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Why trust your friends? Dominic Fareri, Ph.D., an assistant professor at , was part of a select group of cognitive neuroscientists to design a study to look for an answer.

Plenty of research over the years has examined trust as a construct, Dr. Fareri said, but most of it looked at trust from the perspective of learning about somebody new. Much less has been done around trust in relation to existing friends

To explore that particular angle, Dr. Fareri and his colleagues designed a trust game鈥攁 paradigm drawn from behavioral economics鈥撯�搕hat included a social relationship manipulation. At the start of each trial, after being placed in a neuroimaging scanner, each participant was given $1 and could then decide to keep it all or share/invest it with their assigned partner: alternately a close friend, a stranger or a computer. If the person chose to share the money鈥攁 sign of trust鈥攖he partner would get triple the amount ($3), which they could share evenly with the participant or keep all for themselves.

As expected, participants trusted their friends significantly more. Dr. Fareri and his team found that the reason was not so much the prior history with the friend鈥攁s others have previously theorized鈥攂ut the social value of the friendship bond. That was a reward in itself, as neuroimaging and computational modeling of participants鈥� decisions revealed. 鈥淲e found areas of the brain in the reward circuit were more active when the friend reciprocated trust than when the stranger or computer did,鈥� Dr. Fareri said. 鈥淭he brain seems to be involved in computations of social reward鈥� that take into account close relationships.

That fact can explain some of the reasons we continue to trust people in daily life and how our relationships can influence our behavior, he added. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something unique and rewarding about relationships; they can carry extra value that influences how we behave.鈥�

Using neuroscience in this way鈥攖o help us understand our everyday interactions鈥攊s Dr. Fareri鈥檚 main research interest. New to Adelphi this semester, he was drawn in part by the uniqueness of the Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies. 鈥淥ther schools have psychology departments, but the fact that this is a separate school鈥攊t鈥檚 one of the only places I know of,鈥� he said. He looks forward to playing a role in Adelphi鈥檚 new neuroscience program, and he is excited about the mix of faculty who are his new colleagues. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a strong clinical focus but also faculty interested in the social and developmental questions I鈥檓 interested in,鈥� he said, and he anticipates future collaboration and brainstorming.

Dr. Fareri hopes to devise courses tailored around questions in social neuroscience, decision-making and the brain. 鈥淚n terms of research, I鈥檇 like to pursue related questions so students who come to work with me in the lab would get to experience running experiments looking at social factors and decision-making,鈥� he said. Rewards pertaining to social media also interest him鈥擣acebook and Instagram could provide considerable research material there鈥攁nd he hopes to explore how those are working in our brains these days, as he finds ways to apply the tools of neuroscience to our daily lives.

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