An Electroencephalographic Analysis of Strategy Usage During Social Dilemmas

The neuroscience of strategy usage during social dilemmas is said to require Theory of Mind (ToM). The process of ToM takes into consideration the actions of another person, so implications with strategies like tit-for-tat (TFT) or win-stay-lose-switch (WSLS) are logical. However, using either TFT or WSLS does not require ToM since these strategies are based on the previous opponent choice. Thus using a quantifiable strategy like TFT or WSLS during a social dilemma game may not necessarily incur activation of ToM. To investigate whether this is possible, 31 participants participated in the Prisoner’s Dilemma while being recorded via electroencephalography (EEG). 16 participants were trained and performed either TFT or WSLS (strategy group) while 15 participants did not train or perform either TFT or WSLS (control group). The strategy group differed from the control group by showing significantly less alpha desynchrony than the control group in ToM areas (channels AF3 and P8) when faced with an opponent whose cooperation rate varied from one half of the experiment to the other half. The differences suggest choice processing differs when selecting by TFT or WSLS versus selecting by ToM. Furthermore, greater ToM activity for the control group may indicate strategy downregulates ToM during social dilemmas