The neural integration of different social motives and its impact on prosocial behavior: how egoism affects empathy and reciprocity

所有以目标为导向的人类行为都是由动机驱动的。关于亲社会行为，这个基本假设变得复杂了。亲社会行为可以由不同的动机激发，如关心他人（利他主义，由移情触发），关心自己的群体（集体主义），关心社会规范（原则主义，如互惠），或关心自己的福利（如帮助获得奖励，利己主义）。这些不同的动机很难孤立地起作用。在大多数情况下，不同的动机同时被激活，并且必须被整合。要了解亲社会行为发生的时间和程度，了解不同动机是如何整合的，以及动机的整合组合如何影响亲社会行为是至关重要的。在项目的第一个资助期，我们主要关注共情、互惠和集体主义动机之间的相互作用。然而，剩下的动机，即利己主义，如何影响特定的其他亲社会动机仍然知之甚少。利己主义对其他亲社会动机的影响尤为重要，因为利己主义动机（由激励引发）通常用于塑造公司或整个社会（例如奖金制度）中的个人行为。我为第二个资助期提出的研究系统地调查了利己动机和特定其他动机之间的神经相互作用，以及它对亲社会行为的影响。在概念层面上，本研究有助于构建多动机互动及其对实际亲社会决策影响的模型。在实践层面上，本研究的发现有助于优化激励结构。

All goal directed human behavior is driven by motives. With regard to prosocial behaviors, this fundamental assumption becomes complex. Prosocial behaviors can be incited by different motives such as concern for the other (altruism, triggered by empathy), concern for one’s own group (collectivism), concern for a social norm (principlism, e.g. reciprocity), or concern about one’s own welfare (for example helping to receive a reward; egoism). These different motives hardly ever operate in isolation. In most cases, different motives are activated simultaneously, and have to be integrated. To understand when and to which extent prosocial behaviours occur, it is crucial to understand how different motives are integrated, and how integrated combinations of motives affect prosocial behaviour. In the first funding period of the project, we have mainly focused on the interplay between the empathy, reciprocity and collectivistic motives. However, how the remaining motive, i.e., egoism, affects specific other prosocial motives remains poorly understood. The effect of egoism on other prosocial motives is particularly important, because the egoistic motive (triggered by incentives) is commonly used to shape individuals’ behaviors in firms or in society in general (e.g., bonus-systems). The studies that I propose for the second funding period systematically investigate the neural interplay between the egoistic motive and specific other motives, and its impact on prosocial behavior. On a conceptual level, the proposed research contributes to a model of multi-motive interactions and their impact on actual prosocial decisions. On the practical level, the finding of this project can help to optimize incentive structures.