It’s five o’clock, you should be out of the office or be late to the gym, but does not have time to finish the day’s work. His companion, very friendly, offered to lend a hand to finish before the two together. Why does he do this? Do you pay your support for true generosity, or because it feels in debt, or actually moves a selfish interest you hidden? It is very likely that the simple observation of their behavior do not give a reliable answer. Is there any way to know?
To know the real reasons why humans act, an international team of scientists has investigated brain connections that are activated when we work moved for some reason or other. The results have been published in the journal Science .
“Our study shows that brain connections can reveal whether people behave in an altruistic way for empathy or because they feel obliged to return a favor to someone, “says Grit Hein, a researcher at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and lead author of the study.
” in addition, we found that the selfish people become more altruistic through the empathy, “he adds.
to reach these conclusions, the scientists designed an experiment with two groups of individuals. One participant interacted with two other people associated with the researcher, located one on each side of the volunteer.
In the first group, participants watched a colleague received electric shock, causing him an answer empathy, as “shared” their pain. In the second group, the subject watched his partner sacrificed money to save one of those electric shocks, thus generating the need to return the favor. In both groups, there was a third party who was driving control in the experiment but that will not induce empathy and reciprocity.
After the first part of the experiment, all participants conducted a economic task assignment. They could lose money in exchange for giving it to his companions (altruistic behavior) or make money at the expense of the others at the loss (selfish behavior). As the scientists expected, participants gave more money to the partner with whom they felt empathy and reciprocity that the person in charge of the control.
brain connections
in both groups, participants acted selflessly, but without betraying their motives. Researchers studied in each group brain connections of the participants and identified distinct patterns that betrayed what those specific reasons were.
According to the results, altruistic acts performed by empathy betrayed a slightly negative connection between the insula anterior and ventral striatum of the brain, while acts driven by reciprocity activated the connection between these regions.
the most selfish, on the other hand, individuals showed little or no connection between the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula; while those subjects called prosocial showed a positive connectivity between these areas.
Another result that highlights the research group is that by creating an empathetic response in the most selfish participants, this group showed similar brain connectivity of prosocial groups. By contrast, prosocial behaved more altruistically still activating the motivation of reciprocity.
“The way the brain regions communicate with each other used to know information that a person is not willing to Reveal. Moreover, we ensure that emotions like empathy can be used to make selfish people behave more altruistically “says Hein.
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