A Key Role for Similarity in Vicarious Reward
Creators
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1.
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
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2.
University of Birmingham
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3.
Institute of Neurological Sciences
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4.
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging
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5.
Aarhus University
Abstract
Humans appear to have an inherent prosocial tendency toward one another in that we often take pleasure in seeing others succeed. This fact is almost certainly exploited by game shows, yet why watching others win elicits a pleasurable vicarious rewarding feeling in the absence of personal economic gain is unclear. One explanation is that game shows use contestants who have similarities to the viewing population, thereby kindling kin-motivated responses (for example, prosocial behavior). Using a game show–inspired paradigm, we show that the interactions between the ventral striatum and anterior cingulate cortex subserve the modulation of vicarious reward by similarity, respectively. Our results support studies showing that similarity acts as a proximate neurobiological mechanism where prosocial behavior extends to unrelated strangers.
Additional Information
© 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 6 January 2009; accepted 13 March 2009. We thank M. Ewbank, R. Henson, and E. Hill for their help. This work was conducted at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and supported by the MRC. These authors contributed equally to this work.Attached Files
Accepted Version - ukmss-28868.pdf
Supplemental Material - Mobbs.SOM.pdf
Files
Mobbs.SOM.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- PMCID
- PMC2839480
- Eprint ID
- 85075
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.1170539
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180302-151347877
Related works
- Describes
- 10.1126/science.1170539 (DOI)
Funding
- Medical Research Council (UK)
Dates
- Created
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2018-03-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field