Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate

clipped from www.physorg.com The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry. "We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward," said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience. "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats," she said. This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need, she added. "The brain's reward regions were more active when people were given a $5 offer out of $10 than when they received a $5 offer out of $23," Lieberman said. "We call this finding the 'sunny side of fairness' because it shows the rewarding experience of being treated fairly." When people accepted the insulting offers, they tended to turn on a region of the prefrontal cortex that is associated with emotion regulation