', Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, epub ahead of print, p. nsu071.

  • Zhou, Y., Wang, Y., Rao, L.-L., Yang, L., & Li, S. (2014). Money talks: Neural substrate of modulation of fairness by monetary incentives. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 150.

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This study was funded by the Chinese postdoctoral innovation talent support program (BX201600019), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017 M610055),the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Senzhen University (31671169, 31500920, 31300869, 31671169, and 201564/000099), the foundation of the National Key Laboratory of Human Factors Engineering (HF2012-K-03), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (BK20130415).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhihao Li or Yue-Jia Luo.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

Author Chunliang Feng, Xue Feng, Li Wang, Lili Wang, Ruolei Gu, Aiping Ni, Gopikrishna Deshpande, Zhihao Li, and Yue-Jia Luo declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, and the applicable revisions at the time of the investigation.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects for being included in the study.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(DOCX 107 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Feng, C., Feng, X., Wang, L. et al. The neural signatures of egocentric bias in normative decision-making. Brain Imaging and Behavior 13, 685–698 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9893-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9893-1

Keywords

Navigation