I thought this was interesting. So I'm not just a meddling busy-body. I'm just following my brain's dictates when I simmer over unfairness at work.
"At some point in our lives, we've all cried "It's not fair!" In fact, it's human nature for us to dislike unequal situations, and we often try to avoid or remedy them. Now, scientists have identified the first evidence of this behavior's neurological underpinnings in the human brain.
The results show that the brain's reward center responds to unequal situations involving money in a way that indicates people prefer a level playing field, and may suggest why we care about the circumstances of others in the first place.
"Our study shows that the brain doesn’t just reflect self-interested goals, but instead, these basic reward processing regions of the brain seem to be affected by social information," said study author Elizabeth Tricomi, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "That might explain why what happens to other people seems to matter so much to us, even when it might not actually directly affect our own situation."
3 comments:
But how can this be? Our "brain centers" have been developing for millions of years, and try imagining a prehistoric human stewing over "injustice." Back then, you were either strong enough, fast enough, smart enough, skilled enough with the spear, or you weren't, and so you either succeeded and lived, or died of starvation because you weren't all that great at slaying a mastodon to roast for supper.
An early *homo erectus* who whined, "it's not faiiiirrrrr! Trog ran faster than me!" would have made delicious sabre-tooth tiger meat, and deservedly so.
Since most great apes exhibit altruistic and cooperative behaviour it's pretty likely that evolution put these mechanisms into our brains too i.e. because we're only a few genes different from them.
Primates are social animals (mostly) and successful populations are far, far more important in evolutionary terms than successful individuals, so you can see why this kind of behaviour would be strongly selected for in our species.
Now, that's interesting, Steve. I looked at a bit of primate info, and you're right, they do exhibit certain altruistic behaviors. But the study I read about indicated that a primate will indeed help a fellow primate, but only if the one in need ASKS for help---it is apparently not offered without a request. And that might be a lesson for humans in the workplace: instead of bemoaning "injustice" privately, just ASK for what you want, or feel entitled to, and keep asking until you get it. As we say over here, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."
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