Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 99, Issue 17, Pages 11531-11536Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.122352699
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Funding
- NINDS NIH HHS [P50 NS017778, P01 NS17778, NS21135, R56 NS021135, F-32 NS09971, R01 NS021135, R37 NS021135] Funding Source: Medline
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Social exchange is a pervasive feature of human social life. Models in evolutionary biology predict that for social exchange to evolve in a species, individuals must be able to detect cheaters (nonreciprocators). Previous research suggests that humans have a cognitive mechanism specialized for detecting cheaters. Here we provide neurological evidence indicating that social exchange reasoning can be selectively impaired while reasoning about other domains is left intact. The patient, R.M., had extensive bilateral limbic system damage, affecting orbitofrontal cortex, temporal pole, and amygdala. We compared his performance on two types of reasoning problem that were closely matched in form and equally difficult for control subjects: social contract rules (of the form, if you take the benefit, then you must satisfy the requirement) and precaution rules (of the form, if you engage in hazardous activity X, then you must take precaution Y). R.M. performed significantly worse in social contract reasoning than in precaution reasoning, when compared both with normal controls and with other brain-damaged subjects. This dissociation in reasoning performance provides evidence that reasoning about social exchange is a specialized and separable component of human social intelligence, and is consistent with other research indicating that the brain processes information about the social world differently from other types of information.
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