Social Rank Alters the Synchrony of Attribute Integration in Altruistic Decisions

Abstract

AbstractSocial rank, which represents the hierarchical dominance structure in societies, forms the backdrop against which most social decisions are made. Effective social decision-making demands the flexible integration of multifaceted information, including the relative weights and timings of different attributes. However, there is limited understanding of the potential impact of attribute timing on social preferences and, crucially, whether attribute weights and timings are susceptible to the influence of social rank. Here, through a two-stage social decision task, we manipulated subjects’ social rank before they engaged in altruistic decisions. By interrogating behavioral data through the lens of the time-varying drift diffusion process, we found that the behavioral patterns are better explained by a model that considers both attribute timing and weight. Interestingly, varying social ranks only modulate attribute timings in the decision process, leaving attribute weights unaffected. Furthermore, we demonstrated that individuals with more prosocial tendencies exhibited higher sensitivities of attribute timing in response to the changes of social rank and these results were replicated in a separate and larger cohort of participants. Our results underscore the intricate interplay between social rank and social attribute integration and introduce a new dimension to the computational mechanisms that underlie social decision-making.Author SummarySocial rank characterizes the background where most social decisions take place, however, the cognitive and computational mechanisms underlying how social rank influences altruistic decisions remain elusive. Here, combining a two-stage social decision task and time-varying DDM, we reveal that social rank specifically modulates attribute timings in the decision process, leaving attribute weights unaffected. Our results underscore the intricate interplay between social rank and social attribute integration during social decision-making.