Integration of individual and social information for decision-making in groups of different sizes

PLoS Biol. 2017 Jun 28;15(6):e2001958. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2001958. eCollection 2017 Jun.

Abstract

When making judgments in a group, individuals often revise their initial beliefs about the best judgment to make given what others believe. Despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon, we know little about how the brain updates beliefs when integrating personal judgments (individual information) with those of others (social information). Here, we investigated the neurocomputational mechanisms of how we adapt our judgments to those made by groups of different sizes, in the context of jury decisions for a criminal. By testing different theoretical models, we showed that a social Bayesian inference model captured changes in judgments better than 2 other models. Our results showed that participants updated their beliefs by appropriately weighting individual and social sources of information according to their respective credibility. When investigating 2 fundamental computations of Bayesian inference, belief updates and credibility estimates of social information, we found that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) computed the level of belief updates, while the bilateral frontopolar cortex (FPC) was more engaged in individuals who assigned a greater credibility to the judgments of a larger group. Moreover, increased functional connectivity between these 2 brain regions reflected a greater influence of group size on the relative credibility of social information. These results provide a mechanistic understanding of the computational roles of the FPC-dACC network in steering judgment adaptation to a group's opinion. Taken together, these findings provide a computational account of how the human brain integrates individual and social information for decision-making in groups.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Brain Mapping / methods
  • Cerebral Cortex / physiology
  • Cognition / physiology*
  • Decision Making*
  • Female
  • Gyrus Cinguli / physiology
  • Humans
  • Judgment / physiology*
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Nerve Net / physiology
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiology
  • Regression Analysis
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

French National Research Agency (ANR) (grant number ANR-14-CE13-0006-01 ‘BRAINCHOICE’). Received by JCD. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. JCD was funded by the EURIAS Fellowship Programme, the European Commission (Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions—COFUND Programme—FP7, grant number 502-686353647) and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. French National Research Agency (ANR) (grant number ANR-11-IDEX-0007). Received by JCD. This work was performed within the framework of the LABEX ANR-11-LABEX-0042 of Université de Lyon, within the program "Investissements d'Avenir". The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) (French National Research Agency [ANR] and National Science Foundation [NSF]) (grant number for the ANR-NSF CRCNS ‘SOCIAL_POMDP’ is ANR-16-NEUC-0003-01). Received by JCD. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.