The Co-Op Brain
According to a story in "Wired News," an Emory University study revealed a biological theory that essentially says people cooperate because it makes them feel good. In other words, the brain is hard-wired to cooperate . it associates cooperation with reward. The Emory team discovered that when pairs of volunteers cooperated with one another, the regions of the brain known as reward circuits were activated. These are the same regions of the brain that are activated when you receive an unexpected sum of money.
(Thirty-six women participated in the study. No men were chosen because the Emory team wanted to avoid introducing any possible sexual tension that might affect participants' judgment. Source: www.WiredNews.com )
