The human brain dislikes income inequality

[eridani]

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/03/rich-inequality-study-money

There's a fascinating new study out which finds that the human brain is hard-wired to dislike income inequality. A team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and Trinity College Dublin have discovered that "the reward centres in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does".

Perhaps most significantly, they found that this pattern of activity holds true even if the relevant brain is that of a rich person, rather than a poor person. As one of the scientists, Colin Camerer, explains:

In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money. In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money.

This reponse is not motivated by pure altruism (something that basic evolutionary studies have shown to be impossible) but self-interest: the rich take pleasure in others receiving money as it reduces their guilt over having more than others. It's an apt reminder of the New Labour maxim that self-interest and the common good go hand-in-hand.

In light of these findings, it is perhaps not surprising that egalitarian societies such as Denmark, Finland and Sweden are among the world's happiest countries and, conversely, that highly unequal societies are among the world's unhappiest.

[ck4829]

1. Nature finds income inequality to be an abomination, imagine that. K&R.

[AllentownJake]

2. Survival

If you have a shit load of stuff, and someone else doesn't have much stuff, you better have a system in place so the other person doesn't get the idea that they can just take your stuff.

[Ardent15]

3. teh liburl scientizzz

REAL AMURKA!!!

[FarCenter]

4. Maybe they should test their theory on the Forbes billionaires list

My guess is that it works for inheirited money, e.g. the Kennedys after Joe P.

[KittyWampus]

5. How do you link this using empirical science with guilt. It's one thing to show pleasure responser

to X over Y. It's another to come up with a rationalization that preference is caused by Z.

[Odin2005]

6. Just posted this on a message board where a RW troll claimed that inequality is a good thing.

[LiberalLoner]

7. I have a hard time understanding why

so many around me don't see the basic rightness of this. Don't see that we should share and share alike as my Swedish grandpa used to say.

I think I was just born knowing it's not right for one person to suffer and go hungry while another - even if it's me - has much more than is needed.

I always wonder why others don't know that, too.

It feels like being born into a planet where most people are the worst kind of serial killers without conscience, and being a person with a conscience, and thinking...well, I don't fit in, do I? And wondering if it's me that is crazy and defective, or them.

[applegrove]

8. They are finding out more and more about empathy every day.

[glitch]

9. Now they need to run the same tests on a group of known sociopaths. nt