Social neuroeconomics: the neural circuitry of social preferences.

Combining the methods of neuroscience and economics generates powerful tools for studying the brain processes behind human social interaction. We argue that hedonic interpretations of theories of social preferences provide a useful framework that generates interesting predictions and helps interpret brain activations involved in altruistic, fair and trusting behaviors. These behaviors are consistently associated with activation in reward-related brain areas, such as the striatum, and with prefrontal activity implicated in cognitive control, the processing of emotions, and integration of benefits and costs, consistent with resolution of a conflict between self-interest and other-regarding motives.

• Publication year

  2007

• Venue

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences

• Publication date

  2007-10-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Economics, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.TICS.2007.09.002PMID 17913566
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Minimally acceptable altruism and the ultimatum game

  2008cited by this paper
• The Sunny Side of Fairness

  2008cited by this paper
• Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations

  2007cited by this paper
• Irrational Economic Decision-Making after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage: Evidence from the Ultimatum Game

  2007cited by this paper
• Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations

  2007cited by this paper
• Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements

  2007cited by this paper
• Differential Encoding of Losses and Gains in the Human Striatum

  2007cited by this paper
• Resisting the Power of Temptations

  2007cited by this paper
• Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes.

  2007cited by this paper
• Egalitarian motives in humans

  2007cited by this paper
• American Economic Association Do We Underestimate the Benefits of Cultural Competition ?

  2007cited by this paper
• The Neural Basis of Loss Aversion in Decision-Making Under Risk

  2007cited by this paper
• Neural predictors of purchases.

  2007cited by this paper
• Disruption of Right Prefrontal Cortex by Low-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Induces Risk-Taking Behavior

  2006cited by this paper
• A theory of reciprocity

  2006cited by this paper
• Neural differentiation of expected reward and risk in human subcortical structures.

  2006cited by this paper
• What you don't know won't hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in dictator games

  2006cited by this paper
• Agent-Specific Responses in the Cingulate Cortex During Economic Exchanges

  2006cited by this paper
• Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others

  2006cited by this paper
• Incentives and Prosocial Behavior

  2006cited by this paper
• Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation

  2006cited by this paper
• Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex

  2006cited by this paper
• Neuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making.

  2006cited by this paper
• Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences: Initial Evidence.

  2005cited by this paper
• Oxytocin increases trust in humans

  2005cited by this paper
• Neural Systems Responding to Degrees of Uncertainty in Human Decision-Making

  2005cited by this paper
• Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics

  2005cited by this paper
• A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage

  2005cited by this paper
• Foundations of Human Sociality: A Review Essay

  2005cited by this paper
• The neural basis of human moral cognition

  2005cited by this paper
• Self-referential thinking and equilibrium as states of mind in games: fMRI evidence

  2005cited by this paper
• Opinion: the neural basis of human moral cognition.

  2005cited by this paper
• Perceptions of moral character modulate the neural systems of reward during the trust game

  2005cited by this paper
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging of reward prediction

  2005cited by this paper
• Oxytocin Modulates Neural Circuitry for Social Cognition and Fear in Humans

  2005cited by this paper
• Getting to Know You: Reputation and Trust in a Two-Person Economic Exchange

  2005cited by this paper
• Dissociable Roles of Ventral and Dorsal Striatum in Instrumental Conditioning

  2004cited by this paper
• The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment

  2004influential reference
• CHAPTER EIGHT. Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market

  2004cited by this paper
• Social cognitive neuroscience: where are we heading?

  2004cited by this paper
• A theory of sequential reciprocity

  2004cited by this paper
• Third Party Punishment and Social Norms

  2004cited by this paper
• Brain responses to the acquired moral status of faces.

  2004cited by this paper
• Anterior prefrontal cortex: insights into function from anatomy and neuroimaging

  2004cited by this paper
• Neuroeconomics: The Consilience of Brain and Decision

  2004cited by this paper
• Reward representations and reward-related learning in the human brain: insights from neuroimaging.

  2004cited by this paper
• Modulation of caudate activity by action contingency.

  2004cited by this paper
• Opposing BOLD responses to reciprocated and unreciprocated altruism in putative reward pathways

  2004cited by this paper
• Trust, Risk and Betrayal

  2004cited by this paper
• CHAPTER TEN. Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics

  2004cited by this paper
• Cognitive neuroscience: Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour

  2003cited by this paper
• The nature of human altruism

  2003cited by this paper
• Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing.

  2003cited by this paper
• The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game

  2003cited by this paper
• Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction

  2003cited by this paper
• A neural basis for social cooperation.

  2002cited by this paper
• Automatic and intentional brain responses during evaluation of trustworthiness of faces

  2002cited by this paper
• Neural economics and the biological substrates of valuation.

  2002cited by this paper
• Altruistic punishment in humans

  2002cited by this paper
• Neural Economics and the Biological Substrates of Valuation

  2002cited by this paper
• Autonomous vs. comparative status: Must we be better than others to feel good about ourselves?

  2002cited by this paper
• A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange

  2001cited by this paper
• The neurobiology of attachment

  2001cited by this paper
• In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies

  2001cited by this paper
• Conflict monitoring and cognitive control.

  2001cited by this paper
• UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL PREFERENCES WITH SIMPLE TESTS

  2001cited by this paper
• What You Don't Know Won't Hurt Me:Impression Management Functions of Communication Channels in Relationships

  2000cited by this paper
• The pursuit of joint outcomes and equality in outcomes: An integrative model of social value orientation.

  1999cited by this paper
• Modeling Altruism and Spitefulness in Experiments

  1998cited by this paper
• A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation

  1998cited by this paper
• Handbook of Experimental Economics

  1997cited by this paper
• Deciding Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy

  1997cited by this paper
• Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games

  1996cited by this paper
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

  1995cited by this paper
• Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History

  1995cited by this paper
• When Social Outcomes Aren't Fair: The Effect of Causal Attributions on Preferences

  1995cited by this paper
• New Challenges to the Rationality Assumption

  1994cited by this paper
• Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research

  1994cited by this paper
• IMPURE ALTRUISM AND DONATIONS TO PUBLIC GOODS: A THEORY OF WARM-GLOW GIVING*

  1990cited by this paper
• EXPERIMENTAL TESTS OF A SEQUENTIAL EQUILIBRIUM REPUTATION MODEL

  1988cited by this paper
• Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking

  1986cited by this paper
• An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining

  1982cited by this paper
• The social psychology of groups

  1960cited by this paper

• Investigating the neurocognition of social provocation and the role of oxytocin in violent antisocial personality disordered men with and without psychopathy

  2026cites this paper
• Neuroeconomics and myopia prevention: A framework for public health intervention.

  2026cites this paper
• Empathy and mentalization as mediators between childhood maltreatment and social decision-making during adulthood.

  2026cites this paper
• AI in Debt Collection: Estimating the Psychological Impact on Consumers

  2026cites this paper
• A Stalemate in Naturalizing Ethics: Insights from Theories of Punishment

  2025cites this paper
• When Collaboration Falters, Insensitivity to How Our Actions Affect Others Drives Inflated Self-evaluations

  2025cites this paper
• Cognitive and emotional engagement in negotiation: insights from EEG and fNIRS Hyperscanning

  2025influential citation
• Social inequity disrupts reward-based learning

  2025cites this paper
• Neural mechanisms underlying reward processing and social cognition: A replication study with a Japanese sample

  2025cites this paper
• Social Context Matters-Characterizing Adolescent Cooperation Strategies When Perceiving the Other as a Peer Versus Computer Partner.

  2025cites this paper
• NEUROMARKETING E TEORIA DA PERSPECTIVA: A INFLUÊNCIA DOS VIESES COGNITIVOS NA TOMADA DE DECISÃO

  2025cites this paper
• Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Environmental Behavior: The Reciprocal Influence of Reward-Based Decision-Making and the Sense of Agency

  2025cites this paper
• Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Norm Violations Across Trust and Fairness Contexts

  2025cites this paper
• Older Adults Show Altered Network Connectivity during Fairness Decisions with Similar and Dissimilar Partners

  2025cites this paper
• Ventromedial prefrontal cortex shields value computations from bodily arousal in decision making

  2025cites this paper
• Questioning the beauty premium: The substitution effect of trust on facial attractiveness

  2025cites this paper
• Altruistic behavior in Chinese children with hearing impairment: Associations with power cognition and word comprehension.

  2025cites this paper
• Manipulating attention facilitates cooperation

  2025cites this paper
• Predictable and Unpredictable Threat Immune Enhancement.

  2025cites this paper
• It's Only Human

  2025cites this paper
• Integrating Neuroeconomics Insights Into Financial Decision Making: A Comprehensive Review

  2025cites this paper
• Comparison of independence axiom violations across primates: Humans and monkeys

  2025cites this paper
• The role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in social decision-making against high- and low-rank opponents: a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) study

  2025cites this paper
• Distributed range adaptation in human parietal encoding of numbers

  2025cites this paper
• “Rationality” enhancement through anodal tDCS over the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

  2025influential citation
• Strategic Decisions Are Rational And Emotional: A Field Experiment Study of Innovation Portfolio Reviews

  2024cites this paper
• Vicarious punishment of moral violations in naturalistic drama narratives predicts cortical synchronization

  2024cites this paper
• Neural response to monetary and social rewards in adolescent girls and their parents

  2024cites this paper
• Opening the Pandora Box: Neural processing of self-relevant negative social information.

  2024cites this paper
• Substantial Heritability Underlies Fairness Norm Adaptation Capability and its Neural Basis

  2024cites this paper
• Social anxiety undermines prosocial behaviors when required effort

  2024cites this paper
• Ahlaki Karar Verme ve Fayda Teorisi

  2024cites this paper
• Autistic Traits and Psychosocial Predictors of Depressive Symptoms

  2024cites this paper
• Adolescent Internet Gaming Disorder and sensitivity to money and social rewards.

  2024cites this paper
• The Cost of Looking Up: Social Comparison as a Partial Mediator Between Social Anxiety and Vindictive Behavior in a Non-anonymous Ultimatum Game.

  2024cites this paper
• Neural Mechanisms of Cooperation and Fairness in Iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.

  2024cites this paper
• Phylogenetic Economics: Animal Models and the Study of Choice

  2024cites this paper
• Impaired social reward processing in individuals with Internet gaming disorder and its relationship with early face perception.

  2024cites this paper
• Introducing Entropy into Organizational Psychology: An Entropy-Based Proactive Control Model

  2024cites this paper
• The Neuroscientific Validation of the Leadership Competency Model Drenica

  2024cites this paper
• The impact of partially covered faces on trust attribution, sharing resources, and perceived fairness of one’s own choices in Ultimatum Game

  2024cites this paper
• Confusion cannot explain cooperative behavior in public goods games

  2024cites this paper
• The Neurocomputational Mechanism Underlying Decision-Making on Unfairness to Self and Others

  2024cites this paper
• A SUMMARY ON FITRADEOFF METHOD WITH METHODOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

  2023cites this paper
• Mentalizing in an economic games context is associated with enhanced activation and connectivity in the left temporoparietal junction

  2023influential citation
• Balance between projecting neuronal populations of the nucleus accumbens controls social behavior in mice.

  2023cites this paper
• Neuronal mechanisms of dynamic strategic competition

  2023cites this paper
• Cerebral Support for Making Donation-Related Decision with Altruistic and Egoistic Motives

  2023cites this paper
• The Preference for Reciprocity in Congress

  2023cites this paper
• Neuroeconomics of decision-making during COVID-19 pandemic

  2023cites this paper
• Heat & Social Cooperation: The Effects of Thermal Stress on Altruism

  2023cites this paper
• Wine stress vs. Technostress: Communities and wine appreciation digital platforms

  2023cites this paper
• Dyadic visual perceptual learning on orientation discrimination.

  2023cites this paper
• Preheating Prosocial Behaviour

  2023cites this paper
• Prosocial Decision-Making and Human Brain: A Graph Theory Analysis on Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Image

  2023cites this paper
• The role of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex on voluntary emotion regulation of social pain

  2023cites this paper
• Trusting promises under pressure

  2023cites this paper
• When shapes are more than shapes: perceptual, developmental, and neurophysiological basis for attributions of animacy and theory of mind

  2023cites this paper
• Testosterone administration modulates inequality aversion in healthy males: evidence from computational modeling.

  2023cites this paper
• Reciprocity versus Self-Interest in a Competitive Interaction Context: An Experimental Study

  2022cites this paper
• Distinct neural representations for prosocial and self-benefiting effort

  2022cites this paper
• Motivation and competition in health care

  2022cites this paper
• Balance between direct and indirect pathways of the nucleus accumbens controls social behavior in mice

  2022cites this paper
• Distinct neurofunctional alterations during motivational and hedonic processing of natural and monetary rewards in depression - a neuroimaging meta-analysis

  2022cites this paper
• Importance of prefrontal meta control in human-like reinforcement learning

  2022cites this paper
• Decoding social decisions from movement kinematics

  2022cites this paper
• The combined effect of music-induced emotions and neuromodulation on economic decision making: a tDCS study

  2022cites this paper
• Analyse de l’impact du conformisme social sur l’adoption de l’e-learning dans un pays en développement

  2022cites this paper
• PRBM_A_370155 2049..2065

  2022cites this paper
• Causal role of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for norm-guided social decision making: A meta-analysis of TMS studies.

  2022cites this paper
• Is Multidisciplinary Possible In Economics With The Framework of Neuroeconomics?

  2022cites this paper
• What makes us act together? On the cognitive models supporting humans’ decisions for joint action

  2022cites this paper
• Pathways to depression: Dynamic associations between neural responses to appetitive cues in the environment, stress, and the development of illness.

  2022cites this paper
• Morality is Supreme: The Roles of Morality, Fairness and Group Identity in the Ultimatum Paradigm

  2022cites this paper
• Neurocomputations of strategic behavior: From iterated to novel interactions

  2022cites this paper
• The Neural Mediators of Moral Attitudes and Behaviors.

  2022cites this paper
• Mentalizing in economic games is associated with enhanced activation and connectivity in left temporoparietal junction

  2022influential citation
• Resting-state functional connectivity and socioemotional processes in male perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women

  2022cites this paper
• Role of right temporoparietal junction for counterfactual evaluation of partner’s decision in ultimatum game

  2022cites this paper
• Use of the Alpha-Theta Diagram as a decision neuroscience tool for analyzing holistic evaluation in decision making

  2022cites this paper
• Hope College Digital Commons Hope College Digital Commons

  2022cites this paper
• Altruistic Concern for the Other and the Development of the Virtue of Humility

  2022cites this paper
• Mine or ours? Neural basis of the exploitation of common-pool resources

  2022cites this paper
• Generating value(s): Psychological value hierarchies reflect context-dependent sensitivity of the reward system

  2022cites this paper
• Norms

  2021cites this paper
• DSS for Multicriteria Preference Modeling with Partial Information and Its Modulation with Behavioral Studies

  2021cites this paper
• Mentalizing in Value-Based Social Decision-Making: Shaping Expectations and Social Norms

  2021cites this paper
• Neuronal Circuits for Social Decision-Making and Their Clinical Implications

  2021cites this paper
• Decision-making: from neuroscience to neuroeconomics—an overview

  2021cites this paper
• Human Curiosity Then and Now: The Anthropology, Archaeology, and Psychology of Patent Protections

  2021cites this paper
• The Modulation of Cardiac Vagal Tone on Attentional Orienting of Fair-Related Faces: Low HRV is Associated with Faster Attentional Engagement to Fair-Relevant Stimuli

  2021cites this paper
• Interdisciplinary influences in behavioral economics: a bibliometric analysis of cross-disciplinary citations

  2021cites this paper
• Neuroscience and climate change: How brain recordings can help us understand human responses to climate change.

  2021cites this paper
• Of Mice and Toddlers: A Cross-Species Investigation of the Social Motivation Theory of Autism

  2021cites this paper
• Environmental neuroeconomics: how neuroscience can inform our understanding of human responses to climate change

  2021cites this paper
• Altruism in a Time of Crisis: Dissociable Social Valuation and Perception during COVID-19 in the United States

  2021influential citation
• Neuroeconomics: reliable, scientifically legitimate and useful knowledge for economists?

  2021cites this paper
• Social preferences correlate with cortical thickness of the orbito-frontal cortex

  2021cites this paper
• Bioelectrical brain activity can predict prosocial behavior

  2021cites this paper
• Uncertainty in the Social World and its Interdependence

  2021cites this paper