ArticleCurrent biology : CB2022
Distinct neural representations for prosocial and self-benefiting effort.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- L-DOPA and oxytocin influence the neural correlates of performance monitoring for self and others.Psychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Self-relevance dynamically biases exploration and exploitation in value-based decisions.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Mindful minds: How group identity shapes brain and behavior in social decision-making.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural and computational mechanisms of effort under the pressure of a deadline.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- The social dimension of apathy: evidence for a distinct domain from 11,243 individuals across health and neurocognitive disorders.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- The neural basis of prosocial effort-based decision making in older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Self-allocation bias in performance-based cooperative decisions is driven by self-interest rather than distorted performance encoding.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Dopamine Boosts Motivation for Prosocial Effort in Parkinson's Disease.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Prosocial Behavior toward Others in Negative State.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Humans are more prosocial in poor foraging environments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Deciding for others diminishes model-based decision-making but depends on individual prosociality.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Associations between amygdala connectivity and experienced discrimination in children.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Prosocial decisions in naturalistic helping scenarios are predicted by cost-benefit tradeoffs and individual disposition.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Effort and time costs influence motivational asymmetries in self-benefitting vs pro-environmental decisions.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Avoiding Pain to Others Motivates Effortful Prosocial Behavior.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Hypocritical blame is associated with reduced prosocial motivation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Effort Expenditure Reduces Prosocial Decision-Making: Computational Principles and Neural Mechanisms.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Divergent Neural Mechanisms of Self-Concerned and Prosocial Decision-Making Under High and Low Cognitive Loads.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
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Abstract
Prosocial behaviors-actions that benefit others-are central to individual and societal well-being. Although the mechanisms underlying the financial and moral costs of prosocial behaviors are increasingly understood, this work has often ignored a key influence on behavior: effort. Many prosocial acts are effortful, and people are averse to the costs of exerting them. However, how the brain encodes effort costs when actions benefit others is unknown. During fMRI, participants completed a decision-making task where they chose in each trial whether to "work" and exert force (30%-70% of maximum grip strength) or "rest" (no effort) for rewards (2-10 credits). Crucially, on separate trials, they made these decisions either to benefit another person or themselves. We used a combination of multivariate representational similarity analysis and model-based univariate analysis to reveal how the costs of prosocial and self-benefiting efforts are processed. Strikingly, we identified a unique neural signature of effort in the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg) for prosocial acts, both when choosing to help others and when exerting force to benefit them. This pattern was absent for self-benefiting behaviors. Moreover, stronger, specific representations of prosocial effort in the ACCg were linked to higher levels of empathy and higher subsequent exerted force to benefit others. In contrast, the ventral tegmental area and ventral insula represented value preferentially when choosing for oneself and not for prosocial acts. These findings advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms of prosocial behavior, highlighting the critical role that effort has in the brain circuits that guide helping others.
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