Associations Between Neural Responses to Social Fairness and Financial Exploitation Vulnerability Vary With Age and Emotional Intelligence

Financial exploitation frequently occurs in social situations where people must assess fairness, trust, and interpersonal information during monetary choices. Researchers explored whether neural responses to fairness in social versus non-social contexts correlate with vulnerability to financial exploitation and whether these connections differ based on age, emotional intelligence, and emotional state.

Involving 310 adults aged 21 to 89, the study employed an fMRI Ultimatum Game where participants accepted or rejected offers from human and computer partners, alongside assessments of financial exploitation vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and mood. Participants exhibited a strong sensitivity to offer fairness, and individual variations in behavioral sensitivity to partner type connected to social-specific insula activity when faced with unfairness.

Higher initial negative affect was linked to a more pronounced distinction in anterior insula activity between social and non-social fairness scenarios. Financial exploitation vulnerability was linked to prefrontal responses to social-relative fairness, with this association influenced by age and emotional intelligence. Age moderated the relationship between financial exploitation vulnerability and activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, while emotional intelligence moderated the connection with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Additional whole-brain connectivity analyses revealed that age also moderated the association between emotional intelligence and connectivity within the executive control network with the posterior cingulate and right temporoparietal regions. These results indicate that susceptibility to financial exploitation is manifested through how social context is integrated with emotional and personal attributes throughout adulthood.