Archive for March 4th, 2010

  • Dislike of Inequality Hardwired in Humans

    As the saying goes, life is not fair – the same can said of the workplace. People bring different backgrounds, talents, ambitions, abilities (you name it) to their jobs, all of which impacts their work. Based on how much (or little) they contribute to the company, and in what ways, employees typically are rewarded accordingly.

    But this approach – tying pay to performance – may run counter to how humans are innately wired … to dislike inequality even when it is favor of one person over another. (But what to make of schadenfreude?) This insight has been revealed by recent brain research, as excerpted below:

    “The researchers gave some participants a hypothetical $50 while others began with nothing. Then, while they were in the MRI, they were presented with a series of possible money transfers. Sometimes they would be given more money, sometimes another person would get more. As the subjects pondered this monetary transfer, the researchers looked to see how their brains reacted.

    As they’d expected, people who started out ‘poor’ in the experiment had the strongest brain reaction when they were given money, and didn’t really react when money went to the ‘rich’ person. But in a surprise finding,  the ‘rich’ participants reacted just as strongly to the ‘poor’ person getting money as they did when they themselves got money.

    Their brains weren’t simply wired for self-interest, but for fairness all around.”

    Read more here.

    2010.03.04 / no responses / Category: Human Resources