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The good news is that most of us are naturally endowed with the ability to consider the interests of others. But the craving for deception and swindle is rather a pathology.
Decency is common to most of us, but a pathological tendency to deceive can be the result of brain disorders. Psychologists from the University of Virginia (USA) have found that we owe our ability to be honest to a special area of the brain – the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It is she who suppresses selfish impulses, forcing us to reckon with the interests of others. If this zone is damaged or destroyed, a person’s behavior develops a tendency to cheat, lie and deceive, scientists have found *.
Read more:
- Selfishness has its good points
A team of researchers at the University of Virginia studied the behavior of 30 people whose prefrontal cortex had been damaged by trauma and ruptured blood vessels. They were asked to play a game where they had to sell products with defects or subtle factory defects (“sellers” knew about it, but “buyers” did not). Most of the participants in the control group (who had no brain damage) were honest about the state of things. In contrast, participants with prefrontal cortex injury kept silent about the defects and tried to sell the product at a higher price (they could keep the difference).
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- Where do altruists come from?
Interestingly, damage to the prefrontal cortex is often observed in people of an antisocial warehouse – criminals, sociopaths, rapists. Even confessing to their deeds, they do not show remorse or sympathy, but they talk a lot about themselves, their desires and plans.
* Nature Neuroscience, 2014, vol. 17, № 1319–1321.