Magnetic Pulse To Reduce Human Need For Fairness

Look at this article, where magnetic pulse is used, and is proven, to reduce someone's need for equality or fairness. Someone whose brain is pulsed, was much more likely to take a significantly smaller amount of money than someone whose brain wasn't pulsed. Ummm...I will tell you one thing. That is not ME baby. I know what happened now, and all I need is my informants and we are going for the gold.

CTV British Columbia

Canadian money

What offer would you settle on if you were playing the ultimatum game?
Magnetic pulse to brain hampers judgment of fairness

Updated: Fri Oct. 06 2006 09:54:21

Brian Jackson, DiscoveryChannel.ca

Using low-frequency magnetic stimulation on the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (the upper-right part of your brain) causes people to care less about fairness, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Zurich used the "ultimatum game" to test their theory that specific region of the brain mediates between self-interest and fairness.

The game goes like this: there are two players, and $20 to divide between them. One player makes just one offer to the other, and it is either accepted or rejected. If the offer is accepted, both players keep their share - but if it's rejected, they walk away empty-handed.

Humans have a sense of reciprocal fairness - we want to be treated equally. For that reason, people are less likely to accept when an offer of less than $10 (half) is made, even though it means they get nothing instead of something.

But when scientists added some magnetic stimulation to the game, things changed.

Participants in the study who had the right side of their prefrontal cortex stimulated were almost three times more likely to accept an offer of just $4 compared to subjects who received no magnetic stimulation.

The subjects still judged the offers to be unfair; complaining about the low amounts when questioned after the game was finished.

This shows that region of the brain doesn't evaluate fairness, but controls the decision-making process where fairness is balanced against self-interest.

The study is published in Friday's edition of the journal Science