Equity theory and fair inequality: a neuroeconomic study.

ABSTRACT: The present paper reports results from, to our knowledge, the first study designed to examine the neuronal responses to income inequality in situations in which individuals have made different contributions in terms of work effort. We conducted an experiment that included a prescanning phase in which the participants earned money by working, and a neuronal scanning phase in which we examined how the brain responded when the participants evaluated different distributions of their earnings. We provide causal evidence for the relative contribution of work effort being crucial for understanding the hemodynamic response in the brain to inequality. We found a significant hemodynamic response in the striatum to deviations from the distribution of income that was proportional to work effort, but f

SUBMITTER: Cappelen AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4217432 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature