Prosocial Motivation and Preferences: Age-related Changes and Neural Mechanisms

Many of our decisions affect other people. Our choices can decelerate climate change, stop the spread of infectious diseases and directly help or harm others. Prosocial behaviors – decisions that help others – could contribute to reducing the impact of these challenges, yet their computational and neural mechanisms remain poorly understood.

A Message from the Speaker

Dr. Patricia Lockwood

I will begin by discussing my journey through science and how I became interested in social cognition and behavior. I will then present recent work from our group that examines prosocial motivation, and how willing we are to incur costs to help others. I will show that there are important differences in these processes as we grow older. Next, I will present studies probing the neural basis of prosocial motivation using computational modeling and functional neuroimaging. This work shows that different aspects of prosocial motivation can be distinguished by signals in brain areas that are domain-general and domain-specific for social processing. Finally, I will discuss a project that has examined prosocial preferences and age on a global scale to show that differences in prosocial behavior in older adults are similar around the world.

For more information about this event, please contact Dominic Fareri at neuroscience@adelphi.edu or via 516.877.4824.