Behavioral Social Neuroscience Seminar

People often face choices that activate conflicting responses and objectives (i.e., should I buy a healthful salad or a tasty ice-cream treat? should I give my spare change to a beggar or selfishly spend it on myself?). How do we make decisions like these, and why does it often seem so hard to avoid behaving in ways that have negative consequences for ourselves and others? To answer these questions, I use behavioral, fMRI and EEG data to construct neurally informed computational models of decision-making in domains like altruism, dietary choice, and self-control. This work suggests a need to revise popular competitive dual-system models of choice in light of computational predictions, and points to new ways to help people make better choices for themselves and others.