If you had to choose between status or cash, which way would you go? That was the question that researchers in Japan and at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Maryland hoped to answer with experiments that used an MRI to watch their subjects brains as they made decisions that would reward them with either money or status. The answer: It’s close, but status has the lead.
In the Japanese study, researchers observing 19 participants found that the brain was activated in response to high and low appraisals by others (but did not
perk up to more neutral comments); it also responded to monetary wins
and losses but was quiet if a player broke even.
At NIMH, researchers scanned the brains of 72 volunteers as they attempted to
earn money in a computer game. During play, the researchers
occasionally revealed how supposed competitors (who, unbeknownst to
them, were fake) were faring. The scientists created an arbitrary
ranking system of the real and faux players in which some of the bogus
gamers appeared to perform betterâ€â€and others worseâ€â€than the real ones.
The participants were told that their status in the game had no effect
on how much money they could win, but that earning more money could
boost their rank.
Lead researcher Caroline Zink told the Scientific American that the brains of players reacted very
strongly to the other players and specifically the status of the other
players. The journal reports that, according to Zink, the striatum
became just as animated when players were given a shot at improving
their social standing as it did when they won a buck. And that wasn’t
the only indicator that they cared about how others perceived them. She
says another brain region (the medial prefrontal cortex) involved in sizing up others went wild when players were shown photos of competitors who outperformed them.
Read more in the Scientific American.