Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality

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Two related topics.... Empathy and people naturally don't like inequality.

This video brings up some very interesting questions... are we able to respect our innate empathy?

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/09/09/homo-empathicus-jeremy-rifkin-on-the-science-of-empathy/

"Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality"

PASADENA, Calif.—The human brain is a big believer in equality—and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it. Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.
It's long been known that we humans don't like inequality, especially when it comes to money. Tell two people working the same job that their salaries are different, and there's going to be trouble, notes John O'Doherty, professor of psychology at Caltech, Thomas N. Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and the principal investigator on the Nature paper.

But what was unknown was just how hardwired that dislike really is. "In this study, we're starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from," he says. "It's not just the application of a social rule or convention; there's really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations."

More at link:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ciot-csf022310.php