Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
Okay, the topic for today is "Brainy choices: are they greedy or fair?"
Let's find out.
So, we are the result of our choices.
Bad choices lead to bad outcomes.
The fact that 1.3 billion people worldwide live in poverty
is clearly the result of bad decision-making.
If we want to improve the living conditions for everyone,
we need to make more brainy decisions.
And that leads us to our first question:
are brainy decisions greedy or fair?
So, the Ultimatum Game is a perfect experimental paradigm
to study fairness and social punishment.
So, in this game, two players have to agree
upon how to split a fixed sum of money between themselves.
So, one player suggests to another like,
"You get 50, and I get 50."
And the responder can choose to either accept or reject this offer.
If the player chooses to accept the offer, it means that the split will be realized.
However, if the receiver chooses to reject the offer,
neither of the two will get any money.
So, if someone chooses to reject an offer,
it means that he pays a price to punish the proposer.
And this is also a way to implement fairness,
saying, "If you're not nice to me, I'm not going to be nice to you."
So, here on your left side,
you see the example of a fair proposal.
So here, the proposer says, "I've got 100 kroner.
I will give you 50, and I will take 50 for myself."
And fair proposals like these are accepted 100 percent of the time.
So, on your right side,
you see the example of an unfair proposal.
So, in this case, the proposer says,
"I've got 100 kroner. I will give you 20, and I will take 80 for myself."
These types of unfair offers are rejected 50 percent of the time.
And, as we heard before, according to economic theory,
one should always accept all monetary offers,
because we have to maximize our profit.
I mean, in the end, some money is better than none, right?
But this is not the kind of rational, brainy behavior we see
in everyday life.
And why is that?
Well, this is actually due to the fact that we have a built-in mechanism,
in our brains, that prevent us from being too greedy.
So, let's take a look at what actually happens in the brain
when people play the Ultimatum Game.
So, in this particular study,
my colleagues and I were the first to show
that the amygdala, that you can see here,
a structure that's very important for emotional processing,
was involved in the neuroprocessing of unfairness
and also in the rejection of an unfair proposal.
And this is actually very interesting
because the amygdala is a very old brain structure
and is part of our reptile brain.
So, that means that the mechanism of fairness and of implementing justice
has been around for quite a while.
Another part of our study was to see what happens
if we suppress the amygdala activity.
Can we change our subjects' behavior by knocking out the amygdala?
So, in order to accomplish this, we gave our subjects and anxiolytic drug,
because these drugs are known to actually suppress the amygdala activity.
And what happened?
Well, when there was basically no amygdala signal,
our subjects accepted these unfair proposals to a much greater extent
than the group that just got the placebo treatment.
So, this means that, when we actually gave our subjects and anxiolytic drug,
we made them more greedy.
Interestingly, we did not change their perception of unfairness.
That remained the same, so they could tell what was fair and unfair.
We only changed their behavior.
So, another interesting thing is actually happening in the brain
when we act fairly to others.
So, in one of their studies, Tricomi et al. investigated what happens
when rich and poor people transfer money between themselves.
So, to find out, they divided the subjects into two groups.
One group was given $ 80,
and these people were considered to be the rich people.
Another group of subjects was just given $ 30,
and this group of people was considered to be "the poor people" in the study.
And then, the task was to basically transfer money between themselves.
So, what happened?
Well, as you can see here,
when a rich person gave money to a poor person,
their striatum, the reward center of the brain, got activated.
So, they felt good about giving some of their money to poor people.
But, when they got money from someone who was poor,
it didn't feel as good.
So, there was basically no signal of reward in the brain
when they had to take money from someone poor.
So, if you look at what happened in the "poor subjects,"
the opposite pattern was actually observed.
So, as you can see here,
when a poor person got money from a rich person,
their striatum got activated.
That was a signal of reward in their brain.
But when they had to give money to someone who was rich,
then, there was no sign of reward.
So, this is kind of like the Robin Hood in our brain, you know.
We take from the rich and you give to the poor,
and that's kind of what their brain is telling us,
because this kind of striatum activity kind of shows us
that, when resources are equally distributed,
the brains of both parties signal "reward."
So, this is our brain's way of telling us that sharing is good,
that we actually should distribute our resources equally.
So, hippies, please take notes.
(Laughter)
So, what actually happens if we zoom out a bit,
and what happens when we follow the signals
of the amygdala and the striatum?
So, research has shown
that, when we actually distribute our resources equally,
it leads to great benefits,
because living in a society where resources are equally distributed
and where the discrepancy between rich and poor people is very, very small,
that leads to a healthier and better educated population.
So, there are lots of benefits.
So, usually people tell you to follow your heart whatever you do,
but, when it comes to fairness, my message is: follow your amygdala!
Thank you very much.
(Applause)