Discussion
The value-based theory of sharing posits that sharing content online is a value-based decision and that self- and social relevance of the to-be-shared content contributes to the perceived value of sharing (First, our sharing goal manipulation causally impacted brain activity in hypothesized ROIs while participants considered sharing health news articles. We further provide evidence that brain activity outside these ROIs was not significantly increased by the experimental conditions. Consistent with pre-registered hypotheses, activity in ROIs associated with self-related, social (specifically mentalizing) and value-related processing was higher when participants used articles to ‘Describe Yourself’ compared to ‘Spread Information’. This is consistent with the idea that people value positive social interaction (The non-significant effect of the ‘Help Somebody’ condition on value-related processing conflicts with prior work that emphasizes the high value humans place on positive social connections (Finally, the results of one prior study examining sharing decisions for video advertisements (Although there were some linguistic distinctions in how participants shared content across conditions (see exploratory analysis in In sum, our neuroimaging and text data support pre-registered hypotheses, suggesting that inducing self-related and social thought processes increases brain activity in regions associated with self-related, social and value-related thoughts during sharing decisions. This extends prior work that relied on reverse inferences to interpret neural correlates of sharing. Yet, some limitations remain with regard to these conclusions. For instance, future work may increase specificity in distinguishing neural responses to different manipulation strategies and describing the precise cognitions that underlie ROI activity (e.g. the value of ROI may operationalize separate yet related concepts like value and reward).Second, we found condition effects on sharing intentions and perceived benefits of sharing. As expected, ‘Help Somebody’ (In sum, instructions to share health news articles to ‘Describe Yourself’ and ‘Help Somebody’ significantly increased activity in brain regions meta-analytically associated with self-related, social and value-related processing. This validates prior reverse inferences following correlational work on the role of these cognitions in sharing decisions (