Pro-environmental and Prosocial Decisions Share Neural Correlates

Previous evidence suggests a link between pro-environmental decisions and prosociality, but it remains unknown whether pro-environmental and prosocial decisions rely also on common neural mechanisms. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the neural correlates of pro-environmental decisions overlap with brain regions involved in prosociality, including the TPJ. To test this hypothesis, we used fMRI on 35 healthy participants performing pro-environmental and prosocial decision tasks as well as a control task for future-oriented decisions. As expected, pro-environmental and prosocial decision-making showed overlapping neural activation in regions belonging to the mentalizing network, including the TPJ. In addition, the TPJ moderated the attitude-behavior gap: Increasing TPJ activation was associated with lower attitude-behavior gaps. Taken together, our findings provide insight into the neurocognitive processes of pro-environmental decision-making by suggesting that pro-environmental decisions share neural correlates with prosocial decisions and by elucidating the role of the TPJ in the attitude-behavior gap.