Setayesh Radkani

• PhD Candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

We use our experiences to form and update beliefs about the hidden states of the world. When possible, we also gather evidence by observing others. However, how the brain integrates experiential and observational evidence is not understood. We studied the dynamics of evidence integration in a two-player game with volatile hidden states. Both humans...

Authorities, from parents of toddlers to leaders of formal institutions, use punishment to communicate disapproval and enforce social norms. Ideally, from whether and how severely a transgression is punished, targets and other observers learn how to comply with shared social norms. Yet in light of every punitive choice, observers also evaluate the...

In polarized societies, divided subgroups of people have different perspectives on a range of topics. Aiming to reduce polarization, authorities may use debunking to lend support to one perspective over another. Debunking by authorities gives all observers shared information, which could reduce disagreement. In practice, however, debunking may have...

Children must learn the norms of their society. One source of information is observing parents, teachers and other authorities to see which behaviors they punish. We test the hypothesis that young children selectively learn that punished actions are wrong, only when they deem the punisher to be legitimate. Across three pre-registered studies, 6- to...

The gradual accumulation of noisy evidence for or against options is the main step in the perceptual decision-making process. Using brain-wide electrophysiological recording in mice (Steinmetz et al., 2019), we examined neural correlates of evidence accumulation across brain areas. We demonstrated that the neurons with drift-diffusion model (DDM)-l...

People facing material deprivation are more likely to turn to acquisitive crime. It is not clear why it makes sense for them to do so, given that apprehension and punishment may make their situation even worse. Recent theory suggests that people should be more willing to steal if they are on the wrong side of a ‘desperation threshold’; that is, a l...

Punishment is a cost imposed on a target, in response to an undesirable action. Yet choosing to punish also reveals information about the authority’s own motives and values. We propose that observers jointly infer the wrongness of the action and the authority’s motivations. Using hypothetical scenarios in unfamiliar societies, we experimentally man...

Across the cortical hierarchy, single neurons are characterized by differences in the extent to which they can sustain their firing rate over time (i.e., their “intrinsic timescale”). Previous studies have demonstrated that neurons in a given brain region mostly exhibit either short or long intrinsic timescales. In this study, we sought to identify...

Actions that do not have instrumental goals can communicate social goals that are not rituals. Many non-instrumental actions such as bowing or kissing communicate a commitment to or roles in dyadic relationships. What is unclear is when people understand such actions in terms of ritual and when they understand them in terms of relationships.

People facing material deprivation are more likely to turn to acquisitive crime. It is not clear why it makes sense for them to do so, given that apprehension and punishment may make their situation even worse. A recent theoretical model explored the consequences of positing a desperation threshold, a critical level of resources below which it is d...

The gradual accumulation of noisy evidence for or against options is the main step in the perceptual decision-making process. Using brain-wide electrophysiological recording in mice (Steinmetz et al., 2019), we examined neural correlates of evidence accumulation across multiple brain areas. We demonstrated that the neurons across the brain exhibite...

Actions that do not have instrumental goals can communicate social goals that are not rituals. Many non-instrumental actions such as bowing or kissing communicate a commitment to or roles in dyadic relationships. What is unclear is when people understand such actions in terms of ritual and when they understand them in terms of relationships. [comme...

Group representations based on recursive utilities can be used to derive the same predictions as Pietraszewski in conflict situations. Additionally, these representations generalize to non-conflict situations, asymmetric relationships, and represent the stakes in a conflict. However, both proposals fail to represent asymmetries of power and respons...