The role of empathy in social decision-making

This project investigates the influence of empathy on human decision-making behaviour in social interactions. The investigation of empathic processes within decision-making situations has the advantage that established models of decision-making behaviour can be used as an example, and deviations from optimal behavior can be observed and explained. Thus, we will not only examine healthy participants in the project, but also two groups of participants who are expected to show deviations from so-called optimal behaviour, based on previous literature. On the one hand, we will test participants who have already suffered from depression once or several times in their lives, and on the other hand, we will test participants with the personality trait alexithymia, i.e. emotional blindness. After designing and testing a novel experimental paradigm in a first step, two studies employing functional magnetic resonance imaging will be carried out in the next step, including the groups of participants mentioned above. This will allow us to observe and assess decision-making behaviour and the underlying processes that take place in the brain during the simulated social interactions. In addition to the new experimental paradigm, established empathy paradigms will also be used, by means of which the potential connection between susceptibility to depression and deviations in various subcomponents of empathy (e.g. processes such as affect sharing or mentalizing) will be investigated. The project is led by principal investigator Dr. Markus Rütgen and will be carried out in Sweden (Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience) in cooperation with Assoc.-Prof. Predrag Petrovic and Prof. Andreas Olsson. In the first two years, the conceptual phase and the first experiments, including the first functional magnetic resonance imaging study, will take place. In the third year, the second functional magnetic resonance imaging study (on the subject of alexithymia) will be carried out back in Vienna (University of Vienna, Faculty of Psychology) together with Prof. Claus Lamm.