Functional connectome differences predict preferred division of resources in humans

Social value orientation (SVO) characterizes individual differences regarding the division of resources. It determines behavior in economic games and real-life situations. Prosocials maximize the sum of resources for themselves and for others, while simultaneously minimizing the difference between the two. In contrast, individualists maximize resources for themselves. Recent evidence suggests that automatic emotional processing of unfair splits in the amygdala is essential for behaviour in prosocials. Here, we investigate the neural bases of SVO in prosocials and individualists. As social dispositions influence behavior in a wide range of situations and are highly stable over the life-span, we hypothesize to find differences between prosocials and individualists at rest, i.e. independent of any specific task. To this end, we measured resting-state functional Blood Oxygen Level Dependent dynamics in 29 subjects (n=15 Prosocials and n=14 Individualists), calculated functional connectivity and applied a Support-Vector-Machine-based approach to predict SVO. We show that functional whole-brain connectivity of the amygdala during rest is predictive of SVO (accuracy=.56; p