Congrats to Lisa Bas and Ian Roberts on their exciting new paper published in eLife. The article sheds light on the question of what distinguishes biological agents who are willing to help others – even at significant costs to themselves – from those who seem to care mostly about their own welfare. How do social perceptions, like those related to others’ need or merit, shape social actions? Humans do not help others indiscriminately: they are more inclined to help those perceived as needy or deserving. The paper provides a neurocomputational account of how people assess whether others need or deserve help, and how these computations influence their choices to initiate help. The results identify a set of distinct mechanisms that contribute to our understanding of when and how social perceptions translate into social actions. These findings have important behavioral implications for an individual’s tendency toward favoritism or discrimination in social settings, which is prevalent in sports, politics, educational settings, or religion, just to name a few. The full paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.92539.1
QUEEN'S NEUROECONOMICS LABORATORY 