- MBTI
- ENTJ
- Enneagram
- Type me.
Note: This topic will probably generate discussion of politics, philosophy and morality as well as science. That's fine. I chose this subforum simply because it could use some more activity relative to the others.
Neuropsychologists define "prosocial" people as those who prefer to share and share alike, and "individualists" as those who are primarily concerned with maximising their own gain.
According to one theory, the difference between these two groups is that prosocial people actively suppress their selfish tendencies with the help of their prefrontal cortex. But Masahiko Haruno of Tamagawa University in Tokyo, Japan wondered if some people might instead have an automatic aversion to inequality.
Haruno, along with Christopher Frith of University College London used functional MRI to scan the brains of 25 prosocial people and 14 individualists (presorted using a standard behavioral test) while they rated their preference for a series of money distributions between themselves and a hypothetical other person. As expected, the prosocial group preferred even splits while the individualists favoured distributions where they got the most money.
A less predictable finding was that the only brain region that differed in activity between the two groups was the amygdala. When presented with unfair money distributions the activity in the amygdala increased significantly in prosocial people but not in the individualists. "And the more they disliked the split, the more activity you saw in this region," says Frith.
"The amygdala tends to respond automatically, without thought, or even without awareness," says Frith. Combined with the fact that there was no difference in activity in the prefrontal cortex