Humans use forward thinking to exploit social controllability
The controllability of our social environment has a profound impact on our behavior and mental health. Nevertheless, neurocomputational mechanisms underlying social controllability remain elusive. Here, 48 participants performed a task where their current choices either did (Controllable), or did no...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
2021
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/2c8f3595f4b644cba884b35be2e1f69c |
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| Sumario: | The controllability of our social environment has a profound impact on our behavior and mental health. Nevertheless, neurocomputational mechanisms underlying social controllability remain elusive. Here, 48 participants performed a task where their current choices either did (Controllable), or did not (Uncontrollable), influence partners’ future proposals. Computational modeling revealed that people engaged a mental model of forward thinking (FT; i.e., calculating the downstream effects of current actions) to estimate social controllability in both Controllable and Uncontrollable conditions. A large-scale online replication study (n=1342) supported this finding. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (n=48), we further demonstrated that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) computed the projected total values of current actions during forward planning, supporting the neural realization of the forward-thinking model. These findings demonstrate that humans use vmPFC-dependent FT to estimate and exploit social controllability, expanding the role of this neurocomputational mechanism beyond spatial and cognitive contexts. |
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