The Social Brain
Ben Seymour
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution
Beauty contest game
• You can select any number
between 0 and 100.
• Whoever selects the number
closest to 2/3 of the average of all
the players’ numbers is the winner.
• Winner gets a prize!
Many eyes are better than two
Cooperative signals:
many eyes are better than two..
The benefits of teamwork:
To share or not to share?
There’s a snake, honest!
Someone terrible lives here
Do we really need to fight?
Retributivism
Consequentialism
empathy
Schadenfreude
Cooperation game with actors
player 1
player 2
cooperate
defect
cooperate
10/10
0/15
defect
15/0
1/1
Watch each other get electric shocks
Empathy
the
nice
Schadenfreude
Recordfor
brain
for
activity
the person
nasty person
Hunting stags and rabbits
Theory of Mind
Theory of mind
• Hierarchical value-functions
first order
second order
third order
– The brain codes parameters for working out how sophisticated
others are
Human pro-sociality:
• Trust and reciprocity.
• Reputation formation.
– is it enough?
The importance of culture
Culture seeds altruism
• Human culture: learning how to make good decisions
from others:
• Observation
• Apprenticeship
• Teaching
Culture seeds altruism
• Human culture: learning how to make good decisions
from others:
• Observation
• Apprenticeship
• Teaching
C
Now for the results:
•
Acknowledgements:
– Wako Yoshida
– Tania Singer
– Ray Dolan
– Karl Friston
– Chris Frith