Bar-charts or Bearskins?

Had to go to a certain financial institution what likes visigoths and assorted meanies in their ads, yesterday. On the way, one of our group mentioned a radio story she's heard earlier in the day about a study, one that claimed, as she put it, "rich people aren't motivated by money." After listening to the top line, we agreed: "Sounds goofy--they do care, but about significant amounts of money. And by the time you've reached "significant," money isn't "money" anymore. It's something else.

Not a bad conversation to have on the way to talk to some nice people about what makes financial services workers engage with boring old, mostly invisible money. Anyway, trolling neuroscience blogs this morning and lookety here, via the frontal cortex....

"They were bored by the pocket change."

w00t!

Poor People Learn Faster

Marginal utility can be measured. According to new research out of Wolfram Schultz's lab, poor people are much quicker learners than rich people when playing a Pavlovian paradigm for small amounts of money. (Poor people took about 12 trials to figure out the game, while rich people took about 35 trials.) This behavior was then confirmed with fMRI. Sure enough, rich people demonstrated less dopaminergic midbrain activity than poor people in response to the experimental paradigm. They were bored by the pocket change. Here's the abstract:

A basic tenet of microeconomics suggests that the subjective value of financial gains decreases with increasing assets of individuals ("marginal utility"). Using concepts from learning theory and microeconomics, we assessed the capacity of financial rewards to elicit behavioral and neuronal changes during reward-predictive learning in participants with different financial backgrounds. Behavioral learning speed during both acquisition and extinction correlated negatively with the assets of the participants, irrespective of education and age. Correspondingly, response changes in midbrain and striatum measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging were slower during both acquisition and extinction with increasing assets and income of the participants. By contrast, asymptotic magnitudes of behavioral and neuronal responses after learning were unrelated to personal finances. The inverse relationship of behavioral and neuronal learning speed with personal finances is compatible with the general concept of decreasing marginal utility with increasing wealth.

Ouch. And zzzzzz. Poor people learn faster? Or, rich people yawn at the familiar, the already 'learned,' and the seemingly easy?

Now, I could see where we could get into how this *seemingly easy* thing could get people in all kinds of trouble. That would be a cool study. Something about the inverse relationship between confidence and competence and the dangers of broadbrushing--confusing catgeories of things with their individually unique events.

What if, say, the lowly dismissed quarter was a Standing Liberty worth $8,000? What if the "rich" person was seated in a waiting area with CNN on in the background? What if one of the TV bobbleheads did a quick story about rare coins and their value?

A rare coin and a rare chance, yes. But maybe a quarter's not a quarter anymore after that. What has it become? A challenge? A reminder to look closely? An affirmation of your keen observational skills? A worthy adversary? *Real* money?

Marginal utility and incentive. At certain levels, money ain't "the thing" for peeps who gots money, it's what their money sez about them to other folks who ain't gots. Hello, Darwin; and, Hi there! Signifying and Being Noted. Might as well be about who's got the sharpest spear, the best nose and the quickest reflexes. In that case, the tallest pile of the plushest bearskins would be the marker. And the bragging right. And the factor what makes the girlies think you're handsomer and stuff. The other boys? They just keep asking if you've been working out.

In a larger, more serious sense, this really is a nice reminder of how when all others have their heads down or noses to grindstone being all dedicated n stuff, guys like Apple's Jobs or Chrysler's Lutz or Southwest's Kelleher come along and "change the game."

But, what they really show is that, "Whooops! All along, the game wasn't about what you thought it was, was it fellas?"

Look! A bear!

Not dead, just lotsa bz

Activation of Brain Region Predicts Altruism - Dukehealth.org

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Genealogy of Influence a visualization of the connections between the most influential writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians of Western culture

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LiveScience.com - Popular Brands May Brand the Brain: "

(HealthDay News) -- Marketers may have your number, neurologically speaking: A new study finds that familiar brands evoke faster, more positive responses in the brain than lesser-known brands.

In tests on young adults using real-time functional MRI (fMRI), the logos of well-known auto and insurance companies 'lit up' areas of the brain associated with warm emotions, reward and self-identity.

'Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain' ...

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Even individualists like that herd feeling - Us and Them: the blog

Look at a picture of a conventional person, you're more likely to go along with what people around you say, even if it contradicts the evidence of your senses. Look at a photo of an obvious rebel, you're more likely to stand up for yourself. That's the nicely convoluted result obtained by the study described here...

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Security on the Couch - CSO Magazine: "Security on the Couch

Too bad, says Bruce Schneier, we don't have separate words for security the mathematical reality and security the psychological feeling, because they are as distinct as air and water. Once was time Schneier maligned the psychology of security, what he called security theater to make people feel safe even at the expense of being safe. But, as you'll hear in this podcast, the more he learns about the human brain, the more he's coming around to see value in security theater."