A preliminary study on neural basis of strategic reasoning to social decision making

The effect of the interacting counterpart's depth of strategic reasoning on social decision making was investigated. In the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, participants played competitive or collaborative matrix games with the other agent whose reasoning level was ranged from zeroth (low) to first (high). Results showed increased prefrontal activation for higher-level interaction compared to lower-level interaction, regardless of the type of social interaction. This result can be interpreted as the increased cognitive demand for social decision making in more complex situation (e.g., interaction with a higher-level agent). In summary, this study suggests that social decision making relies on how strategic the interacting agent's reasoning is.