CHICAGO — That good feeling you get by writing a check to your favorite charity could be your brain patting itself on the back.
Reporting in today's issue of the journal Science, a team of economists and psychologists at the University of Oregon has found that donating money to charity activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure.
The study represents a major advance in the young field of neuroeconomics, a collaboration between economists and psychologists to determine how the brain directs the way people handle money.
Economic models would suggest "only Bill Gates or Warren Buffett should be making contributions, and everyone else should just free-ride," said one of the authors, economics professor William T. Harbaugh. "But that doesn't happen; there's high participation, where even low-income people are giving away a portion of their income."
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The apparent reason is that giving to others produces a "warm glow." As Harbaugh described it, "people feel good knowing that they're a charitable giver."
Technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging, which uses magnetic waves to monitor acute changes in brain activity, may allow economists to uncover answers about behavior and motivation that previously were hidden.
"As an economist, I was fascinated that one can actually look inside a person's brain and see them make economic decisions," Harbaugh said. "Once I heard it was possible, there was no way I could stop myself" from doing this research.
In the study, female college students were given $100, then told either that a mandatory transfer of money would go from their account to a local food bank or that they could make a voluntary donation to the same charity. At the end of the study, the women were allowed to keep the remainder of the money.
Using MRI, the investigators found that both mandatory and voluntary transfers increased activity in brain areas called the nucleus accumbens and the caudate nucleus. These areas previously have been associated with the brain's response to rewarding stimuli, such as taking street drugs or viewing pictures of loved ones.
The reward reaction was more intense with the voluntary giving, which the authors argue supports the notion of a "warm glow" phenomenon.
Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, said: "It's mysterious that human beings among all mammals are so hypersocial that our brains are wired to help other people, even strangers.
"There's very little evidence that other animals have that capacity," Zak continued. "Economists have always been shocked (by unselfish altruism), and now we have a reason for it: It feels good to do this."
