Equity theory and fair inequality: a neuroconomic study
Cappelen, Alexander W.; Eichele, Tom; Hugdahl, Kenneth; Specht, Karsten; Sørensen, Erik Ø.; Tungodden, Bertil
Working paper
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/296612Utgivelsesdato
2015-08Metadata
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Sammendrag
The present paper reports results from 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
of the relative contribution of work effort being crucial for understanding
the hemodynamic response in the brain. We found a significant hemodynamic
response in the striatum to deviations from the distribution of income
that was proportional to work effort, but found no effect of deviations from
the equal distribution of income. We also observed a striking correlation
between the hemodynamic response in the striatum and the self-reported
evaluation of the income distributions. Our results provide the first set of
neuronal evidence for equity theory and suggest that people distinguish between
fair and unfair inequalities.