Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions.

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor's case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns of brain activation from mock jurors reading criminal scenarios. Brain patterns from crime-type bias were most similar to those associated with social cognition (mentalizing and racial bias) but not affect or moral judgment. Our results support a central role for social cognition in juror decisions and suggest that crime-type bias and cultural bias may arise from similar mechanisms.

Neural Support for Contributions of Utility and Narrative Processing of Evidence in Juror Decision Making.

Efforts to explain complex human decisions have focused on competing theories emphasizing utility and narrative mechanisms. These are difficult to distinguish using behavior alone. Both narrative and utility theories have been proposed to explain juror decisions, which are among the most consequential complex decisions made in a modern society. Here, we asked jury-eligible male and female subjects to rate the strength of a series of criminal cases while recording the resulting patterns of brain activation. We compared patterns of brain activation associated with evidence accumulation to patterns of brain activation derived from a large neuroimaging database to look for signatures of the cognitive processes associated with different models of juror decision-making. Evidence accumulation correlated with multiple narrative processes, including reading and recall. Of the cognitive processes traditionally viewed as components of utility, activation patterns associated with uncertainty, but not value, were more active with stronger evidence. Independent of utility and narrative, activations linked to reasoning and relational logic also correlated with increasing evidence. Hierarchical modeling of cognitive processes associated with evidence accumulation supported a more prominent role for narrative in weighing evidence in complex decisions. However, utility processes were also associated with evidence accumulation. These complementary findings support an emerging view that integrates utility and narrative processes in complex decisions.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The last decade has seen a sharply increased interest in narrative as a central cognitive process in human decision-making and as an important factor in the evolution of human societies. However, the roles of narrative versus utility models of decision-making remain hotly debated. While available models frequently produce similar behavioral predictions, they rely on different cognitive processes and so their roles can be separated using the right neural tests. Here, we use brain imaging during mock juror decisions to show that cognitive processes associated with narrative, and to a lesser extent utility, were engaged while subjects evaluated evidence. These results are consistent with interactions between narrative and utility processes during complex decision-making.

Pairing facts with imagined consequences improves pandemic-related risk perception.

The COVID-19 pandemic reached staggering new peaks during a global resurgence more than a year after the crisis began. Although public health guidelines initially helped to slow the spread of disease, widespread pandemic fatigue and prolonged harm to financial stability and mental well-being contributed to this resurgence. In the late stage of the pandemic, it became clear that new interventions were needed to support long-term behavior change. Here, we examined subjective perceived risk about COVID-19 and the relationship between perceived risk and engagement in risky behaviors. In study 1 (n = 303), we found that subjective perceived risk was likely inaccurate but predicted compliance with public health guidelines. In study 2 (n = 735), we developed a multifaceted intervention designed to realign perceived risk with actual risk. Participants completed an episodic simulation task; we expected that imagining a COVID-related scenario would increase the salience of risk information and enhance behavior change. Immediately following the episodic simulation, participants completed a risk estimation task with individualized feedback about local viral prevalence. We found that information prediction error, a measure of surprise, drove beneficial change in perceived risk and willingness to engage in risky activities. Imagining a COVID-related scenario beforehand enhanced the effect of prediction error on learning. Importantly, our intervention produced lasting effects that persisted after a 1- to 3-wk delay. Overall, we describe a fast and feasible online intervention that effectively changed beliefs and intentions about risky behaviors.

Imagining a Personalized Scenario Selectively Increases Perceived Risk of Viral Transmission for Older Adults.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a serious and prolonged public-health emergency. Older adults have been at substantially greater risk of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death due to COVID-19; as of February 2021, over 81% of COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. occurred for people over the age of 651,2. Converging evidence from around the world suggests that age is the greatest risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness and for the experience of adverse health outcomes3,4. Therefore, effectively communicating health-related risk information requires tailoring interventions to older adults' needs5. Using a novel informational intervention with a nationally-representative sample of 546 U.S. residents, we found that older adults reported increased perceived risk of COVID-19 transmission after imagining a personalized scenario with social consequences. Although older adults tended to forget numerical information over time, the personalized simulations elicited increases in perceived risk that persisted over a 1-3 week delay. Overall, our results bear broad implications for communicating information about health risks to older adults, and they suggest new strategies to combat annual influenza outbreaks.

Applying Behavioral Economics to Improve Adolescent and Young Adult Health: A Developmentally-Sensitive Approach.

Each day, adolescents and young adults (AYAs) choose to engage in behaviors that impact their current and future health. Behavioral economics represents an innovative lens through which to explore decision-making among AYAs. Behavioral economics outlines a diverse set of phenomena that influence decision-making and can be leveraged to develop interventions that may support behavior change. Up to this point, behavioral economic interventions have predominantly been studied in adults. This article provides an integrative review of how behavioral economic phenomena can be leveraged to motivate health-related behavior change among AYAs. We contextualize these phenomena in the physical and social environments unique to AYAs and the neurodevelopmental changes they undergo, highlighting opportunities to intervene in AYA-specific contexts. Our review of the literature suggests behavioral economic phenomena leveraging social choice are particularly promising for AYA health. Behavioral economic interventions that take advantage of AYA learning and development have the potential to positively impact youth health and well-being over the lifespan.

Neural Mechanisms of Reward Prediction Error in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Few studies have explored neural mechanisms of reward learning in ASD despite evidence of behavioral impairments of predictive abilities in ASD. To investigate the neural correlates of reward prediction errors in ASD, 16 adults with ASD and 14 typically developing controls performed a prediction error task during fMRI scanning. Results revealed greater activation in the ASD group in the left paracingulate gyrus during signed prediction errors and the left insula and right frontal pole during thresholded unsigned prediction errors. Findings support atypical neural processing of reward prediction errors in ASD in frontostriatal regions critical for prediction coding and reward learning. Results provide a neural basis for impairments in reward learning that may contribute to traits common in ASD (e.g., intolerance of unpredictability).

Revealing the world of autism through the lens of a camera.

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypical attention to social stimuli [1] and gaze at faces [2] and complex images [3] in unusual ways. But all studies to date are limited by the experimenter's selected stimuli, which are generally photographs taken by people without autism. What might participants with ASD show us if they were the ones taking the photos? We gave participants a digital camera and analysed the photos they took: images taken by participants with ASD had unusual features and showed strikingly different ways of photographing other people.

Enhanced Neural Responses to Imagined Primary Rewards Predict Reduced Monetary Temporal Discounting.

The pervasive tendency to discount the value of future rewards varies considerably across individuals and has important implications for health and well-being. Here, we used fMRI with human participants to examine whether an individual's neural representation of an imagined primary reward predicts the degree to which the value of delayed monetary payments is discounted. Because future rewards can never be experienced at the time of choice, imagining or simulating the benefits of a future reward may play a critical role in decisions between alternatives with either immediate or delayed benefits. We found that enhanced ventromedial prefrontal cortex response during imagined primary reward receipt was correlated with reduced discounting in a separate monetary intertemporal choice task. Furthermore, activity in enhanced ventromedial prefrontal cortex during reward imagination predicted temporal discounting behavior both between- and within-individual decision makers with 62% and 73% mean balanced accuracy, respectively. These results suggest that the quality of reward imagination may impact the degree to which future outcomes are discounted. Significance statement: We report a novel test of the hypothesis that an important factor influencing the discount rate for future rewards is the quality with which they are imagined or estimated in the present. Previous work has shown that temporal discounting is linked to individual characteristics ranging from general intelligence to the propensity for addiction. We demonstrate that individual differences in a neurobiological measure of primary reward imagination are significantly correlated with discounting rates for future monetary payments. Moreover, our neurobiological measure of imagination can be used to accurately predict choice behavior both between and within individuals. These results suggest that improving reward imagination may be a useful therapeutic target for individuals whose high discount rates promote detrimental behaviors.

Activity in dlPFC and its effective connectivity to vmPFC are associated with temporal discounting.

There is widespread interest in identifying computational and neurobiological mechanisms that influence the ability to choose long-term benefits over more proximal and readily available rewards in domains such as dietary and economic choice. We present the results of a human fMRI study that examines how neural activity relates to observed individual differences in the discounting of future rewards during an intertemporal monetary choice task. We found that a region of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) BA-46 was more active in trials where subjects chose delayed rewards, after controlling for the subjective value of those rewards. We also found that the connectivity from dlPFC BA-46 to a region of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) widely associated with the computation of stimulus values, increased at the time of choice, and especially during trials in which subjects chose delayed rewards. Finally, we found that estimates of effective connectivity between these two regions played a critical role in predicting out-of-sample, between-subject differences in discount rates. Together with previous findings in dietary choice, these results suggest that a common set of computational and neurobiological mechanisms facilitate choices in favor of long-term reward in both settings.

A common allele in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) impacts prosocial temperament and human hypothalamic-limbic structure and function.

The evolutionarily highly conserved neuropeptide oxytocin is a key mediator of social and emotional behavior in mammals, including humans. A common variant (rs53576) in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) has been implicated in social-behavioral phenotypes, such as maternal sensitivity and empathy, and with neuropsychiatric disorders associated with social impairment, but the intermediate neural mechanisms are unknown. Here, we used multimodal neuroimaging in a large sample of healthy human subjects to identify structural and functional alterations in OXTR risk allele carriers and their link to temperament. Activation and interregional coupling of the amygdala during the processing of emotionally salient social cues was significantly affected by genotype. In addition, evidence for structural alterations in key oxytocinergic regions emerged, particularly in the hypothalamus. These neural characteristics predicted lower levels of reward dependence, specifically in male risk allele carriers. Our findings identify sex-dependent mechanisms impacting the structure and function of hypothalamic-limbic circuits that are of potential clinical and translational significance.

Acute D2 receptor blockade induces rapid, reversible remodeling in human cortical-striatal circuits.

Structural remodeling has been observed in the human brain over periods of weeks to months, but the molecular mechanisms governing this process remain incompletely characterized. Using multimodal pharmaco-neuroimaging, we found that acute D2 receptor blockade induced reversible striatal volume changes and structural-functional decoupling in motor circuits within hours; these alterations predicted acute extrapyramidal motor symptoms with high precision. Our findings suggest a role for D2 receptors in short-term neural plasticity and identify a potential biomarker for neuroleptic side effects in humans.

Vasopressin modulates medial prefrontal cortex-amygdala circuitry during emotion processing in humans.

The neuropeptide vasopressin is a modulator of mammalian social behavior and emotion, particularly fear, aggression, and anxiety. In humans, the neural circuitry underlying behavioral effects of vasopressin is unknown. Using a double-blind crossover administration of 40 IU of vasopressin or placebo and functional MRI during processing of facial emotions in healthy male volunteers, we show that vasopressin specifically reduces differential activation in the subgenual cingulate cortex. Structural equation modeling of a previously evaluated circuit between amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and supragenual cingulate revealed altered effective connectivity between subgenual and supragenual cingulate under vasopressin. Our data demonstrate an impact of vasopressin on activity and connectivity in the cortical component of a medial prefrontal cortex-amygdala circuit implicated in emotional regulation, providing the first data on the neural basis for the effects of vasopressin on social behavior in humans with potential therapeutic significance for mood and anxiety disorders.

Neural bases of social anxiety disorder: emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat.

CONTEXT: Social anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyperreactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated. OBJECTIVE: To investigate behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli. DESIGN: Participants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience. SETTING: Academic psychology department. PARTICIPANTS: Fifteen adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically matched healthy controls. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood oxygen level-dependent signal and negative emotion ratings. RESULTS: Behaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion- and attention-processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared with patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (ie, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in patients compared with controls. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation-related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder.