title: Electromyographic activity of hand muscles in a motor coordination game: effect of incentive scheme and its relation with social capital.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  A vast body of social and cognitive psychology studies in humans reports evidence that external rewards, typically monetary ones, undermine intrinsic motivation. These findings challenge the standard selfish-rationality assumption at the core of economic reasoning. In the present work we aimed at investigating whether the different modulation of a given monetary reward automatically and unconsciously affects effort and performance of participants involved in a game devoid of visual and verbal interaction and without any perspective-taking activity.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twelve pairs of participants were submitted to a simple motor coordination game while recording the electromyographic activity of First Dorsal Interosseus (FDI), the muscle mainly involved in the task. EMG data show a clear effect of alternative rewards strategies on subjects' motor behavior. Moreover, participants' stock of relevant past social experiences, measured by a specifically designed questionnaire, was significantly correlated with EMG activity, showing that only low social capital subjects responded to monetary incentives consistently with a standard rationality prediction.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings show that the effect of extrinsic motivations on performance may arise outside social contexts involving complex cognitive processes due to conscious perspective-taking activity. More importantly, the peculiar performance of low social capital individuals, in agreement with standard economic reasoning, adds to the knowledge of the circumstances that makes the crowding out/in of intrinsic motivation likely to occur. This may help in improving the prediction and accuracy of economic models and reconcile this puzzling effect of external incentives with economic theory.
authors.affiliation: University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Censolo
authors.forename: Laila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Craighero
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ponti
authors.forename: Leonzio
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.forename: Rosario
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Canto
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fadiga
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004576:Electromyography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D009042:Motivation; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires