Dataset Information

Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating.

ABSTRACT: There is a long-standing debate regarding the cognitive nature of (dis)honesty: Is honesty an automatic response or does it require willpower in the form of cognitive control in order to override an automatic dishonest response. In a recent study (Speer et al., 2020), we proposed a reconciliation of these opposing views by showing that activity in areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled cheating for honest participants. These findings suggest that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se but that it depends on an individual's moral default. However, while our findings provided insights into the role of cognitive control in overriding a moral default, they did not reveal whether overriding honest default behavior (non-habitual dishonesty) is the same as overriding dishonest default behavior (non-habitual honesty) at the neural level. This speaks to the question as to whether cognitive control mechanisms are domain-general or may be context specific. To address this, we applied multivariate pattern analysis to compare neural patterns of non-habitual honesty to non-habitual dishonesty. We found that these choices are differently encoded in the IFG, suggesting that engaging cognitive control to follow the norm (that cheating is wrong) fundamentally differs from applying control to violate this norm.

SUBMITTER: Speer SPH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7900520 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating.

Speer Sebastian P H SPH Smidts Ale A Boksem Maarten A S MAS

Frontiers in neuroscience 20210209

There is a long-standing debate regarding the cognitive nature of (dis)honesty: Is honesty an automatic response or does it require willpower in the form of cognitive control in order to override an automatic dishonest response. In a recent study (Speer et al., 2020), we proposed a reconciliation of these opposing views by showing that activity in areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled ...[more]

PMID: 33633534

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Project description:BackgroundThe reliability of signals is a key issue in the study of animal communication. Both empirical work and theoretical models show that communication need not be entirely honest, and thus signals can be deceitful. Aggressive communication appears to be a prime candidate for such deceitful communication, because bluffing has been described in several species. Bluffing in these situations are supposed to be maintained by frequency dependent selection where the fitness of a given type depends on the frequencies of the other types in the population. Previous efforts to model such a scenario through individual based simulations have yielded conflicting results. Studies have either found a rich set of polymorphic strategies including the traditional cheating scenario or found none. Thus, the modelling assumptions responsible for these diverging conclusions remain unclear.ResultsIn this study, I investigate the effects of four modelling assumptions: the role of an extended strategy set, the initial population composition (seeding), the differences in pay-offs and finally different parameter spaces. I investigate the effects of these factors on the evolvability of both honest and mixed cheating strategies. I show that both honest and cheating equilibria readily evolve and that the investigated parameter range and the seeding of the starting populations have the greatest influence on the outcome.ConclusionsBoth honest signalling and polymorphic cheating equilibria are more likely to evolve from a narrow strategy set than from a random mixture of strategies. A large potential strategy set is not a setback for the evolution of communication -honest or cheating- as long as the initial population is seeded with only a few strategies. In addition, different sections of the parameter space show consistently different behaviour. Thus, frequency dependent selection has the potential to explain various empirical observations that show consistent differences in aggressive behaviour.

Dataset Information

Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating.

Publications

Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating.

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