The effect of self-focus on personal and social foraging behaviour

Zacharopoulos, George, Shenhav, A., Constantino, S., Maio, Gregory ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5408-5829 and Linden, David E. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5638-9292 2018. The effect of self-focus on personal and social foraging behaviour. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13 (9) , pp. 967-975. 10.1093/scan/nsy057

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Abstract

The continuous balancing of the risks and benefits of exploiting known options or exploring new opportunities is essential to human life. We forage for new opportunities when they are deemed to be more attractive than the available option, but this decision to forage also entails costs. People differ in their propensity to exploit or forage, and both the social circumstances and our individual value orientations are likely influences. Here, participants made foraging decisions for themselves and for a charity of their choice in two paradigms: one that features two distinct modes of decision-making (foraging vs classical economic decision-making) and one which is more directly related to the classical animal foraging and ethology literature. Across both paradigms, individuals who possessed a stronger self-focused value orientation obtained more rewards when they were allowed to forage for themselves rather than the charity. Neuroimaging during the tasks revealed that this effect was associated with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in that more self-focused individuals showed lower activity in dACC for the self-condition relative to the other condition. This evidence reveals a dynamic interplay between foraging outcomes and the higher-order value system of individuals.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology Medicine MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG) Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute (NMHRI)
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	1749-5016
Funders:	MRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 August 2018
Date of Acceptance:	11 July 2018
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 13:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/113856

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