Decoding social decisions from movement kinematics

Abstract

Summary: Decisions, including social decisions, are ultimately expressed through actions. However, very little is known about the kinematics of social decisions, and whether movements might reveal important aspects of social decision-making. We addressed this question by developing a motor version of a widely used behavioral economic game - the Ultimatum Game - and using a multivariate kinematic decoding approach to map parameters of social decisions to the single-trial kinematics of individual responders. Using this approach, we demonstrated that movement contains predictive information about both the fairness of a proposed offer and the choice to either accept or reject that offer. This information is expressed in personalized kinematic patterns that are consistent within a given responder, but that varies from one responder to another. These results provide insights into the relationship between decision-making and sensorimotor control, as they suggest that hand kinematics can reveal hidden parameters of complex, social interactive, choice.

Keywords

• Social interaction
• social sciences
• research methodology social sciences