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Goal-directed, habitual and Pavlovian prosocial behavior
Filip Gęsiarz1, Molly J Crockett1
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford Oxford, UK.
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
|June 16, 2015
Summary
Prosocial behaviors are driven by goal-directed, habitual, and Pavlovian systems. Understanding these decision-making systems reveals the neural basis of altruism and egoism.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Decision Science
- Reinforcement Learning
Background:
- Prosocial behaviors are extensively studied but their underlying mechanisms remain unclear.
- Factors influencing prosociality include altruism vs. egoism, intuition vs. deliberation, and innate vs. learned behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a novel framework integrating diverse factors influencing prosocial behaviors.
- To explain prosocial behavior characteristics across different contexts using a unified model.
Main Methods:
- The proposed framework integrates concepts from reinforcement learning and decision-making research.
- It models prosociality through three decision-making systems: goal-directed, habitual, and Pavlovian.
Main Results:
- The framework links seemingly opposing factors driving prosocial actions (e.g., altruism/egoism).
- It identifies conditions under which each system (goal-directed, habitual, Pavlovian) influences self- or other-regarding behavior.
Conclusions:
- This framework offers insights into neural circuits and computations underlying prosocial behaviors.
- It clarifies how different decision-making systems contribute to diverse prosocial actions and their contexts.
Keywords:
Pavlovianaltruismdictator gamemodel-basedmodel-freeprosocial behaviorreinforcement learningwarm-glowMore Related Videos
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