2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Anatomy of Social Preferences with Hypothetical Choice Exeriments and fMRI
| Project/Area Number |
24653058
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Applied economics
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| Research Institution | Osaka University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
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| Keywords | 労働経済学 / 神経経済学 |
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| Research Abstract |
We examined neural mechanism of social preferences by addressing two novel features of the experiment. One is methodological: we employed a new experimental paradigm on social preferences that is free from the use of self-evaluation data. The other feature is our focus on the effect of gender of reference persons. We measured brain activity by fMRI at the timing when subjects (N = 26, male 14; female 12) chose, rather than gave scores on, a preferred option out of two, each of which consisted of combination of reward for the subjects and for their fictive male or female rivals. By looking at the correlation of estimated parameters of social preferences and the BOLD signal in the DLPFC and the insula, we found that DLPFC played an universal role of social preferences. On the other hand, regarding the insula, that correlation was significant only in the case when female subjects compared to male rivals. Hence, the insula plays a very specific role of social preference in term of gender.
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