However, this interpretation is unlikely because we continue to observe activity in the insula when participants match expectations after controlling for the amount of money that participants chose to return.

To provide further support for our interpretation that the competing motivations to maximize financial gain and minimize anticipated guilt are associated with distinct regions, we examined the relationship between the regions of interest (as defined by the group analyses) and independently assessed individual differences in guilt sensitivity. Consistent with our interpretation, click here we find that participants who report that they would have experienced more guilt had they returned less money demonstrated increased insula and SMA activation when they matched expectations. Conversely, participants who claimed that they would not have experienced any additional guilt had they returned less money showed increased activity in the NAcc when they in fact returned less than they believed their partner expected them to return. This implies that there

is individual variability in the way in which anticipated guilt influences decisions. People who are more guilt sensitive have increased activity in the network associated with moral sentiments, while people with less guilt sensitivity have greater activity in those areas associated with reward and value. Together, our results suggest that participants who are guilt sensitive may experience moral sentiments via the insula

and Alectinib mw SMA, which signals that they will feel guilty if they believe they let their investment partner down. This notion that feelings can be used as information in the decision-making process Thiamine-diphosphate kinase has been discussed in other domains of decision making such as risk (Damasio, 1994, Loewenstein et al., 2001, Mellers et al., 1997 and Slovic et al., 2002) and regret (Coricelli et al., 2005). According to this framework, people generate anticipated emotions about how they might feel after choosing a particular outcome, which ultimately predicts their decision (Mellers et al., 1997). Interestingly, anticipatory feelings associated with risk have been reliably associated with the anterior insula (Critchley et al., 2001) and ACC (Coricelli et al., 2005), which provides further support for our argument that guilt aversion is generated by a sampling of the sentiment in question and is processed by the cingulo-insular network. Importantly, this extends the notion of anticipatory emotions from individual decision making to social contexts. These feelings originating in the insula may recruit the DLPFC to override the competing motivation to maximize financial gain and overall result in participants honoring their partner’s trust and returning their initial investment.