The Social Brain

Ben Seymour

Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging

ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution

Beauty contest game

• You can select any number between 0 and 100.

• Whoever selects the number closest to 2/3 of the average of all the players’ numbers is the winner.

• Winner gets a prize!

Cooperative signals:many eyes are better than two..

Many eyes are better than two

The benefits of teamwork:

To share or not to share?

There’s a snake, honest!

Someone terrible lives here

Do we really need to fight?

Retributivism Consequentialism

empathy

Schadenfreude

Cooperation game with actors

Watch each other get electric shocks

Record brain activity

player 1 player 2

cooperate defect

cooperate 10/10 0/15

defect 15/0 1/1

Empathy for the nice personSchadenfreude for the nasty person

Hunting stags and rabbits

Theory of Mind

Theory of mind

• Hierarchical value-functions

– The brain codes parameters for working out how sophisticated others are

first order second order third order

Human pro-sociality:

• Trust and reciprocity.• Reputation formation.

– is it enough?

The importance of culture

Culture seeds altruism

• Human culture: learning how to make good decisions from others:• Observation• Apprenticeship• Teaching

Culture seeds altruism

• Human culture: learning how to make good decisions from others:• Observation• Apprenticeship• Teaching

C

Now for the results:

• Acknowledgements:– Wako Yoshida– Tania Singer– Ray Dolan– Karl Friston– Chris Frith