How brain responds to fairness, inequality

A new study has provided a deeper insight into the how does people's brain responds to the questions regarding to fairness, inequality, work and money.

According to a new Norwegian brain study, people appreciate fairness in much the same way as they appreciate money for themselves, and also that fairness is not necessarily that everybody gets the same income.

Economists from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and brain researchers from the University of Bergen (UiB) have worked together to assess the relationship between fairness, equality, work and money. Indeed, how do people's brains react to how income was distributed?

More precisely, the interdisciplinary research team from the two institutions looked at the striatum; or the "reward centre" of the brain. By measuring people's reaction to questions related to fairness, equality, work and money, this part of the brain might hold some answers to the issue of how people perceive distribution of income.

Professor Alexander W. Cappelen said that the brain appreciates both own reward and fairness, and both influence the activation of the striatum.

This might explain why a lot of people are willing to sacrifice monetary rewards when this results in a fairer balance, he further added.

Their key discovery was that the activation in the striatum in response to receiving more money to themselves depends on how much they have worked. The change in the activation was larger for those who had worked a long time, than it was for those who had worked for a short time.

Cappelen further mentioned that people are neither complete saints who only care about fairness, nor complete egoists who only care about money to themselves.