Predicting Human Decisions in a Social Interaction-Scenario Using Real-Time Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Rt-FMRI)

Maurice Hollmann¹, Sebastian Baecke¹, Charles Mueller¹, Johannes Bernarding¹

Making decisions in a social context is fundamental in our daily life. Is it possible to predict decisions by investigating activation patterns of the brain? We used a paradigm from economic behavioral research: the Ultimatum Game (UG). In the UG, two players split a sum of money. One player decides how the money should be split. The responder can accept or reject this offer. If rejected, neither player receives anything. In our study an rtfMRI-system was used to predict the decision of the responder 1-2 seconds before the subject conveys the decision. Classification accuracy reached 70% averaged over seven subjects.