Ethics Newsline®

From the University of Oregon:

“Want to light up the pleasure center in your brain? Just pay your taxes, and then give a little extra voluntarily to your local food bank. University of Oregon scientists have found that doing those deeds can give you the same sort of satisfaction you derive from feeding your own hunger pangs.

“A three-member team — a cognitive psychologist and two economists — published its results in the June 15 issue of the journal Science. The scientists gave 19 women participants $100 and then scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they watched their money go to the food bank through mandatory taxation, and as they made choices about whether to give more money voluntarily or keep it for themselves….

“Researchers found that two evolutionarily ancient regions deep in the brain … fired when subjects saw the charity get the money. The activation was even larger when people gave the money voluntarily, instead of just paying it as taxes. These brain regions are the same ones that fire when basic needs such as food and pleasures (sweets or social contact) are satisfied.

” ‘The surprising element for us was that in a situation in which your money is simply given to others — where you do not have a free choice — you still get reward-center activity,’ said Ulrich Mayr, a professor of psychology. ‘I don’t think that most economists would have suspected that. It reinforces the idea that there is true altruism — where it’s all about how well the common good is doing. I’ve heard people claim that they don’t mind paying taxes, if it’s for a good cause — and here we showed that you can actually see this going on inside the brain, and even measure it.’

“The study gives economists a novel look inside the brain during taxation, said co-author William T. Harbaugh, a UO professor of economics and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass…. ‘On top of that,’ Harbaugh added, ‘people experience more brain activation when they give voluntarily — even though everything here is anonymous. That’s a very surprising result — and, to me, an optimistic one.’…

“There remain a lot of unanswered questions, Harbaugh said. ‘We show that people liked paying a tax that went to a food bank. But suppose the tax had been unfair. What then?’ Or suppose that people voted to make other people pay the tax, too.’ That would help other people even more, so would the voter get a bigger neural reward?’…”