Is this why your boss won't give you a payrise?

More bad news for the low paid - apparently the rich like it like that.

A small study of 38 men carried out at Bonn University suggests that men are hard-wired to be competitive - just as their partners have frequently feared.

The brains of two men were scanned while they were simultaneously carrying out a simple on-screen task. Success was rewarded with a payment of 30 to 120 Euros. There was activity in many parts of the brain, particularly the ventrial striatum, the region where scientists believe the brain's 'reward system' is located. When the man completed the task correctly there was a lot of activity here; when he was wrong activity subsided.

No surprise there but what really interested the researchers was the man's reaction to another's success or failure. Here activity was highest for those players who got the right answer while their co-player got it wrong.

What about when both got it right?

If the players both received the same payment there was relatively moderate activation of the reward centre. But if player one was given, say, 120 euros, while his partner received only 60, the activation turned out to be much stronger for player one. For player two, on the other hand, the blood flow into the ventral striatum actually decreased - even though he had performed the task successfully and had been rewarded for his efforts.

Bonn-based economist Professor Dr. Armin Falk  who was part of the team running the experiment believes that 'this result clearly contradicts traditional economic theory which assumes that the only important factor is the absolute size of the reward. The comparison with other people's rewards shouldn't really play any role in economic motivation.'

Of course, the absolute size of the reward had impact on the 'reward centre': more excitement was registered in response to 60 euros than 30. 'But ,' says Falk. 'The interesting point to emerge from our study is that the relative size of one's earnings plays such a major role.'

This was a study of German men. Now he researchers now want to find out if that goes for women, too and are also planning a series of experiments with Asian subjects to see how far competitive thinking may be influenced by cultural factors.

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