People Are Hard-Wired To Be Kind And Generous, Says Study

It’s an age-old quandary: Are we born naturally wired to help others or born selfish brutes who need civilization to rein in our basest impulses? After exploring the areas of the brain that fuel our empathy – and temporarily disabling regions that oppose such impulses – two UCLA neuroscientists are coming down on the optimistic side of human nature. “Our altruism may be more hard-wired than previously thought,” said Leonardo Christov-Moore, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. The findings, reported in two recent studies, also point to a possible way to make people behave in less selfish and more altruistic ways, said senior author Marco Iacoboni, a UCLA psychiatry professor.

“This is potentially groundbreaking,” he said.

For the first study, which was published in February in Human Brain Mapping, 20 people were shown a video of a hand being poked with a pin and then asked to imitate photographs of faces displaying a range of emotions — happy, sad, angry and excited. Meanwhile, the researchers scanned participants’ brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, paying close attention to activity in several areas of the brain. One cluster they analyzed – the amygdala, somatosensory cortex and anterior insula –is associated with experiencing pain and emotion and with imitating others. Two other areas are in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating behavior and controlling impulses.

In a separate activity, participants played the dictator game, which economists and other social scientists often use to study decision-making. Participants are given a certain amount of money to either keep for themselves or share with a stranger. In the UCLA study, participants were given $10 per round for 24 rounds, and the recipients were actual Los Angeles residents whose names were changed for the game, but whose actual ages and income levels were used.

After each participant had completed the game, researchers compared their payouts with brain scans. Participants with the most activity in the prefrontal cortex proved to be the stingiest, giving away an average of only $1 to $3 per round. But the one-third of the participants who had the strongest responses in the areas of the brain associated with perceiving pain and emotion and imitating others were the most generous: On average, subjects in that group gave away approximately 75 percent of their bounty. Researchers referred to this tendency as “prosocial resonance” or mirroring impulse, and they believe the impulse to be a primary driving force behind altruism. “It’s almost like these areas of the brain behave according to a neural Golden Rule,” Christov-Moore said. “The more we tend to vicariously experience the states of others, the more we appear to be inclined to treat them as we would treat ourselves.”

In the second study, published earlier this month in Social Neuroscience, the researchers set out to determine whether the same portions of the prefrontal cortex might be blocking the altruistic mirroring impulse. In this study, 58 study participants were subjected to 40 seconds of a noninvasive procedure called theta-burst Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which temporarily dampens activity in specific regions of the brain. In the 20 participants assigned to the control group, a portion of the brain that had to do with sight was weakened on the theory it would have no effect on generosity. But in the others, the researchers dampened either the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which combine to block impulses of all varieties.

Christov-Moore said that if people really were inherently selfish, weakening those areas of the brain would free people to act more selfishly. In fact, though, study participants with disrupted activity in the brain’s impulse control center were 50 percent more generous than members of the control group. “Knocking out these areas appears to free your ability to feel for others,” Christov-Moore saidThe researchers also found that who people chose to give their money to changed depending on which part of the prefrontal cortex was dampened. Participants whose dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was dampened, meanwhile, tended to be more generous overall. But those whose dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was dampened tended to be more generous to recipients with higher incomes — people who appeared to be less in need of a handout.

“Normally, participants would have been expected to give according to need, but with that area of the brain dampened, they temporarily lost the ability for social judgments to affect their behavior,” Christov-Moore said in a UCLA release. “By dampening this area, we believe we laid bare how altruistic each study participant naturally was.” The findings of both studies suggest potential avenues for increasing empathy, which is especially critical in treating people who have experienced desensitizing situations like prison or war. “The study is important proof of principle that with a noninvasive procedure you can make people behave in a more prosocial way,” Iacoboni said.


http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/people-hard-wired-kind-generous-study/

Only partially true . Left wingers are hard wired to be kind and generous. Right wingers are by nature selfish and greedy.

More Bollocks Handy lol

Handy Andy wrote:Only partially true . Left wingers are hard wired to be kind and generous. Right wingers are by nature selfish and greedy.

Generalisations are not an argument. They're just bollocks.

well my wiring must be wrong then....

see all hear all say nowt
eat all drink all pay nowt
an' if ever thee does owt fer nowt
do it fer thisen

Lord Foul wrote:well my wiring must be wrong then....

see all hear all say nowt
eat all drink all pay nowt
an' if ever thee does owt fer nowt
do it fer thisen

Well as stated before, we have not yet discovered your planet





I also reckon you are lycanthrope and this is your true form

nope didge ...more like

and just remember...


you HAVE to let the wookie win


or he'll rip your arms and legs off....

Lord Foul wrote:and just remember...


you HAVE to let the wookie win


or he'll rip your arms and legs off....

Or maybe not 

that made me chuckle.....

Actually, studies say that right-wingers have no problem being empathetic and altruistic toward people they know and live around. The difference is that liberals have an ability to feel the same way about people on the other side of their country or the world, which conservatives seem to lack.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Actually, studies say that right-wingers have no problem being empathetic and altruistic toward people they know and live around. The difference is that liberals have an ability to feel the same way about people on the other side of their country or the world, which conservatives seem to lack.

You see again you make a disingenious claim
Studies show that on Average right-wingers who are more so religiously based happen to be the most generous in helping those of their faith or people they associate to racially.
Also the differnce is minimal overall when you discard the main groups people do give charity, in other words religiously associated. There is very little difference over all.
It is only now, in the younger generation that sees a new more charitable less religious dominance.
Even based on right wing and Liberal you again make a very flawed argument, where people have views that cross over as Right wing and liberal. Again its based on percentages, but you find within each group that they have empathy

Ben_Reilly wrote:Actually, studies say that right-wingers have no problem being empathetic and altruistic toward people they know and live around. The difference is that liberals have an ability to feel the same way about people on the other side of their country or the world, which conservatives seem to lack.

Studies

Studies are not your buddies
They are meant for fuddy duddies and all unsuccessful understudies

Can't think of any more words to rhyme

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/nonreligious-children-are-more-generous