John O'Doherty, a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has always believed that the human brain is a "device designed to maximize one's own self interest." And his colleague Colin Camerer, a professor of behavioral economics at Caltech, shares the "widespread view" with other economists "that most people are basically self-interested, and won't try to help other people."
But O'Doherty and Camerer are reconsidering their ideas about human behavior after conducting an experiment that revealed that people think equality is more desirable than having a financial advantage over others. The study, which was conducted by a team of scientists from Caltech and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, was published in the February 25th issue of Nature under the title, "Neural evidence for inequality-averse social preferences."
Forty male volunteers underwent fMRI brain scans while being presented with scenarios involving unequal pay for equal work. The series of experiments found that the reward centers of volunteers' brains responded when they received money, which wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the reward centers of the volunteers' brains reacted even more powerfully to the news that other volunteers received the same amount of money as they did. As Camerer put it, "their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money."
The researchers concluded that the "brain's reward circuitry is sensitive to distribution inequality and is actively modulated relative to context." What a nice thing to learn about our species!
You can read a summary of the study here.
Mark Frauenfelder Credit.com contributor, editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular site Boing Boing, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online. He covers creative DIY projects and how-tos that will help you make the most of your money.
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