Abstract
Our lives consist of a constant stream of decisions, from the mundane to the highly consequential. The standard approach to studying decision-making has been to examine choices with clearly defined probabilities and outcomes, however it is challenging to extend these decision models to situations where one’s outcomes depend on the choices of others, and their outcomes on you. This class of ‘social’ decision-making better approximates many of our real-life choices, and these social interactive scenarios reveal important motivations, other than simple economic gain, that guide our decisions in a systematic fashion. For example, people consistently value prosocial acts more than standard economic models predict, though importantly, different people have different reasons for acting altruistically. In this talk I will outline an experimental approach using functional brain imaging and computational modelling to observe how players decide in real, consequential, social contexts, and how we can assess what motivations underlie these choices.