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Published Online October 5, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1129156

Reports

Submitted on April 25, 2006
Accepted on September 22, 2006

Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex

Daria Knoch 1*, Alvaro Pascual-Leone 2, Kaspar Meyer 3, Valerie Treyer 4, Ernst Fehr 5*

1 Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland; Collegium Helveticum, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
2 Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
3 Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland.
4 PET Center, Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, University Hospital, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland.
5 Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland; Collegium Helveticum, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Daria Knoch , E-mail: dknoch{at}iew.unizh.ch
Ernst Fehr , E-mail: efehr{at}iew.unizh.ch

Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values. They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness, which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors, even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocal fairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, where players often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers. Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known about how the human brain limits the impact of selfish motives and implements fair behavior. Here we show that disruption of the right, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) substantially reduces subjects' willingness to reject their partners' intentionally unfair offers, which suggests that subjects are less able to resist the economic temptation to accept these offers. Importantly, however, subjects still judge such offers as very unfair, which indicates that the right DLPFC plays a key role in the implementation of fairness-related behaviors.


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