title: Can beneficial ends justify lying? Neural responses to the passive reception of lies and truth-telling with beneficial and harmful monetary outcomes.
abstract: Can beneficial ends justify morally questionable means? To investigate how monetary outcomes influence the neural responses to lying, we used a modified, cheap talk sender-receiver game in which participants were the direct recipients of lies and truthful statements resulting in either beneficial or harmful monetary outcomes. Both truth-telling (vs lying) as well as beneficial (vs harmful) outcomes elicited higher activity in the nucleus accumbens. Lying (vs truth-telling) elicited higher activity in the supplementary motor area, right inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus and left anterior insula. Moreover, the significant interaction effect was found in the left amygdala, which showed that the monetary outcomes modulated the neural activity in the left amygdala only when truth-telling rather than lying. Our study identified a neural network associated with the reception of lies and truth, including the regions linked to the reward process, recognition and emotional experiences of being treated (dis)honestly.
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience (CENs), University of Bonn, Nachtigallenweg 86, Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, and yin.lijun@uni-bonn.de.
authors.forename: Lijun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience (CENs), University of Bonn, Nachtigallenweg 86, Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, and Life & Brain Center, Department of NeuroCognition, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Str. 25, 53127 Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Weber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D026686:Beneficence; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D008192:Deception; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology; D009714:Nucleus Accumbens / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012201:Reward; D014342:Truth Disclosure; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: fMRI; lying; truth-telling