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Abstract The equitable allocation of resources has long been a central concern for humanity, prompting extensive research into various motivations that drive the pursuit of distributive justice. In contrast to one of the most fundamental motives, inequality aversion, a conflicting motive has been proposed: rank-reversal aversion. However, it remains unclear whether this rank-reversal aversion persists in the presence of self-rank. Here we provide evidence of rank-reversal aversion in the first-party context and explore diverse moral strategies for distribution. In a modified version of the redistribution game involving 55 online-recruited participants, we observed rank-reversal aversion only when one’s rank was maintained. When participants’ self-rank was altered, they tended to base their behavior on their new ranks. This behavioral tendency varied among individuals, revealing three distinct moral strategies, all incorporating considerations of rank-reversal. Our findings suggest that rank-reversal aversion can indeed influence one’s distribution behavior, although the extent of its impact may vary among individuals, especially when self-rank is a factor. These insights can be extended to political and economic domains, contributing to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of distributive justice.

Fairness constitutes a cornerstone of social norms, emphasizing equal treatment and equitable distribution in interpersonal relationships. Unfair treatment often leads to direct responses and can spread to others through a phenomenon known as pay-it-forward (PIF) reciprocity. This study examined how unfairness spreads in interactions with new partners who have higher, equal, or lower status than the participants. In the present study, participants (N = 47, all Korean) were given either fair or unfair treatment in the first round of a dictator game. They then allocated monetary resources among partners positioned at various hierarchical levels in the second round. Our main goal was to determine if the severity of inequity inflicted on new partners was influenced by their hierarchical status. The results revealed an inclination among participants to act more generously towards partners of higher ranking despite prior instances of unfair treatment, whereas a tendency for harsher treatment was directed towards those with lower ranking. The interaction between the fairness in the first round (DG1) and the hierarchical status of the partner in the second round (DG2) was significant, indicating that the effect of previous fairness on decision-making differed depending on the ranking of the new partners. This study, therefore, validates the presence of unfairness PIF reciprocity within hierarchical contexts.

With an increasing societal need for digital therapy solutions for poor mental health, we face a corresponding rise in demand for scientifically validated digital contents. In this study we aimed to lay a sound scientific foundation for the development of brain-based digital therapeutics to assess and monitor cognitive effects of social and emotional bias across diverse populations and age-ranges. First, we developed three computerized cognitive tasks using animated graphics: 1) an emotional flanker task designed to test attentional bias, 2) an emotional go-no-go task to measure bias in memory and executive function, and 3) an emotional social evaluation task to measure sensitivity to social judgments. Then, we confirmed the generalizability of our results in a wide range of samples (children (N = 50), young adults (N = 172), older adults (N = 39), online young adults (N=93), and depression patients (N = 41)) using touchscreen and online computer-based tasks, and devised a spontaneous thought generation task that was strongly associated with, and therefore could potentially serve as an alternative to, self-report scales. Using PCA, we extracted five components that represented different aspects of cognitive-affective function (emotional bias, emotional sensitivity, general accuracy, and general/social attention). Next, a gamified version of the above tasks was developed to test the feasibility of digital cognitive training over a 2-week period. A pilot training study utilizing this application showed decreases in emotional bias in the training group (that were not observed in the control group), which was correlated with a reduction in anxiety symptoms. Using a 2-channel wearable EEG system, we found that frontal alpha and gamma power were associated with both emotional bias and its reduction across the 2-week training period.

Abstract The evolutionary fitness payoffs of moral condemnation are greatest within an individual’s immediate social milieu. Accordingly, insofar as human moral intuitions have been shaped by adaptive design, we can expect transgressive harms to be perceived as more wrong when transpiring in the here and now than when occurring at a distance, or with the approval of local authority figures. This moral parochialism hypothesis has been supported by research conducted in diverse societies, but has yet to be tested in an East Asian society, despite prior research indicating that East Asians appraise transgressive acts as being caused by situational and contextual factors to a greater extent than do Westerners, who tend to emphasize dispositional factors (i.e., the transgressor’s personal nature). Here, in a quasi-experiment using field samples recruited in Seoul and Los Angeles, we tested (i) the moral parochialism hypothesis regarding the perceived wrongness of transgressions, as well as (ii) the extent to which these wrongness judgments might be influenced by cross-cultural differences in causal appraisals. Despite notably large differences across the two societies in situational versus dispositional appraisals of the causes of the transgressions, replicating previous findings elsewhere, in both societies we found that transgressions were deemed less wrong when occurring at spatial or temporal remove or with the consent of authorities. These findings add to the understanding of morality as universally focused on local affairs, notwithstanding cultural variation in perceptions of the situational versus dispositional causes of (im)moral acts.

Abstract Ingroup favoritism and fairness are two potentially competing motives guiding intergroup behaviors in human. Here, we investigate if and how limited resources can modulate the way these two motives affect individuals’ decisions in intergroup situation. In the present study, participants (N = 58) were asked to accept or reject three types of resource allocation proposals generated by a computer: the ingroup advantageous condition, outgroup advantageous condition, and neutral condition. In general, participants were more willing to accept the proposals in the ingroup advantageous condition than the outgroup advantageous or the neutral conditions, and also in the moderate inequality than the extreme inequality condition. This may indicate that people sought a careful balance between ingroup favoritism and fairness, although we also found marked individual differences in their preferences for ingroup favoritism or fairness. Importantly, as predicted, participants were more likely to show ingroup favoritism only when limited resources affect the well-being of ingroup members. The present study provides novel insights into the situational and personality factors affecting human intergroup behaviors, shedding light on motives underlying intergroup conflicts prevalent in human societies.

Reverse correlation (RC) method has been recently used to visualize mental representations of self. Previous studies have mainly examined the relationship between psychological aspects measured by self-reports and classification images of self (self-CIs), which are visual proxies of self-image generated through the RC method. In Experiment 1 (N = 118), to extend the validity of self-CIs, we employed social evaluation on top of self-reports as criterion variables and examined the relationship between self-CIs and social evaluation provided by clinical psychologists. Experiment 1 revealed that the valence ratings of self-CIs evaluated by independent raters predicted social evaluation after controlling for the effects of self-reported self-esteem and extraversion. Furthermore, in Experiment 2 (N = 127), we examined whether a computational scoring method – a method to assess self-CIs without employing independent raters – could be applied to evaluate the valence of participants’ self-CIs. Experiment 2 found that the computational scores of self-CIs were comparable to independent valence ratings of self-CIs. We provide evidence that self-CIs can add independent information to self-reports in predicting social evaluation. We also suggest that the computational scoring method can complement the independent rating process of self-CIs. Overall, our findings reveal that self-CIs are a valid and useful tool to examine self-image more profoundly.

How do we incorporate contextual information to infer others’ emotional state? Here we employed a naturalistic context-dependent facial expression estimation task where participants estimated pleasantness levels of others’ ambiguous expression faces when sniffing different contextual cues (e.g., urine, fish, water, and rose). Based on their pleasantness rating data, we placed participants on a context-dependency continuum and mapped the individual variability in the context-dependency onto the neural representation using a representational similarity analysis. We found that the individual variability in the context-dependency of facial expression estimation correlated with the activity level of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) and the amygdala and was also decoded by the neural representation of the ventral anterior insula (vAI). A dynamic causal modeling revealed that those with higher context-dependency exhibited a greater degree of the modulation from vAI to the pgACC. These findings provide novel insights into the neural circuitry associated with the individual variability in context-dependent facial expression estimation and the first empirical evidence for individual variability in the predictive accounts of affective states.

Why would people conform more to others with higher social positions? People may place higher confidence in the opinions of those who rank higher in the social hierarchy, or they may wish to make better impressions on people of higher social status. We investigated how individual preferences for novel stimuli are influenced by the preferences of others in the social hierarchy and whether anonymity affects such preference changes. After manipulation of their social rank, participants were asked to indicate how much they liked or disliked a series of images. Then, they were shown the rating given to each image by a partner (either inferior or superior in social rank) and were given a chance to adjust their ratings. The participants were more likely to change their preferences to match those of a superior partner in the public vs. private condition. The tendency to conform to the views of the superior partner was stronger among those with higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and those with greater fear of negative evaluation (FNE) by others. Altogether, the findings suggest that the motivation to make better impressions on people of higher social status can be the major driver of conformity to others with higher social positions.

Social factors play a significant role in the health outcomes of those struggling with mental or physical health issues. People with mental illness experience more social stigmatization and receive less concern for their welfare than do those with physical illness. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which such a bias in attitude arises remain unclear. This functional MRI study examined whether a lack of self-other similarity during mental state attribution affects perceivers’ theory of mind and, subsequently, how they value a patient’s welfare. During scanning, participants were asked to respond to an expression of caring and sympathetic concern from either their own perspective or while adopting the perspective of patients labeled physically ill or mentally ill. Participants reported that physically ill patients would share their affective responses to the situations, but mentally ill patients would not. Furthermore, mentalizing about physically ill patients was associated with increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a critical region for empathic concern and value-based decisions. In contrast, mentalizing about mentally ill patients preferentially engaged the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula, regions previously implicated in empathic distress, in which activity correlated with individual differences in prejudice control. The findings indicate that a lack of perceived self-other similarity poses a challenge to the theory of mind and thus requires greater cognitive resources and neural computations. This might give rise to stereotyped beliefs about and prejudice against the mentally ill and failure to respond with appropriate empathy and care.

Social comparison orientation (SCO), the tendency to compare oneself with others, is universal, varies widely across individuals, and predicts important life and health outcomes. However, the neural mechanism underlying individual differences in SCO is still not well-understood. In the present study, we identified intrinsic neural markers of SCO in healthy young adults (n = 42) using a multimodal neuroimaging approach that included diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional MRI data. We found that higher SCO was associated with weaker structural and functional connectivity (SC, FC) strengths between the ventral striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex, which are core regions of the brain reward network. Additionally, individual SCO was negatively associated with neural fluctuations in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), part of the frontoparietal network, and positively with FC between the IPS and anterior insula/amygdala cluster. This finding was further confirmed by the observation of independently-defined, large-scale, inter-network FC between the frontoparietal network and cingulo-opercular network. Taken together, these results provide novel evidence for intrinsic functional and structural connectivity of the human brain associated with individual differences in SCO.

The reverse correlation (RC) method has been widely used, because it allows visualization of mental representations without a priori assumptions about relevant dimensions. We employed the RC method to visualize mental representations of self and examined their relationships with traits related to self-image. For this purpose, 110 participants (70 women) performed a two-image forced choice RC task to generate a classification image of self (self-CI). Participants perceived their self-CIs as bearing a stronger resemblance to themselves than did CIs of others (filler-CIs). Valence ratings of participants who performed the RC task (RC sample) and of 30 independent raters both showed positive correlations with self-esteem, explicit self-evaluation, and extraversion. Moreover, valence ratings of independent raters were negatively correlated with social anxiety symptoms. On the other hand, valence ratings of the RC sample and independent raters were not correlated with depression symptoms, trait anxiety, or social desirability. The results imply that mental representations of self can be properly visualized by using the RC method.

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has long been recognized as the key component of the neurocircuitry involved in various social as well as non-social behaviors, however, little is known regarding the organizing principle of distinctive subregions in the mPFC that integrates a wide range of mPFC functions. The present study proposes a hierarchical model of mPFC functionality, where three functionally dissociable subregions, namely, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), rostromedial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC), and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), are differentially involved in computing values of decision-making. According to this model, the mPFC subregions interact with each other in such a way that more dorsal regions utilize additional external sensory information from environment to predict and prevent conflicts occurring in more ventral regions tuned to internal bodily signals, thereby exerting the hierarchically organized allostatic regulatory control over homeostatic reflexes. This model also emphasizes the role of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) in arbitrating the transitions between different thalamo-cortical loops, detecting conflicts between competing options for decision-making, and in shifting flexibly between decision modes. The hierarchical architecture of the mPFC working in conjunction with the TRN may play a key role in adjusting the internal (bodily) needs to suit the constraints of external (environmental) variables better, thus effectively addressing the stability-plasticity dilemma.

People insulate themselves against negative social feedback via self-protective behaviors. Here, the authors show that early adolescents react against immediate social feedback, but adults also consider accumulated past negative evaluations, a function mediated by the rostromedial prefrontal cortex (RMPFC).

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

Oxytocin (OXT) is known to affect various social processes, including social comparisons and intergroup competition. In this study, we examined whether social comparisons in intergroup situations can be modulated by OXT and, if so, how this modulation manifests. Using a double-blind placebo-controlled design, we randomly assigned male participants to either OXT or placebo treatment and then asked them to play a card game with either an in-group or an out-group member. The OXT-treated participants showed a greater social comparison effect in the games with an out-group member than in games with an in-group member. Specifically, the participants in the OXT treatment condition showed a greater acceptance rate for relative gain (downward comparison) and a lower acceptance rate for relative loss (upward comparison) while playing with an out-group member rather than an in-group member. In contrast, no such effect was observed among placebo-treated participants. These findings demonstrate that OXT facilitates intergroup social comparisons with out-group versus in-group members.

BACKGROUND:Altruistic behavior is essential to the sustainability of society, but our current understanding of its underlying motivation is limited. In addition to the intrinsic motives to help others, based on empathy, extrinsic motives such as monetary incentives and social reputation influence prosociality. The purpose of this study was to examine the underlying motivations of prosocial behavior under constant or increasing extrinsic motivation settings. METHODS:An experimental task, Altruistic Pain Sharing, was developed in which the participants were asked to share the other participants' pain. In the session with monetary incentives, the incentives were given either constantly (CONSTANT condition) or proportionally (INCREASING condition), to the amount of shared pain. In addition, monetary incentives were not provided in the NO session. The participants experienced different amounts of mechanical pain at the beginning of the task and chose the number of pain stimulations to share, based on their experiences. RESULTS:Compared to the NO session, the INCREASING session exhibited a rise in the mean of shared pain, but not the CONSTANT session. Furthermore, there was a distinct tendency to receive less pain than the other participant in the CONSTANT session, and a tendency to receive more pain than the other participant in the INCREASING session. CONCLUSION:Prosocial behavior was influenced by the presence, as well as the form, of the extrinsic monetary incentives. Our study shows that rewards incentivize individuals to demonstrate a higher level of prosocial behavior, implying that prosocial behavior is itself a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and that an effectively designed rewards system may function to enhance prosocial behavior.

Humans often attempt to predict what others prefer based on a narrow slice of experience, called thin-slicing. According to the theoretical bases for how humans can predict the preference of others, one tends to estimate the other's preference using a perceived difference between the other and self. Previous neuroimaging studies have revealed that the network of dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is related to the ability of predicting others' preference. However, it still remains unknown about the temporal patterns of neural activities for others' preference prediction through thin-slicing. To investigate such temporal aspects of neural activities, we investigated human electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during the task of predicting the preference of others while only a facial picture of others was provided. Twenty participants (all female, average age: 21.86) participated in the study. In each trial of the task, participants were shown a picture of either a target person or self for 3 s, followed by the presentation of a movie poster over which participants predicted the target person's preference as liking or disliking. The time-frequency EEG analysis was employed to analyze temporal changes in the amplitudes of brain oscillations. Participants could predict others' preference for movies with accuracy of 56.89 ± 3.16% and 10 out of 20 participants exhibited prediction accuracy higher than a chance level (95% interval). There was a significant difference in the power of the parietal alpha (10~13 Hz) oscillation 0.6~0.8 s after the onset of poster presentation between the cases when participants predicted others' preference and when they reported self-preference (p < 0.05). The power of brain oscillations at any frequency band and time period during the trial did not show a significant correlation with individual prediction accuracy. However, when we measured differences of the power between the trials of predicting other's preference and reporting self-preference, the right temporal beta oscillations 1.6~1.8 s after the onset of facial picture presentation exhibited a significant correlation with individual accuracy. Our results suggest that right temporoparietal beta oscillations may be correlated with one's ability to predict what others prefer with minimal information.

Reward processing, which plays a critical role in adaptive behavior, is impaired in addiction disorders, which are accompanied by functional abnormalities in brain reward circuits. Internet gaming disorder, like substance addiction, is thought to be associated with impaired reward processing, but little is known about how it affects learning, especially when feedback is conveyed by less-salient motivational events. Here, using both monetary (±500 KRW) and symbolic (Chinese characters “right” or “wrong”) rewards and penalties, we investigated whether behavioral performance and feedback-related neural responses are altered in Internet game overuse (IGO) group. Using functional MRI, brain responses for these two types of reward/penalty feedback were compared between young males with problems of IGO (IGOs, n = 18, mean age = 22.2 ± 2.0 years) and age-matched control subjects (Controls, n = 20, mean age = 21.2 ± 2.1) during a visuomotor association task where associations were learned between English letters and one of four responses. No group difference was found in adjustment of error responses following the penalty or in brain responses to penalty, for either monetary or symbolic penalties. The IGO individuals, however, were more likely to fail to choose the response previously reinforced by symbolic (but not monetary) reward. A whole brain two-way ANOVA analysis for reward revealed reduced activations in the IGO group in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in response to both reward types, suggesting impaired reward processing. However, the responses to reward in the inferior parietal region and medial orbitofrontal cortex/vmPFC were affected by the types of reward in the IGO group. Unlike the control group, in the IGO group the reward response was reduced only for symbolic reward, suggesting lower attentional and value processing specific to symbolic reward. Furthermore, the more severe the Internet gaming overuse symptoms in the IGO group, the greater the activations of the ventral striatum for monetary relative to symbolic reward. These findings suggest that IGO is associated with bias toward motivationally salient reward, which would lead to poor goal-directed behavior in everyday life.

Background: Developing valid emotional facial stimuli for specific ethnicities creates ample opportunities to investigate both the nature of emotional facial information processing in general and clinical populations as well as the underlying mechanisms of facial emotion processing within and across cultures. Given that most entries in emotional facial stimuli databases were developed with western samples, and given that very few of the eastern emotional facial stimuli sets were based strictly on the Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, developing valid emotional facial stimuli of eastern samples remains a high priority.Aims: To develop and examine the psychometric properties of six basic emotional facial stimuli recruiting professional Korean actors and actresses based on the Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System for the Korea University Facial Expression Collection-Second Edition (KUFEC-II).Materials And Methods: Stimulus selection was done in two phases. First, researchers evaluated the clarity and intensity of each stimulus developed based on the Facial Action Coding System. Second, researchers selected a total of 399 stimuli from a total of 57 actors and actresses, which were then rated on accuracy, intensity, valence, and arousal by 75 independent raters.Conclusion: The hit rates between the targeted and rated expressions of the KUFEC-II were all above 80%, except for fear (50%) and disgust (63%). The KUFEC-II appears to be a valid emotional facial stimuli database, providing the largest set of emotional facial stimuli. The mean intensity score was 5.63 (out of 7), suggesting that the stimuli delivered the targeted emotions with great intensity. All positive expressions were rated as having a high positive valence, whereas all negative expressions were rated as having a high negative valence. The KUFEC II is expected to be widely used in various psychological studies on emotional facial expression. KUFEC-II stimuli can be obtained through contacting the corresponding authors.

Heightened attentional bias to emotional information is one of the main characteristics of disorders related to emotion dysregulation such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Although reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, is known to effectively modulate subjective experience of emotions, it remains unknown whether reappraisal can alter attentional biases to emotional information. In the current research, we investigated the influence of instruction-induced state reappraisal (Study 1) and trait reappraisal (Study 2) on attentional biases to happy and angry faces. In Study 1, healthy young women were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the three groups: up-, down-, and no-regulation. Participants were instructed to reappraise their emotions to increase and decrease emotional experience while viewing an emotionally negative film clip. Attentional bias was assessed with a dot-probe task with pictures of angry and happy facial expressions. In Study 2, a separate group of healthy young men and women participated. Participants’ trait reappraisal and suppression as well as state and trait anxiety were assessed. A dot-probe task was completed by all participants. Statistical tests in Study 1 revealed that participants who reappraised to decrease negative emotions while viewing an emotionally negative film clip had reduced attentional bias to subsequently presented angry faces compared to participants who reappraised to increase negative emotions. Multiple regression analyses in Study 2 revealed that trait reappraisal predicted slower orienting toward angry faces, whereas state anxiety predicted slower disengagement from angry faces. Interestingly, trait suppression predicted slower disengagement from happy faces. Taken together, these results suggest that both instruction-induced state reappraisal and trait reappraisal are linked to reduced attentional bias to negative information and contribute to better understanding of how everyday emotion regulation styles contribute to attentional processing of emotional information.

Quantitative analyses of the 5' end of gal transcripts indicate that transcription from the galactose operon P1 promoter is higher during cell division. When cells are no longer dividing, however, transcription is initiated more often from the P2 promoter. Escherichia coli cells divide six times before the onset of the stationary phase when grown in LB containing 0.5% galactose at 37°C. Transcription from the two promoters increases, although at different rates, during early exponential phase (until the third cell division, OD(600) 0.4), and then reaches a plateau. The steady-state transcription from P1 continues in late exponential phase (the next three cell divisions, OD(600) 3.0), after which transcription from this promoter decreases. However, steady-state transcription from P2 continues 1 h longer into the stationary phase, before decreasing. This longer steady-state P2 transcription constitutes the promoter transition from P1 to P2 at the onset of the stationary phase. The intracellular cAMP concentration dictates P1 transcription dynamics; therefore, promoter transition may result from a lack of cAMP-CRP complex binding to the gal operon. The decay rate of gal-specific transcripts is constant through the six consecutive cell divisions that comprise the exponential growth phase, increases at the onset of the stationary phase, and is too low to be measured during the stationary phase. These data suggest that a regulatory mechanism coordinates the synthesis and decay of gal mRNAs to maintain the observed gal transcription. Our analysis indicates that the increase in P1 transcription is the result of cAMP-CRP binding to increasing numbers of galactose operons in the cell population.

Avoidance learning poses a challenge for reinforcement-based theories of instrumental conditioning, because once an aversive outcome is successfully avoided an individual may no longer experience extrinsic reinforcement for their behavior. One possible account for this is to propose that avoiding an aversive outcome is in itself a reward, and thus avoidance behavior is positively reinforced on each trial when the aversive outcome is successfully avoided. In the present study we aimed to test this possibility by determining whether avoidance of an aversive outcome recruits the same neural circuitry as that elicited by a reward itself. We scanned 16 human participants with functional MRI while they performed an instrumental choice task, in which on each trial they chose from one of two actions in order to either win money or else avoid losing money. Neural activity in a region previously implicated in encoding stimulus reward value, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, was found to increase, not only following receipt of reward, but also following successful avoidance of an aversive outcome. This neural signal may itself act as an intrinsic reward, thereby serving to reinforce actions during instrumental avoidance.

People often align their behaviors and decisions with others' expectations, especially those of higher social positions, when they are being observed. However, little attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms underlying increased conformity to the social hierarchy under social observation. Using a preference rating task, we investigated whether and how individual preferences for novel stimuli were influenced by others' preferences by manipulating others' social hierarchy and observational context. The behavioral results showed that human participants of both sexes were more likely to change their preferences to match those of a superior partner in a public than in a private context. fMRI data revealed distinct contributions of the subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to increased conformity to social hierarchy under observation. Specifically, the ventral mPFC showed increased activity when participants' preferences aligned with those of superior partners, regardless of behavioral manifestation. The rostral mPFC showed increased activity when conforming to a superior partner and nonconforming to an inferior one, indicating goal-dependent valuation. The dorsal mPFC showed increased activity in private conditions with a superior partner but only in those with a higher tendency to conform. These findings support the hierarchical allostatic regulation model of the mPFC function for social valuation and suggest strategic conformity as a way to minimize metabolic costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]