Trust‐Based Decision‐Making in the Health and Economic Domains Shows Similar Neural Correlates

Abstract

How people make decisions under dyadic interactions is a relevant topic in social neuroscience, often studied using economic game theory approaches. A relevant question is whether neural correlates of neuroeconomic decision‐making can be generalized to other contexts, such as health‐related decision‐making. We developed a functional neuroimaging paradigm to study trust‐based decision‐making during patient–doctor dyadic interactions (n = 35) as compared with classical investor–trustee interaction in neuroeconomic tasks. We found that the health‐related self‐consequential task activates a very similar network to the neuroeconomics one. Both proactive (higher investment) versus conservative investment attitudes and positive versus negative feedback led to very similar activation patterns between the health and the economic contexts. This shows that trust‐based decision‐making shares similar neural correlates across the economic and health domains.