publications
publications in reversed chronological order.
2024
- Metacognition during fake news detection induces an ineffective demand for disambiguating informationJean-Claude Dreher, Valentin Guigon, and Marie Claire Villeval2024
The mechanisms by which individuals evaluate the veracity of uncertain news and subsequently decide whether to seek additional information to resolve uncertainty remain unclear. In a controlled experiment participants assessed non-partisan ambiguous news and made decisions about whether to acquire extra information. Interestingly, confidence in their judgments of news veracity did not reliably predict actual accuracy, indicating limited metacognitive ability in navigating ambiguous news. Nonetheless, the level of confidence, although uncalibrated, was the primary driver of the demand for additional information about the news, with lower confidence driving a greater demand, regardless of its veracity judgment. This demand for disambiguating information, driven by the uncalibrated metacognition, was increasingly ineffective as individuals became more enticed by the ambiguity of the news. Our findings highlight how metacognitive abilities shape decisions to seek or avoid additional information amidst ambiguity, suggesting that interventions targeting ambiguity and enhancing confidence calibration could effectively combat misinformation.
- Dynamic valuation bias explains social influence on cheating behaviorJulien Benistant, Valentin Guigon, Alain Nicolas , and 2 more authorsbioRxiv, 2024
Observing immoral behavior increases one’s dishonesty by social influence and learning processes. The neurocomputational mechanisms underlying such moral contagion remain unclear. We tested different mechanistic hypotheses to account for moral contagion. We used model-based fMRI and a new cheating game in which participants were sequentially placed in honest and dishonest social norm contexts. Participants’ cheating behavior increased in the dishonest norm context but was unchanged in the honest. The best model to account for behavior indicated that participants’ valuation was dynamically biased by learning that others had cheated. At the time of choice, the internalization of social norms was implemented in the lateral prefrontal cortex and biased valuations of cheating. During learning, simulation of others’ cheating behavior was encoded in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. Together, these findings provide a mechanistic understanding of how learning about others’ dishonesty biases individuals’ valuation of cheating but does not alter one’s established preferences.
2022
- Perturbation of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes power holders less resistant to tempting bribesYang Hu, Rémi Philippe, Valentin Guigon , and 5 more authorsPsychological Science, 2022
Bribery is a common form of corruption that takes place when a briber suborns a power-holder to achieve an advantageous outcome at a cost of moral transgression. While bribery has been extensively investigated in behavioral sciences, its underlying neurobiological basis remains poorly understood. Here we employed transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in combination with a novel paradigm to investigate whether disruption of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) causally changed bribe-taking decisions of power-holders. Perturbing rDLPFC via tDCS specifically made participants more willing to take bribes when the offer proportion ramped up. This tDCS-induced effect could not be explained by changes in other measures. Model-based analyses further revealed that such neural modulation alters the concern for profiting oneself via taking bribes and reshapes that for the distribution inequity between oneself and the briber, thereby influencing the subsequent decisions. These findings reveal a causal role of rDLPFC in modulating corrupt behavior.
2021
- Rewards that are near increase impulsive actionDavid A O’Connor, Remi Janet, Valentin Guigon , and 6 more authorsIscience, 2021
In modern society, the natural drive to behave impulsively in order to obtain rewards must often be curbed. A continued failure to do so is associated with a range of outcomes including drug abuse, pathological gambling, and obesity. Here, we used virtual reality technology to investigate whether spatial proximity to rewards has the power to exacerbate the drive to behave impulsively toward them. We embedded two behavioral tasks measuring distinct forms of impulsive behavior, impulsive action, and impulsive choice, within an environment rendered in virtual reality. Participants responded to three-dimensional cues representing food rewards located in either near or far space. Bayesian analyses revealed that participants were significantly less able to stop motor actions when rewarding cues were near compared with when they were far. Since factors normally associated with proximity were controlled for, these results suggest that proximity plays a distinctive role in driving impulsive actions for rewards.