Diminishing reciprocal fairness by disrupting the right prefrontal cortex
Open accessAbstract
Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values. They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness, which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors, even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocal fairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, where players often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers. Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known about how the human brain limits the impact of selfish motives and implements fair behavior. Here we show that disruption of the right, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation substantially reduces subjects' willingness to reject their partners' intentionally unfair offers, which suggests that subjects are less able to resist the economic temptation to accept these offers. Importantly, however, subjects still judge such offers as very unfair, which indicates that the right DLPFC plays a key role in the implementation of fairness-related behaviors.
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Previous fMRI studies have provided considerable evidence that DLPFC is required for the implementation of basic perceptual as well as complex social decisions and judgments.
“previous fMRI studies have provided considerable evidence that DLPFC is required for the implementation of basic perceptual (Heekeren et al., 2004(Heekeren et al., , 2006) ) as well as complex social decisions and judgments (Knoch et al., 2006(Knoch et al., , 2009;;Spitzer et al., 2007;Steinbeis et al., 2012;Tassy et al., 2012).”
From Age-related differences in function and structure of rSMG and reduced functional connectivity with DLPFC explains heightened emotional egocentricity bias in childhood (2015) · cites this paper as Knoch et al., 2006
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- Authors
- Knoch, D., Pascual-Leone, A., Meyer, K., Treyer, V., & Fehr, E.
- Affiliations
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland.
- Corresponding author
- Knoch, Daria
- Fehr, Ernst
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2006-11-03
- Volume
- 314
- Issue
- 5800
- Pages
- 829-832
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2105563024
- Cited by
- 1,024
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 33 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 77 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 57 · 2015: 59 · 2014: 62 · 2013: 62 · 2012: 81
- FWCI
- 163.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- BORIS (University Library Bern) (submittedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Center for Research Resources (K24RR018875)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Keywords
- right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ultimatum game, rejection of unfair offers, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, self-interest, fairness judgments, moral behavior
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Decision Making, Games, Experimental, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Judgment, Functional Laterality, Male, Social Behavior, Prefrontal Cortex, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
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