Concerns with attempts by neuroeconomics to answer the philosophical question “Is it rational to donate money for charity?”

Sumitava Mukherjee

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00585

Abstract

GENERAL COMMENTARY article Front. Psychol., 30 August 2013Sec. Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology Volume 4 - 2013 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00585

Highlights

Altruism involves acting toward the welfare of others by incurring costs to the self (Batson and Shaw, 1991)
The authors later argued that these results show donating to charity is inherently rewarding and rational (Mayr et al, 2009)
The reasoning adopted was: If brain area B is involved in coding rewards which have inherent utility and we observe area B is involved in donations, there is utility in donating and donating is rational

Summary

Introduction

Altruism involves acting toward the welfare of others by incurring costs to the self (Batson and Shaw, 1991). Harbaugh et al (2007) designed a novel experiment which strikingly showed that both mandatory and voluntary transfers to charity show neural activity in the brain areas associated with reward processing with larger activations following voluntary transfers. The brain areas implicated were medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) along with the ventral striatum, nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the insulae which form parts of the reward circuitry that codes most real life rewards (like money, drugs and chocolates).

Results

Conclusion