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The hidden cost of receiving favors: A theory of indebtedness

View ORCID ProfileXiaoxue Gao, View ORCID ProfileEshin Jolly, View ORCID ProfileHongbo Yu, Huiying Liu, View ORCID ProfileXiaolin Zhou, View ORCID ProfileLuke J. Chang
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.03.926295
Xiaoxue Gao
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, 200062
2School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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Eshin Jolly
3Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
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Hongbo Yu
4Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA
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Huiying Liu
5Mental Health Education Center, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, Henan, China
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Xiaolin Zhou
1Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, 200062
2School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
6School of Business and Management, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 200083, China
7Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
8PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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  • For correspondence: xz104@pku.edu.cn luke.j.chang@dartmouth.edu
Luke J. Chang
3Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
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  • For correspondence: xz104@pku.edu.cn luke.j.chang@dartmouth.edu
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Abstract

Receiving help or a favor from another person can sometimes have a hidden cost. In this study, we explore these hidden costs by developing and validating a theoretical model of indebtedness across three studies that combine a large-scale online questionnaire, interpersonal games, computational modeling, and neuroimaging. Our model captures how individuals perceive the altruistic and strategic intentions of the benefactor. These perceptions produce distinct feelings of guilt and obligation that together comprise indebtedness and motivate reciprocity. Perceived altruistic intentions convey care and concern and are associated with activity in the insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, while perceived strategic intentions convey expectations of future reciprocity and are associated with activation in the temporal parietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. We further develop a neural utility model of indebtedness using multivariate patterns of brain activity that captures the tradeoff between these feelings and reliably predicts reciprocity behavior.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 11, 2021.
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The hidden cost of receiving favors: A theory of indebtedness
Xiaoxue Gao, Eshin Jolly, Hongbo Yu, Huiying Liu, Xiaolin Zhou, Luke J. Chang
bioRxiv 2020.02.03.926295; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.03.926295
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The hidden cost of receiving favors: A theory of indebtedness
Xiaoxue Gao, Eshin Jolly, Hongbo Yu, Huiying Liu, Xiaolin Zhou, Luke J. Chang
bioRxiv 2020.02.03.926295; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.03.926295

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