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Humans use forward thinking to exploit social controllability.

Soojung NaDongil ChungAndreas HulaOfer PerlJennifer JungMatthew HeflinSylvia BlackmoreVincenzo G FiorePeter DayanXiaosi Gu
Published in: eLife (2021)
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.
Keyphrases
  • mental health
  • healthcare
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • prefrontal cortex
  • mental illness
  • computed tomography
  • climate change
  • social media
  • single cell
  • diffusion weighted imaging
  • hiv testing