Neural evidence for inequality-averse social preferences
Abstract
A popular hypothesis in the social sciences is that humans have social preferences to reduce inequality in outcome distributions because it has a negative impact on their experienced reward. Although there is a large body of behavioural and anthropological evidence consistent with the predictions of these theories, there is no direct neural evidence for the existence of inequality-averse preferences. Such evidence would be especially useful because some behaviours that are consistent with a dislike for unequal outcomes could also be explained by concerns for social image or reciprocity, which do not require a direct aversion towards inequality. Here we use functional MRI to test directly for the existence of inequality-averse social preferences in the human brain. Inequality was created by recruiting pairs of subjects and giving one of them a large monetary endowment. While both subjects evaluated further monetary transfers from the experimenter to themselves and to the other participant, we measured neural responses in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, two areas that have been shown to be involved in the valuation of monetary and primary rewards in both social and non-social contexts. Consistent with inequality-averse models of social preferences, we find that activity in these areas was more responsive to transfers to others than to self in the 'high-pay' subject, whereas the activity of the 'low-pay' subject showed the opposite pattern. These results provide direct evidence for the validity of this class of models, and also show that the brain's reward circuitry is sensitive to both advantageous and disadvantageous inequality.
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Ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex show a similar response to outcomes that restore equality amongst partners even when they are not directly interacting.
“Ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex show a similar response to outcomes that restore equality amongst partners even when they are not directly interacting 92.”
From The social brain and reward: Social information processing in the human striatum (2014) · cites this paper as [92]
Striatum responses reflect the positive value of fair outcomes.
“Whereas increased responses in insular cortex have been associated with perceived unfairness of monetary outcomes 91, a growing literature suggests that striatum responses reflect the positive value of fair outcomes 73, 92, 93.”
From The social brain and reward: Social information processing in the human striatum (2014) · cites this paper as [92]
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- Authors
- Tricomi, E., Rangel, A., Camerer, C. F., & O’Doherty, J. P.
- Affiliations
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- O’Doherty, John P.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2010-02
- Volume
- 463
- Issue
- 7284
- Pages
- 1089-1091
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1975125955
- Cited by
- 462
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 35 · 2014: 38 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 37
- FWCI
- 105.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- distributive fairness, inequality aversion, reward systems, ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, monetary transfers, social preferences, reciprocity, social image
- MeSH terms
- Basal Ganglia, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Models, Neurological, Reward, Role Playing, Social Behavior, Social Justice, Reproducibility of Results, Prefrontal Cortex, Beneficence, Young Adult
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