Reduced self-referential neural response during intergroup competition predicts competitor harm
Name
nihms-585296.pdf
Size
572.77 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
964677db89ddf012f0f6cb330bfefa13
Author(s)
Cikara, M.
Jenkins, A.C.
Dufour, Nicholas Paul
Saxe, Rebecca R
Date Issued
April 2014
Journal
NeuroImage
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Cikara, M. et al. “Reduced Self-Referential Neural Response During Intergroup Competition Predicts Competitor Harm.” NeuroImage 96 (August 2014): 36–43 © 2014 Elsevier
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Why do interactions become more hostile when social relations shift from "me versus you" to "us versus them"? One possibility is that acting with a group can reduce spontaneous self-referential processing in the moral domain and, in turn, facilitate competitor harm. We tested this hypothesis in an fMRI experiment in which (i) participants performed a competitive task once alone and once with a group; (ii) spontaneous self-referential processing during competition was indexed unobtrusively by activation in an independently localized region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) associated with self-reference; and (iii) we assessed participants' willingness to harm competitors versus teammates. As predicted, participants who showed reduced mPFC activation in response to descriptions of their own moral behaviors while competing in a group were more willing to harm competitors. These results suggest that intergroup competition (above and beyond inter-personal competition) can reduce self-referential processing of moral information, enabling harmful behaviors towards members of a competitive group.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2014.03.080
