Selfishness Makes the Brain Lazy; Egoists Don't Think About The Future

Image result for It's about me
Careers.Morgan McKinley

So many characters in fiction are egotistical, self-centered and annoying.  An egoist makes a great character to play with, to throw into conflict with others, and to use to drive story. 

This little bit of science shows that egoists have a "lazy brain", that they simply can't think about long term consequences.  Not exactly news, but now it's confirmed by scans.

Here's the story.
*  *  *  *  *

No future for egoists -- that's what their brain says!

Self-centred individuals do not worry about consequences, 
believing that these potential disasters are too far off.

With the help of neuro-imaging, researchers at the University of Geneva found that people deemed "egotistical" do not use the area of the brain that enables us to look into and imagine the distant future. In "altruistic" individuals, on the other hand, the same area is alive with activity. 

The research results, published in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioural Neuroscience, may help psychologists devise exercises that put this specific area of the brain to work. These could be used to improve people's ability to project themselves into the future and raise their awareness of, for example, the effects of climate change.

The concerns experienced by human beings are built on their values, which determine whether individuals prioritize their personal well-being or put themselves on an equal footing with their peers. In order to encourage as many people as possible to adopt "sustainable" behaviour, it is thus necessary that they feel the consequences of climate change are relevant to them. Some individuals -- who are more self-centred -- do not worry about the consequences, believing that these potential disasters are too far off.

"We wondered what magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could teach us about how the brain processes information about the future impact of climate change, and how this mechanism differs depending on the self-centeredness of the individual," says Tobias Brosch, professor in the Psychology Section at UNIGE's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPSE).

Are egoists only afraid of what directly concerns them?
The UNIGE psychologists turned to the report drawn up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where they identified predictions about the outcomes of climate change, such as a reduction in drinking water supplies, an increase in border conflicts and a spike in natural disasters. They then assigned a year in the future to each of these effects, stating when it would come to pass.

Brosch's team invited a panel of participants to complete a standardized questionnaire to measure the value hierarchies, marking the selfish or altruistic tendencies of each individual. One by one, the participants underwent an MRI before being shown the dated consequences of the events; they then had to answer two questions on a scale of 1 to 8: Is it serious? Are you afraid?

"The first result we obtained was that for people with egotistical tendencies, the near future is much more worrying than the distant future, which will only come about after they are dead. In altruistic people, this difference disappears, since they see the seriousness as being the same," explains Brosch.

Selfishness makes the brain lazy
The psychologists then focused on the activity in the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC), an area of the brain above the eyes that is used when thinking about the future and trying to visualize it. "We found that with altruistic people, this cerebral zone is activated more forcefully when the subject is confronted with the consequences of a distant future as compared to the near future. By contrast, in an egotistical person, there is no increase in activity between a consequence in the near future and one in the distant future," says Brosch.

This particular region of the brain is mainly used for projecting oneself into the distant future. The absence of heightened activity in a self-centred person indicates the absence of projection and the fact that the individual does not feel concerned by what will happen after his or her death. Why, then, should such people adopt sustainable forms of behaviour?

Set your projection capabilities to work
These outcomes, which can be applied to areas other than climate change, demonstrate the importance of being able to think about the distant future in order to adapt one's behaviour to the future constraints of the world. "We could imagine a psychological training that would work on this brain area using projection exercises," suggests Brosch. "In particular, we could use virtual reality, which would make the tomorrow's world visible to everyone, bringing human beings closer to the consequences of their actions."

Story Source:  Materials provided by Université de Genève.   Tobias Brosch, Yoann Stussi, Olivier Desrichard, David Sander. Not my future? Core values and the neural representation of future events. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the lives of Georgian gaolbirds and highwaymen shaped modern Britain

Image
Writing historical fiction requires solid research of available materials and databases.  The key word here is available.   So news of a new publicly accessible database that allows an author to research a very interesting past era is priceless almost beyond words.   I expect some exciting fiction to come out of this announcement. Here's the story, with a link to the source in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * London Lives, a landmark project led by Professor Bob Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield and Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex, has uncovered a mass of extraordinary new evidence which reveals how the lives of thousands of 18th-century poor and criminal Londoners helped shape modern Britain. Based on evidence made available in a publicly available database, the study sheds new light on the everyday lives of thieves, prostitutes, vagrants, highwaymen, con-men, paupers and jailbirds, revealing how their daily fight for survival led to t
Read more

An unexpected way to recover from a breakup

Image
Breaking up is truly hard to do. And recovery from a breakup can be even harder. Your friends may counsel you to put the whole thing out of your mind. But new research suggests that repeatedly reflecting on a break-up -- even through participation in a research study -- actually speeds emotional recovery. "Breakups are ubiquitous -- most adults have experienced at least one in their life -- and are typically very distressing," says Grace Larson of Northwestern University. After studying divorce and breakups for years using longitudinal, multi-method designs, Larson and her then-adviser David Sbarra of the University of Arizona wanted to study whether these research techniques on their own were affecting participants. One concern they had was that the studies could be harming participants, Larson says. "At first glance, it might seem like repeatedly reminding participants that they had just broken up -- and asking them to describe the breakup over and over --
Read more

Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

Image
Source: www.shef.ac.uk The charred remains of Assiros Toumba in Greece. Writing historical fiction set in the Greek Bronze Age?  Or simply enjoy reading this genre'?  Here's a study you may find interesting. C onventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. www.weather-forecast.com Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. Researcher Dr Ken Wardle says, 'These new results tell a story that is totall
Read more

Mood Instability and Your Characters

Image
You're putting together a character who's mood simply bounces all over the place, happy one moment, in a fit of rage the next.  Researchers at King's College London note that this sort of mood instability is part of a number of mental health disorders.  So how do you structure the personality and behavior of a character like this?  Below is the King's College report, along with a brief description from mentalhealth.com, of typical behavior, sometimes in the extreme, of a person who is very emotionally unstable.  This is offered strictly as a guide for crafting character in fiction - and NOT for the amateur diagnosis of the state of someone's mental health.  That is always best left to trained professionals. Another note about emotionally unstable behavior:  as any parent will tell you, this is how adolescents and teen-agers often behave.  It's a normal part of growing up - but it is a matter of degree .  In the extreme, however, this behavior can be diag
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more