Human pursuance of equality hinges on mental processes of projecting oneself into the perspectives of others and into future situations

Scientific Reports, Jul 2017

In the pursuance of equality, behavioural scientists disagree about distinct motivators, that is, consideration of others and prospective calculation for oneself. However, accumulating data suggest that these motivators may share a common process in the brain whereby perspectives and events that did not arise in the immediate environment are conceived. To examine this, we devised a game imitating a real decision-making situation regarding redistribution among income classes in a welfare state. The neural correlates of redistributive decisions were examined under contrasting conditions, with and without uncertainty, which affects support for equality in society. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the caudate nucleus were activated by equality decisions with uncertainty but by selfless decisions without uncertainty. Activation was also correlated with subjective values. Activation in both the dACC and the caudate nucleus was associated with the attitude to prefer accordance with others, whereas activation in the caudate nucleus reflected that the expected reward involved the prospective calculation of relative income. The neural correlates suggest that consideration of others and prospective calculation for oneself may underlie the support for equality. Projecting oneself into the perspective of others and into prospective future situations may underpin the pursuance of equality.

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Human pursuance of equality hinges on mental processes of projecting oneself into the perspectives of others and into future situations

Abstract In the pursuance of equality, behavioural scientists disagree about distinct motivators, that is, consideration of others and prospective calculation for oneself. However, accumulating data suggest that these motivators may share a common process in the brain whereby perspectives and events that did not arise in the immediate environment are conceived. To examine this, we devised a game imitating a real decision-making situation regarding redistribution among income classes in a welfare state. The neural correlates of redistributive decisions were examined under contrasting conditions, with and without uncertainty, which affects support for equality in society. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the caudate nucleus were activated by equality decisions with uncertainty but by selfless decisions without uncertainty. Activation was also correlated with subjective values. Activation in both the dACC and the caudate nucleus was associated with the attitude to prefer accordance with others, whereas activation in the caudate nucleus reflected that the expected reward involved the prospective calculation of relative income. The neural correlates suggest that consideration of others and prospective calculation for oneself may underlie the support for equality. Projecting oneself into the perspective of others and into prospective future situations may underpin the pursuance of equality. Introduction Equality is one of the greatest concerns in the humanities and social sciences. Philosophers and social scientists concur that selfishness is constrained by uncertainty about one’s social position, i.e., the veil of ignorance (VoI), but disagree on what motivates humans to pursue equality1. Political theorists contend that humans support equality because they wish to be fair; thus, when social status, abilities, and other characteristics are unknown, i.e., behind the VoI, a consideration of others prioritizes the welfare of the worst-off individuals2. In contrast, economic theorists focus on the prospective calculation for oneself; thus, their utilitarian view posits that equality is chosen behind the VoI if risk aversion motivates people to maximize their worst foreseen pay-off3, 4. Different motivations have distinct social consequences with a bearing on whether equality is or is not likely to be achieved1, 5 in society3, 4. Specifically, equality in income redistribution has been one of the greatest concerns in our society. Therefore, scholarly interest has often focused on whether the uncertainty associated with the VoI increases the possibility of redistributive equality and, if so, what motivates people to support it in a real society1, 2. Behavioural studies have examined whether a distributive decision with uncertainty was motivated by consideration of others or a prospective calculation of self-risk but found mixed results without obtaining data on the psychological process6,7,8. Neuroscience experiments have explored egalitarian preferences9 and compared the equality of self and equality among others10, 11 and the equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes12 but have not examined the decision on distributive equality. A recent study reported that a third-party judgement to distribute to the poor was associated with an individual choice of the safe lottery when selective attention to the worst-off (gambling/distribution) outcomes activated the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ)13. The neural correlates of a decision on distributive equality have not yet been examined, but studies have thus far suggested that both consideration of others and self-risk calculation might be implicated in the human pursuance of equality. Actually, accumulating data have begun to suggest that if examined in a social context, consideration of others and the prospective calculation for oneself may share a core process of projecting oneself into social situations beyond those that arise in the immediate environment14, 15. Building on the literature, this study directly examined the neural correlates of equality decisions and explored the core neural process associated with the human pursuance of equality. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used an experimental framework with a relevance to a real problem, i.e., equality in income redistribution. The experimental game used here imitates a real problem of redistribution among income classes, replicating the uncertainty of the VoI that has been considered to affect support for equality in society. Before the experiment, the participant was told that she would belong to a hypothetical society that consisted of three income classes (high, middle, and low) with the same number of people in each class. The participant voted on one of three redistribution rules: inequality, intermediate redistribution, or absolute equality (Fig. 1A) under contrasting conditions with and without uncertainty: the participant either did not know (VoI) or (...truncated)


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Hirofumi Takesue, Carlos Makoto Miyauchi, Shiro Sakaiya, Hongwei Fan, Tetsuya Matsuda, Junko Kato. Human pursuance of equality hinges on mental processes of projecting oneself into the perspectives of others and into future situations, Scientific Reports, 2017, Issue: 7, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-05469-9