Abstract
<p>A crucial feature of human social cohesion is a feeling of responsibility when we cause harm to others, and an associated willingness to repair any damage we have caused. However, it is largely unknown to what degree these tendencies are evident when the harm we cause has been unintentional. Do we provide reparations to rectify the unintended consequences of the actions? In the current study we explore this question, focusing on the role of responsibility as a potential motivator of reparative behavior. In a novel, incentive-compatible, group decision-making task, we addressed these questions by leveraging both computational modeling and functional neuroimaging. In our sample (N = 48), we found that feelings of responsibility for inflicting unintended harm were computationally tractable: a group’s collective responsibility reflected the psychophysics of diminishing sensitivity, diffused solely over those who were accountable for inflicting the harm, and was agnostic to dissenting votes. We found evidence that these feelings of responsibility were encoded in several regions of the brain, including the orbitofrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the amygdala. In terms of reparative action, individual preferences for rectifying harm predicted decisions to subsequently repair harm, irrespective of whether the individual themselves caused it.</p>