%A Sip,Kamila %A Skewes,Joshua %A Marchant Agustus,Jennifer %A McGregor,William %A Roepstorff,Andreas %A Frith,Christopher %D 2012 %J Frontiers in Neuroscience %C %F %G English %K confrontation,deception,decision-making,social interaction %Q %R 10.3389/fnins.2012.00058 %W %L %M %P %7 %8 2012-April-18 %9 Original Research %+ Dr Kamila Sip,Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - Newark Campus,Psychology,Department of Psychology,Rutgers the State University of New Jersey - Newark,Smith Hall, Room 301, 101 Warren Street,Newark,07102,New Jersey,United States,ksip@psychology.rutgers.edu %+ Dr Kamila Sip,Aarhus University Hospital,Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN),Nørrebrogade 44,Building 10G, 5th floor,Aarhus C,8000,Denmark,ksip@psychology.rutgers.edu %+ Dr Kamila Sip,Aarhus University,Department of Aesthetics and Communication - Linguistics,Bartholins Allé 16, 3.,building 1410, room 339,Aarhus C,8000,Denmark,ksip@psychology.rutgers.edu %# %! What if I get busted? %* %< %T What if I Get Busted? Deception, Choice, and Decision-Making in Social Interaction %U https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2012.00058 %V 6 %0 JOURNAL ARTICLE %@ 1662-453X %X Deception is an essentially social act, yet little is known about how social consequences affect the decision to deceive. In this study, participants played a computerized game of deception without constraints on whether or when to attempt to deceive their opponent. Participants were questioned by an opponent outside the scanner about their knowledge of the content of a display. Importantly, questions were posed so that, in some conditions, it was possible to be deceptive, while in other conditions it was not. To simulate a realistic interaction, participants could be confronted about their claims by the opponent. This design, therefore, creates a context in which a deceptive participant runs the risk of being punished if their deception is detected. Our results show that participants were slower to give honest than to give deceptive responses when they knew more about the display and could use this knowledge for their own benefit. The condition in which confrontation was not possible was associated with increased activity in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. The processing of a question which allows a deceptive response was associated with activation in right caudate and inferior frontal gyrus. Our findings suggest the decision to deceive is affected by the potential risk of social confrontation rather than the claim itself.