Center for Behavioral Decision Research

CBDR : Seminar Series : Seminar by Golnaz Tabibnia

Fairness, Reward, and Self-Control: Clues from the Brain

	presented by Golnaz Tabibnia (UCLA)


	Thursday, November 29	link to paper
	Noon-1:30
	Porter 223D	link to Speaker's Site

	Abstract:

	Although it is known that people are inequity averse and act in accordance with a justice motive, it is unclear whether fairness is itself rewarding or if it simply leads to absence of negative emotional response. In a functional neuroimaging study of the ultimatum game, receiving fair offers, compared to unfair offers of equal monetary value, activated nearly all regions of the brain associated with reward, including the ventral striatum, suggesting that fairness is rewarding in itself. Furthermore, accepting fair offers and accepting unfair offers (both acceptance behaviors) were associated with distinct neurocognitive mechanisms. Whereas accepting fair offers was associated with reward activations, accepting unfair offers did not activate reward regions and instead was associated with increased emotion regulation activity in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the anterior insula, suggesting that accepting unfair offers may involve downregulation of a negative emotional response. These data indicate that sensitivity to fair treatment is linked to our most primitive reward system and is not simply the absence of negative affect. Additionally, these data demonstrate that two seemingly similar behaviors, accepting fair and unfair offers, involve different neural mechanisms that suggest distinct psychological processes.

	Host at CMU: Morewedge