Computational and neurobiological foundations of leadership decisions

Autor: Micah G. Edelson, Christian C. Ruff, Rafael Polania, Ernst Fehr, Todd A. Hare
Přispěvatelé: University of Zurich, Edelson, Micah G
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Science
ISSN: 1095-9203
Popis: INTRODUCTION Decisions as diverse as committing soldiers to the battlefield or picking a school for your child share a basic attribute: assuming responsibility for the outcome of others. This responsibility is inherent in the roles of prime ministers and generals, as well as in the more quotidian roles of firm managers, schoolteachers, and parents. Here we identify the underlying behavioral, computational, and neurobiological mechanisms that determine the choice to assume responsibility over others. METHODS We developed a decision paradigm in which an individual can delegate decision-making power about a choice between a risky and a safe option to their group or keep the right to decide: In the “self” trials, only the individual’s payoff is at stake, whereas in the “group” trials, each group member’s payoff is affected. We combined models from perceptual and value-based decision-making to es­timate each individual’s personal utility for every available action in order to tease apart potential motivations for choosing to “lead” or “follow.” We also used brain imaging to examine the neurobiological basis of leadership choices. RESULTS The large majority of the subjects display responsibility aversion (see figure, left panel), that is, their willingness to choose between the risky and the safe option is lower in the group trials relative to the self trials, independent of basic preferences toward risk, losses, ambiguity, social preferences, or intrinsic valuations of decision rights. Furthermore, our findings indicate that responsibility aversion is not associated with the overall frequency of keeping or delegating decision-making power. Rather, responsibility aversion is driven by a second-order cognitive process reflecting an increase in the demand for certainty about what constitutes the best choice when others’ welfare is affected. Individuals who are less responsibility averse have higher questionnaire-based and real-life leadership scores. The center panel of the figure shows the correlation between predicted and observed leadership scores in a new, independent sample. Our analyses of the dynamic interactions between brain regions demonstrate the importance of information flow between brain regions involved in computing separate components of the choice to understanding leadership decisions and individual differences in responsibility aversion. DISCUSSION The driving forces behind people’s choices to lead or follow are very important but largely unknown. We identify responsibility aversion as a key determinant of the willingness to lead. Moreover, it is predictive of both survey-based and real-life leadership scores. These results sug­gest that many people associate a psychological cost with assuming responsibility for others’ outcomes. Individual differences in the perception of, and willingness to bear, responsibility as the price of leadership may determine who will strive toward leadership roles and, moreover, are associated with how well they perform as leaders. Our computational model provides a conceptual framework for the decision to assume responsibility for others’ outcomes as well as insights into the cognitive and neural mechanisms driving this choice process. This framework applies to many different leadership types, including authoritarian leaders, who make most decisions themselves, and egalitarian leaders, who frequently seek a group consensus. We believe that such a theoretical foundation is critical for a precise understanding of the nature and consequences of leadership.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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