Sense of Fair Play tied to Serotonin Levels

Are you a person that gets really combative and aggressive, or grouchy when you don’t eat? Are you one of those people who are uncomfortable in social situations, or who are unusually sensitive to being treated unfairly? It turns out your serotonin levels may contribute to more than just depression or compulsive disorders. In a new Science study, UCLA and Cambridge researchers report that people with low serotonin levels were found to be more sensitive to being treated unfairly.

A new study, published in the June 6 issue of Science suggests that the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has long been known to act as “…a chemical messenger between nerve cells…” and has been recognized to play “… a critical role in regulating emotions such as aggression during social decision-making…” is also responsible for turning on the brains “reward circuitry.”

The study suggests that the “human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate; being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry.”

The study involved 20 subjects who were each presented with several offers, some skewed and some fair, for dividing sums of money. If they declined the offer neither they, nor the person making the offer would receive anything. After this round of initial offers and responses were recorded, participants were given a drink that “significantly reduced” their serotonin levels before a second round of offers began.

The study discovered that participants rejected 82 percent of the unfair offers when their serotonin levels were reduced as compared to only rejecting 67 percent of the unfair offers when their serotonin levels were normal. The report concluded that people with low serotonin levels were more likely to reject unfair offers.

Serotonin levels can fluctuate in regard to how regularly we eat, since “the essential amino acid necessary for the body to create serotonin can only be obtained through diet…” which suggests that a person’s perception of fairness can also fluctuate. What I view, for instance, as fair on the day I have three full meals, may differ from the day I skip breakfast.

It seems the study proves that the human sense of fairness is not based on rational processes, and unlike the solid mathematical formulas we learn, fairness is a fluid and fluctuating process that flows with the levels of our brain chemistry.

Sources:
UCLA Eureka Alert: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/uoc--sma060608.php
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1155577
About.com: http://depression.about.com/b/2008/06/10/serotonin-levels-related-to-sense-of-fairness.htm

Unfair Criticism of PZ Myers and other Secular Scientists

On July 31, 2008 Salon.com posted an articled titled: What's wrong with science as religion, by Karl Giberson. Giberson, who has a PhD in physics and is the author of “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and believe in Evolution” was responding to a July 24th web posting by PZ Meyers on Meyers’ blog Pharyngula. (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/) In the web posting Meyers stuck a rusty nail in a communion cracker, and then used the nail to impale pages of the Qur’an and Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion,” before throwing them all in a garbage can. The exercise was performed in an effort to demonstrate the importance of remaining free from the influence of dogma.

Seeming to shares in “Myers' enthusiasm for fresh eyes, questioning minds and the power of science…” Giberson says he also worries”…about dogmatism and the kind of zealotry that motivates the faithful to blow themselves up, shoot abortion doctors and persecute homosexuals.” Giberson also worries, however, “about narrow exclusiveness that champions the scientific way of knowing to the exclusion of all else. “I don't like to see science turned into a club to bash religious believers…” and he considers “…PZ Meyers a science crusader and true believer with the “singled-minded enthusiasm of a televangelist.”

Giberson admits that “…Myers doesn't seem to like me.” Maybe Myers doesn’t like him because, when interviewed by Salon.com about his new book, “Saving Darwin” Giberson indicated there “might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God.” Giberson believes that Christianity and evolution are complementary, not incompatible, and he seeks a “middle way.”

Comparison is made by Giberson between Meyers, and other famous secular scientists and writers, to evangelical preachers of the 1700s, saying “Myers' confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God, about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell.” He suggests that Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Myers are a new type of preacher, men of the scientific cloth, “Like their traditional counterpart, the new preachers speak with great confidence that their religion -- science -- contains all the truth we need to know and all the truth that can be known. They call us to worship at the altar of science, a summons of which I am skeptical, to say the least.”

The arguments Giberson poses regarding PZ Meyers’ scientific evangelism fall flat, of course, since the very web blog he is criticizing was meant to promote free thought, not dogmatic adherence to a specific school of ideology. PZ Meyers chose the communion wafer, the Qur’an, and the God Delusion for a reason; he wanted to impress upon us the importance for vigilance, for keeping our minds open, free of dogmatic clutter from any source. As for Richard Dawkins, he himself says he ranks himself somewhere between strong agnostic and pure atheist because to say there is no God without evidence equals the zeal with which theists claim there is a God. Christopher Hitchens is extremely respectful of all religious practices, despite his atheistic beliefs. Perhaps, if Dr. Giberson’s perceptions were less obscured by his own dogmatic affinities, he could more clearly see the truth about those he chooses to malign.