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For goodness' sake

Nature Neuroscience volume 10, pages 137–138 (2007)Cite this article

Humans engage in complex social interactions, including altruism. A study in this issue finds that watching a computer perform an altruistic act, earning money for charity, is sufficient to activate a brain region that has been implicated in the evaluation of others' motives and goals, suggesting that this area may be involved in detecting agency in other creatures.

Thoreau wrote that “Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” Among the bits of wisdom imparted to us when we are young, the separate charges to be fair and good typically make the top-ten list. Despite the simplicity and intuitiveness of these gentle nudges, this childhood advice raises important issues about social cognition. One cannot be fair and good simultaneously, and there's the rub.

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Figure 1: Subjects in the experiment watched the computer play a game after they were told that the computer's performance would earn money for a charity that they had chosen.

Kimberly Caesar

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry (PRM), Computational Psychiatry Unit, Baylor College of Medicine, 1 Baylor Plaza, Houston, 77030, Texas, USA

    P Read Montague & Pearl H Chiu

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  1. P Read Montague
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  2. Pearl H Chiu
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Montague, P., Chiu, P. For goodness' sake. Nat Neurosci 10, 137–138 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0207-137

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