Team cooperation is a process of interpersonal interaction, and the cooperative decision of an individual is the result of repeated games played by many parties16. Repeated games mean that the actions of interacting parties are mutual cause and effect17. For any individual, the change of cooperative behaviour is brought not only by a reward from a peer but also by the individual’s response to all the behaviours of peers in the whole process of interaction. According to neuropsychology, the process of social reward acting on individuals is a process of self-processing and reward processing18. Self-processing refers to that when information is related to self-concept, individuals will process it faster and remember it better. In the social environment, individuals will prioritise dealing with self-related stimuli to maintain self-concept. Individuals must evaluate the importance of the current environmental stimuli to respond appropriately to the environment. Environmental stimuli can be automatically involved in the evaluation system of self-processing. Moreover, environmental stimuli may be encoded by the reward system, that is, the reward value brought by the purposeful pursuit of stimuli19. That is, the processing of stimuli involves two aspects, the degree of self-involvement of stimuli and the reward value of stimuli. In the context of teamwork, the cooperative behaviour of peers constitutes a self-related stimulus source for any individual, which stimulates individuals to self-process through social comparison. Moreover, similar to monetary reward, social reward can also stimulate the response of the corresponding brain areas of individuals, that is, to cause individuals’ reward processing. Berridge and Robinson found that reward processing includes two parts: reward anticipation and reward outcome20. Reward anticipation, also known as ‘wanting’, is a motivational process that promotes reward-related stimuli and anticipated behaviour. Meanwhile, reward outcome, also known as ‘liking’, reflects the happy experience of reward acquisition. The reward opportunity in the team will affect individuals by stimulating their reward anticipation, and the real reward of the team members will affect individuals by stimulating their reward outcome.
To sum up, the process in which social reward affects individual cooperative behaviour includes stimulating individual self-processing because of social comparison, stimulating individual reward anticipation because of reward opportunities and stimulating individual reward outcome because of reward acquisition. Social comparison, reward opportunity and reward acquisition are three stimulus factors that social reward affects individuals. Individuals’ psychological processing and response to these factors reflect the process that social reward affects individual cooperative behaviour in specific cooperative interactions and games. Specifically, the process includes the following aspects:
1.1 The influence of social comparison
Teams involving multi-party interactions provide a typical social comparison situation21. In team cooperation, the fundamental premise that social reward can affect individual behaviour is the social comparison based on peer information. Social comparison is the process of individual self-processing. Without comparison, the occurrence of reward is not justified and has no impact on the focus individual. People in a team make social comparisons first and then decide whether to reward others. The result of social comparison is the decision-making basis of reward behaviour and behaviour choice after being rewarded. Therefore, we speculate that the effect of social reward on cooperation includes the influence of social comparison.
1.2 The effect of reward opportunities
Brain science research on social reward found that the brain regions related to the reward system are the basis of various complex social activities of human beings. The brain’s reward processing includes reward anticipation and reward outcome (i.e. outcome evaluation). Reward anticipation refers to the expectation and waiting for the reward to be received, and the neuron activation involved continues until the reward is received20. In teamwork, not every cooperator will be truly rewarded at any time. However, the existence of reward opportunities will make individuals establish reward anticipation, so everyone will inevitably be affected. Compared with no reward opportunity, reward opportunity affects individual psychology and changes individual cooperation levels by establishing reward anticipation. Therefore, we speculate that the effect of social reward on individual cooperation includes the effect of reward opportunity.
1.3 Reward acquisition
As a motivational tool, reward allows individuals to allocate more effort and resources to complete the task. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience and psychology shows that social reward processing and monetary reward processing in the brain have the same neural basis. Social reward processing also activates other social brain areas. Social reward processing not only causes the relevant brain regions of the reward system to predict, encode and evaluate the reward value but also involves specific brain regions that are very important for social cognitive processing22. Therefore, we speculate that the effect of social reward on individual cooperation includes the effect of reward acquisition.
1.4 Interaction between social comparison and reward acquisition
Neuropsychological studies showed an interaction between self-processing and reward processing in some cognitive processing stages23. Social comparison is an important motivation for individuals’ spontaneous and instinctive driving efforts during social interactions and is essentially a type of intrinsic motivation. Social reward is extrinsic stimuli from peers and is essentially a form of extrinsic motivation. According to motivation theory, individuals’ intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation not only independently affect but also interact with each other. Therefore, one of the important ways that social reward affects individual cooperation is the interaction between social comparison and reward acquisition.
Figure 1 shows the theoretical framework of the effect of social reward on cooperation at the individual level based on the above analysis.