That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Selfishness

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Have you ever wondered why some people are so selfish? Or maybe you've even thought this about yourself? As it turns out your brain is hardwired to be selfish. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind how our brain particularly loves items, people, memories, and many other things related to our sense of self. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kreg Olsson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Have you ever wondered if you're a bit selfish? Maybe you care about yourself a bit too much, or you want things for yourself a bit too much or you want things for yourself a bit too much or maybe you've wondered if you're altruistic you know you you're generous to a fault you you're more than willing to share or give away things if need be i guess most of us think we're somewhere in the middle that sometimes we can be a bit selfish and sometimes we can be a bit altruistic but it actually turns out that's wrong most Most of us, in fact, all of us

are hardwired to be selfish. On today's podcast, the ownership effect and why it matters to you. When I first heard about the ownership effect, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. And my supervisor introduced me to a colleague of his from the University of British Columbia. And my supervisor introduced me to a colleague of his from the University of Aberdeen. And it was he that explained to me the ownership effect. And the basic idea was that as we wander through life, we tend to pay more attention or we tend to preferentially process things that are relevant to us. And we tend to pay less attention to, or we tend to devote less cognitive processing to things that aren't relevant to us. Now to test this, what he did was he designed a memory study. Now in this study, if you want to envision what it looks like,

you'd be sitting in front of a computer. And in the first phase of the experiment, you see a series of items. You might see an apple and then a car and then a fork and then a house and so on and so on. They're just randomly selected items and they're just pictures of these items. Now, what he did though, was he cued people. And as the item appeared, it was surrounded by a colored frame. And if the color was blue, that meant that item belonged to you. And if the color was green, it meant the item belonged to someone else. Now, the colors are immaterial. They were controlled for and changed between people.

But what's really important is people doing this experiment knew these items weren't theirs. These are just pictures on a computer screen. It's just a picture of an apple or a picture of a car. And you know, in one case, I remember one of the pictures was a Porsche. And when I did the experiment and it said the Porsche was mine, I was pretty sure that the Porsche was not mine. It's a very artificial situation. Now the memory portion is after a period of time, you see a whole bunch of items, even more than you saw in the first batch, but there's no cue. You don't know whether the item is yours or someone else's. You're just asked, have you seen this item before? Yes or no? And when the results were examined,

what was found was that people tended to remember things that they had been cued that they belong to them. So in the case of that Porsche, I was more likely to remember seeing that Porsche because I'd been cued that that was my item relative to being cued that it was someone else's item. So it's almost like our memory system engaged and went, hey, this is mine. Even though everyone knows the situation's artificial, like you know it, the experimenters know it, but even then your brain just cues to that, you know, it responds to that simple cue of, hey, that item is mine, right? Now, we were intrigued by this, and where I joined the story was we decided to do some neuroimaging.

We actually used EEG or brainwaves, and we put electrodes on people's heads. And sure enough, what we found is those cues for self relative to cues for other or belonging to someone else elicited a larger brain response. Your brain was literally responding to these cues, indicating that, hey, this item is mine to a greater extent than cues that indicated that the item belonged to someone else. Now, bear in mind what I've always found fascinating, at least on these kind of research aspects of the ownership effect, is that everyone knows it's artificial. When you see these items, you know with 100% certainty that it's not your Porsche or your house or your fork, but your brain still responds with this massive ownership bias.

Now, I'd sort of put away the ownership effect for a while, but then I sort of got, I thought about it. And I, you know, I was walking to work one day, I remember, and I went, you know, actually, I've got an idea. And we decided to run two studies and they were gambling studies. So what we did is we came up with the same collection of items in the first study. And we basically said, well, hey, you're going to gamble for this Porsche, right? And if you win, then it's your Porsche and you've won the Porsche. And if you lose, then you don't get the Porsche. Or you might gamble for a house, but it's for someone else. Remember, it's that ownership cue.

You're specifically told that the item is relevant to you or it's relevant to someone else. And what we found was fascinating when people were gambling for items that were, you know, they were going to win and everyone knew we weren't giving away Porsches. I have to emphasize that We got a larger reward response when gambling for self relative to other. It's like your brain was going, well, hey, yay, I won this thing and I get it. It's relevant to me, even though you'd know that you're not getting it. It's just amazing how powerful these ownership cues really are. I found the second study that we did even more fascinating. In the second study, we actually gambled and we used money. So you would come in and you would find out that you were gambling to win money for yourself or you were gambling to win money for

someone else. And you could lose money as well, of course, it's a gamble. And it worked kind of that way. You know, you would start a gamble and a gamble in this case is a very simple slot machine. It's basically you hit a button and you find out whether you won or lost, right? And you find out, well, hey, I'm gambling and I'm gambling for me. And you push a button. And then after a pause, you get told you won or you lost, you push a button and then after a pause, you get told you won or you lost, or you find out you're gambling for someone else. And again, you select an option and there's an outcome and you found out whether that other person won or lost money. Now, in this case, what we did differently is we actually paid people. So as opposed to the other ownership studies that I've told you about, in this case, people were actually winning and losing money. So when you won money for yourself, you gained money. When you lost money for yourself,

you lost money. And we were literally handing out quarters as we went. It wasn't tons of money, but it was still you winning money. And when you're gambling for that other person, to be clear, I'll emphasize in all of these studies, you never know who the other person is, right? We keep it very distant. It's just other person, right? It could be in another room, could be tested at a different time of day, but it's just other. But anyway, when we found out that people were gambling for themselves, there was a massive reward response when you found out you won. And there was the opposite effect when you found out you're lost. Your brain was really dialed up, just as it was in the other studies,

when things were relevant to you. So winning for yourself, big deal. Losing for yourself, big deal. But interestingly, when you gambled and won or lost for someone else, there was no reward response at all. It's like the reward system in the brain was turned off. It just didn't care. Now, you might think, okay, that's just some study in a lab at a university.

You know, you're gambling for yourself. You're gambling for someone else. You know, your brain responds when you win some money. Great. It doesn't respond when the other person wins money or loses money. Let me ask you this. Now, some of you, I know that listen are a bit younger, but for those that are a bit older, do you have an investment banker? Have you ever let someone else, you know, move your money around and look after it for you? And what if they lose your money and their brain doesn't care?

What if their brain doesn't even care when they gain you money? You see where I'm going at with this? This ownership effect is really interesting and powerful. In a financial sense, it basically implies we should be the only ones that are managing our own money because other people may not care whether they lose our money or win with our money. And it has applications everywhere. This is the part of the podcast I think that hopefully will be relevant to a lot of you. You can use the ownership effect in the real world. In advertising, if you were in advertising and you're listening to this, when you design an advertisement, you need to make it relevant to the individual. Because if it's just generic and

it's about other people, their brain will pay less attention than when it's relevant to them. brain will pay less attention than when it's relevant to them. I use this when I teach. When you're teaching someone, you have to make it relative to the individual. You know, I went and saw Napoleon with my son the other night for his birthday, and you imagine teaching about Napoleon. Well, you got to make it relevant to the individual. Why should they care? What's in it for them when learning about Napoleon? This is of course true for coaching. You know, if you're going to coach someone, make it relevant to the individual. I've already talked about, you know, the business aspect of this, but I think it's really crucial when you're making business decisions

or any decision, you have to make it relevant to the individual. That's the ownership effect in a nutshell. Our brains preferentially process information that's relevant to us. Now, why? We're still debating that one, but it probably goes back to the dawn of man and the whole idea of fight or flight responses, things in that environment that were relevant to us were truly important. And if something wasn't relevant to us in that extreme environment of survival, then our brains probably didn't care as much. It was very quickly going, doesn't matter, doesn't help me. And what I tell people all the time, and I've said this a lot on this podcast, is you have to remember our brains are still dealing in a world that was a long time ago.

Our brains haven't truly adapted to the modern era. And this ownership effect is probably a carryover of that. It goes back to the early days of humankind where things that were relevant to us really matter. And remember, you can use this in your daily life. If you want to make something interesting to someone else, make it relevant to them. Anyway, I hope you found that bit on the ownership effect interesting. I know I've found it fascinating for most of my academic career. Don't forget the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com.

There's links to Patreon where you can support the podcast financially. Remember, all of the money goes to basically Matt and other graduate students in my lab who support the podcast. There's our Etsy store where you can buy some merch. Please send us ideas. We're slowly wrapping up this season. We're going to take a break for Christmas in a couple of weeks, but we are planning to continue on in the new year. So follow me on Twitter if you want to. Sorry, it's X now or threads at that neuroscience guy. There's also our email address, that neuroscience guy at gmail.com.

Just send us ideas. We really want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. And of course the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening and please subscribe. My name is Olof Kregolsen and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you soon for another neuroscience bite.