"Yeah, but where do the $20 bills ultimately come from?"
by John at 10/05/2006 03:07:00 PM
Anyway, this is cool. One can turn off one's sense of fairness using electromagnets. I'm thinking the folks in the Bush administration get a group discount when having these devices installed under their toupees.2
-----Previous brain imaging studies have revealed that part of the frontal lobes known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or DLPFC, becomes active when people face an unfair offer and have to decide what to do. Researchers had suggested this was because the region somehow suppresses our judgement of fairness.
But now, Ernst Fehr, an economist at the University of Zurich, and colleagues have come to the opposite conclusion – that the region suppresses our natural tendency to act in our own self interest.
They used a burst of magnetic pulses called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – produced by coils held over the scalp – to temporarily shut off activity in the DLPFC. Now, when faced with the opportunity to spitefully reject a cheeky low cash offer, subjects were actually more likely to take the money.
The researchers found that the DLPFC region's activity on the right side of the brain, but not the left, is vital for people to be able to dish out such punishment.
"The DLPFC is really causal in this decision. Its activity is crucial for overriding self interest," says Fehr. When the region is not working, people still know the offer is unfair, he says, but they do not act to punish the unfairness.
1. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you are one of the lucky ones.
2. Vice President Dick Cheney is actually a puny, bald Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), and does not have an expanded dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, so no worries there.
