Neurocomputational substrates underlying the effect of identifiability on third-party punishment

The identifiable target effect refers to the preference for helping identified victims and punishing identifiable perpetrators compared with equivalent but unidentifiable counterparts. The identifiable target effect is often attributed to the heightened moral emotions evoked by identified targets. However, the specific neurocognitive processes that mediate and/or modulate this effect remain largely unknown. Here, we combined a third-party punishment game with brain imaging and computational modeling to unravel the neurocomputational underpinnings of the identifiable transgressor effect. Human participants (males and females) acted as bystanders and punished identified or anonymous wrongdoers. Participants were more punitive toward identified wrongdoers than anonymous wrongdoers because they took a vicarious perspective of victims and adopted lower reference points of inequity (i.e., more stringent norms) in the identified context than in the unidentified context. Accordingly, there were larger activity of the ventral anterior insula, more distinct multivariate neural patterns in the dorsal anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and lower strength between ventral anterior insula and dorsolateral PFC and between dorsal anterior insula and ventral striatum connectivity in response to identified transgressors than anonymous transgressors. These findings implicate the interplay of expectancy violations, emotions, and self-interest in the identifiability effect. Last, individual differences in the identifiability effect were associated with empathic concern/social dominance orientation, activity in the precuneus/cuneus and temporo-parietal junction, and intrinsic functional connectivity of the dorsolateral PFC. Together, our work is the first to uncover the neurocomputational processes mediating identifiable transgressor effect and to characterize psychophysiological profiles modulating the effect. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The identifiable target effect, more help to identified victims or stronger punishment to identifiable perpetrators, is common in daily life. We examined the neurocomputational mechanisms mediating/modulating the identifiability effect on third-party punishment by bridging literature from economics and cognitive neuroscience. Our findings reveal that identifiable transgressor effect is mediated by lower reference points of inequity (i.e., more stringent norms), which might be associated with a stronger involvement of the emotion processes and a weaker engagement of the analytic/deliberate processes. Furthermore, personality traits, altered brain activity, and intrinsic functional connectivity contribute to the individual variance in the identifiability effect. Overall, our study advances the understanding of the identifiability effect by shedding light on its component processes and modulating factors.