Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Neural Basis Of Egalitarian Behavior, Christopher T. Dawes, Peter John Loewen, Darren Schreiber, Alan N. Simmons, Taru Flagan, Richard Mcelreath, Scott E. Bokemper, James H. Fowler, Martin P. Paulus

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Individuals are willing to sacrifice their own resources to promote equality in groups. These costly choices promote equality and are associated with behavior that supports cooperation in humans, but little is known about the brain processes involved. We use functional MRI to study egalitarian preferences based on behavior observed in the “random income game.” In this game, subjects decide whether to pay a cost to alter group members’ randomly allocated incomes.Wespecifically examinewhether egalitarian behavior is associated with neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the insular cortex, two regions that have been shown to be related to social preferences. …