Electrophysiological Correlates of Social Punishment

All well-known human societies have social norms and, consequently, mechanisms to maintain social equality. Social punishment is an action that operates as a mechanism to enforce social norms. Third-party punishment reflects the circumstances in which a third party is not directly affected by the norm violation, however, is willing to pay a cost to punish the violator. In order to investigate the interaction between three main neuronal networks in third-party punishment suggested by Frank Krueger and Morris Hoffman (2016), two projects were conducted. In the first project, the main goal was to study MFN as a marker of the salience network. The second project aimed to investigate the interaction between another two networks via influencing the connectivity between rTPJ (DMN network) and rDLPFC (CEN network). Our findings revealed the presence of MFN in third-party punishment and its interaction with third-parties behaviour, while we did not find the results of tACS anti- and in-phase stimulation on theta frequency in third-party punishment.