Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response To Inequality

[DeSwiss]

Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality


This saggital view of the brain shows activity
in both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and
the ventral striatum. (Credit: Elizabeth Tricomi,
Rutgers University)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — The human brain is a big believer in equality -- and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it. Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.

These conclusions, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that led to them, are described in the February 25 issue of the journal Nature. "This is the latest picture in our gallery of human nature," says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at Caltech and one of the paper's coauthors. "It's an exciting area of research; we now have so many tools with which to study how the brain is reacting."

It's long been known that we humans don't like inequality, especially when it comes to money. Tell two people working the same job that their salaries are different, and there's going to be trouble, notes John O'Doherty, professor of psychology at Caltech, Thomas N. Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and the principal investigator on the Nature paper.

But what was unknown was just how hardwired that dislike really is. "In this study, we're starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from," he says. "It's not just the application of a social rule or convention; there's really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132453.htm">MORE

- I knew all about this when I was a kid of 7. Seriously. I knew it because one day my mother made my sister's ice cream cone bigger than mine, and me being me, I immediately raised hell about it. So my mother took my cone away.

It taught me to keep my mouth shut and be glad for what I got. But in pursuit of equality, I made sure that I got my sister back later though. Well, she laughed at me the whole time she ate her cone! What else was I supposed to do?!?!?!
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DeSwiss


http://www.atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox





"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will
be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost." ~ Aristotle

[BrklynLiberal]

1. So Would it be correct to say those who are selfish, greedy and unbothered by

inequality are subhuman, non-human or genetic mutations?

[DeSwiss]

4. Pretty much.

- And that they very likely work on Wall Street, K Street or in Congress -- which is the primary transition station.....

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Yep. My very thought.

:thumbsup: :hi:

[Cali_Democrat]

2. So it's confirmed

Republicans are brain dead.

[DeSwiss]

5. Affirmative.

- And at that, only a few of them even look life-like.

[Duer 157099]

3. So... Republicans have malfunctioning brains? (like that's news)

Perhaps this test could be given to anyone running for a public office?

I'd like to read the paper itself to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. So far I read it as: if you're poor, your brain enjoys getting some cash, but it has no reaction if others are in the same boat as you are (that is, neither of you get cash so your brain just shrugs). But if you already have money, your brain likes it more when other people get money too, instead of you just getting more money and them getting none. Sounds like how a normal brain should function in a healthy society.

So, Republicans have faulty brains. I knew it.

"People who started out poor had a stronger brain reaction to things that gave them money, and essentially no reaction to money going to another person," Camerer says. "By itself, that wasn't too surprising."

What was surprising was the other side of the coin. "In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money," Camerer explains. "In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money."

edit to add: this experiment is confined to the "newly" rich in their model, where they give $50 to half the subjects and zero to the other half. They need to do a follow-up study where they test the brains of the chronically wealthy to see if they also have a normal response. My dime says they don't.

[DeSwiss]

6. Yes.

- I think such a test should be mandatory. Of course you realize that if we do, we'd run the risk of a permanent one-party Democratic system.

[Duer 157099]

8. I don't care what they call it, as long as compassionate, empathetic people are making the rules

This study basically, fundamentally proves the notion that "Greed is bad" doesn't it?

[DeSwiss]

9. I'm not sure that this one study proves it.....

...but it definitely suggests that we're hard-wired to reject it.

So it seems to suggest (at least to me), that it advances the life-chances of the species.

[liberal_at_heart]

7. Nice idea but I don't believe it. There is inequality right here on DU

It's really sad. I thought this was a liberal board but there is just as much intolerance here as anywhere else. People of all kinds get together and start thinking they are better than other groups of people, mob mentality. I think it is this behavior that is natural and probably triggered in the brain somewhere.

[DeSwiss]

10. Nothing in life.....

...is black or white.

- And as much inequality we may be guilty of here, at least we're not Republicans....

[seabeyond]

13. but we will do the same behavior as repug, just with our agenda. see, the equality factor

jumping into play, lol

[liberal_at_heart]

14. exactly

[DeSwiss]

15. Yeah, but with one BIG difference.....

...we wear white hats!

[Shell Beau]

17. That is absolutely the truth. Unfortunately, this is just a human

quality, it seems. I would like to see the study on animal brains for this same situation. It would be interesting to see the differences and similarities.

[bridgit]

11. Duly noetic

[DeSwiss]

12. Noetic....

...and yet somehow subject to autonomic suppression in Republicans from birth.

- Apparently.....

[bridgit]

18. As we've come to know them: 'republican thoughts' do seem enhanced within bundles...

Of misfiring synapse sufficient enough to warrant cares for their origins of what plays as: organic states of disrepair able, as with toxic entities, eccentric person-hoods and the like - to disaffect the world around them with brittle turbulent intransigence to anything that will not enable their compulsive disorders such as they seen today on the tube with McConnell's nit-picayune list of HC Summit Minutes read-as-meant, and in an ill-advised disrespectful manner imo, to demand *republican equal time* to further poison the environment so yeah - republicans are fuckered up in the head