Are yousolidaryOindividualistic? The difference between the two personality traits lies in theamygdala, a brain structure from which emotions such as fear or anger also sprout, according to a study published in the journalNature.
The way people preferdivide resourcesbetween themselves and others is a stable personality trait. Prosocial individuals, who tend to work in ways that benefit others, prefer to maximize resources for themselves but also like others to have similar resources. Individualists, on the contrary, prefer to maximize resources for themselves regardless of the amount available to others.
To find out how we choose one or the other attitude, Japanese scientists from the Institute of Neurology at Tamagawa University launched a series of experiments. The results showed thatprosocial people didn’t like unfair scenariosand they responded accordingly while individualistic people’s decisions were not influenced by the fairness of the situation. The researchers found that activity in the amygdala of the brain differed between these two groups, with higher activity in prosocial people showing an aversion to inequality.
The finding discards previous theories that held the existence of a selfish automatic response, which considers the benefit of oneself, and that is theprefrontal cortexthe one that controls that impulse and turns us into caring individuals.
