Neural correlates of risky monetary decision-making impacting others

Risky decision making can involve potential serious harms to the self and other people. Significant work has focused on the former category, illustrating a variety of neural correlates with risk taking, highlighting valuation, outcome uncertainty, and other cognitive processes related to feedback learning. Behavioral evidence suggests people are generally more risk tolerant in decisions on behalf of others, but it is less clear if this reflects similar value computation or a distinct influence of social cognition. Here, we replicate and extend limited previous work to address that question.

Adults (n = 38) completed a financial risk fMRI task where they chose between safe (small, certain reward) and risky (50% chance of larger reward with 50% risk of losing that amount instead) options. The trials varied on Risk Recipient (self/other) and Risk/Reward Allocation (balanced/mixed).

Individuals were more willing to risk financial loss to others compared to themselves. In this same contrast, temporoparietal junction and posterior cingulate hemodynamic responses were elevated. Ventral striatum engagement was higher when risk of financial loss was to the self. Additional regions were found in a whole-brain analysis examining the effect of Risk/Reward Allocation, including in anterior insula and temporoparietal junction.

Overall, these results suggest decisions about financial risks to others involve engagement in social cognitive processes beyond typical valuation/uncertainty modulation. These processes are particularly sensitive to risk/reward allocation, which suggests potential for future studies to evaluate this allocation framing as a tool for reducing risks to others in real-world scenarios.