Our brains may think two steps ahead when trying to sway others

Date:
November 3, 2021
Source:
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Summary:
In an effort to understand how a sense of control over others may
influence the brain's decision-making processes, researchers have
tested the ability of healthy human subjects to play a bargaining
game. For the first time, they found that people used "forward
thinking" when trying to sway others. Forward thinking happened
regardless of whether the subjects could actually influence others
and appeared to be driven by neural activity in a well-known
decision-making center of the brain.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Humans are able to think a few steps ahead in non-social situations,
such as navigating a new hiking trail or planning a vacation. A Mount
Sinai study now shows that we may also do this when interacting with
other people.


==========================================================================
In an effort to understand how a sense of control over others may
influence the brain's decision-making processes, researchers at the
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai tested the ability of healthy
human subjects to play a bargaining game. For the first time, they found
that people used "forward thinking" when trying to sway others. Forward thinking happened regardless of whether the subjects could actually
influence others and appeared to be driven by neural activity in a
well-known decision-making center of the brain.

"Humans are social beings. And, in our view, many psychiatric disorders
are the result of problems with how the brain's software is programmed
to handle social situations. In this study we tried to understand
the rules that govern how that software is programmed," said Xiaosi
Gu, PhD, Director of the Center for Computational Psychiatry at Mount
Sinai. "Our results suggest that in certain social situations the brain
draws on the kind of forward thinking often used when playing chess."
The study was led by Soojung Na, PhD, a former graduate student in the
Gu lab and Dongil Chung, PhD, a principal investigator at the Uslan
National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea.

The researchers specifically investigated whether forward thinking is used during times when we try to influence others, or exert "social control." Decades of research have shown that social control can have profound
effects on well-being and mental health. Although several studies have
shown that forward thinking is used in non-social situations, few have investigated its role in how we interact with others.

To test this idea, the researchers initially had 48 healthy volunteers sit
in a brain scanner and play different versions of the "ultimatum game,"
a well-known bargaining exercise in which the subjects were asked to split
$20 with an opposing team. Initial offers always started at $5. In one, "controllable," version of the game the rules were predictable. If
the subject accepted the $5 then the next offer would be one or two
dollars lower. Conversely, a rejection of the $5 led to raising the
subsequent offer by the same amounts. For the second, "uncontrollable,"
version of the game, a subject's initial decision had no effect on
the following offers. Instead they were chosen randomly and were thus unpredictable. Each subject played 40 rounds, alternating between the
two different versions.



========================================================================== Initial results showed that there were differences between how the
subjects responded to the games, which suggested that they perceived and exploited the advantages posed by the predictable version. Most notably,
they received higher offers, took longer to decide, and felt a greater
sense of control when playing the predictable version.

The participants reported a sense of control during the unpredictable
game that was much higher -- around 40 percent -- than reality, which
was zero chance of control. Moreover, in one subset of experiments, the subjects played the games against a computer instead of teams. Here the participants felt about 60 percent in control of the game regardless of
which version they played and despite the fact that they received higher
offers in the predictable version.

"These results highlight the complicated interplay between the actual controllability of social situations and our feelings of control,"
said Dr. Gu.

Nonetheless, computational modeling experiments suggested that in every situation tested -- predictable vs unpredictable and team vs computer --
the subjects consistently used forward thinking to play the game. In
other words, a computer algorithm which tested out whether a subject
would think two, three, or four steps ahead before deciding on an offer recreated the initial results better than one that assumed the subjects
just reacted or thought only one step ahead.

These findings were strengthened by the results of an online version of
the initial experiments that was played by 1,342 participants. Again, the results showed that the predictable version of the game produced higher
offers and a greater sense of control then the unpredictable one even
though the simulation suggested that forward thinking was used for both.

Finally, the results of the brain scans suggested that these choices were
being driven by neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex,
a decision- making center known to be involved in forward thinking. For instance, the two- step forward thinking computer simulation helped
explain the changes in this area of the brain better than other
simulations or when applied to other brain regions.

"These results expand the role of both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex
and of forward thinking in our lives," said Dr. Gu. "In the future, we
plan to explore how problems in the brain's forward thinking app may play
role in depression, schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders."
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (MH120789, MH122611, and MH123069); the University of Texas, Dallas; the Ulsan
National Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea, 1.180073.01);
the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018R1D1A1B07043582); the
Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC VISN 2)
at the James J. Peter Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Bronx, NY); the Max Planck Society (Germany); the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by The_Mount_Sinai_Hospital_/_Mount_Sinai_School_of Medicine. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Soojung Na, Dongil Chung, Andreas Hula, Ofer Perl, Jennifer Jung,
Matthew
Heflin, Sylvia Blackmore, Vincenzo G Fiore, Peter Dayan, Xiaosi Gu.

Humans use forward thinking to exploit social
controllability. eLife, 2021; 10 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.64983 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211103115430.htm

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