WHICH IS WHY THE SECULAR STATES ARE TOAST:

Testing the role of trust and values in financial decisions (Evelyn Iritani, 1/21/07, LA Times)

Paul Zak scanned the UCLA computer lab where 18 young men were tapping away at keyboards.

Some of the students had been administered a dose of testosterone the evening before. Now, Zak was monitoring their behavior as they played an experimental game designed to measure trust. He was curious about how these hormonally fueled "alpha" males would behave. Would they be more selfish or generous? Helpful or aggressive?

The Claremont Graduate University researcher was exploring new avenues not in psychology or behavioral studies but in economics. Along with like-minded scholars, he is trying to prove that good behavior, rather than self-interest, "is really what makes the economy work."

In exploring the morality of economic behavior, they aim to put a more positive spin on Western-style capitalism. They want to demonstrate, in a post-Enron world, that markets are driven not by greed but by positive behavior. [...]

With their findings, they hope to persuade political and business leaders to rethink the way they manage corporations and the marketplace. One goal is to reduce government regulation, which they believe has led people to rely too heavily on legal penalties and has discouraged them from adhering to their own sense of right and wrong.

"Free enterprise has been badly described and badly sold," said Monika Gruter Cheney, executive director of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. The think tank in Portola Valley, Calif., is sponsoring a project dubbed Free Enterprise: Values in Action, which supports research by Zak and others. [...]

Zak, director of Claremont's Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, believes humans are hard-wired to trust and cooperate. By linking brain chemistry to financial decision making, he believes he can prove it.

In earlier research, Zak found that people who inhaled oxytocin, a brain chemical associated with breastfeeding and sex, were twice as likely to risk their money with strangers while participating in a trust game. In his UCLA experiment, he is trying to determine what role testosterone might play in driving people's financial decisions.

The night before the UCLA research was conducted in the fall of 2005, half of the male participants received a patch containing the male sex hormone. The others were given a placebo.

The next morning, after having their blood drawn, the students were herded into a computer room and assigned to machines.

The young men then were matched anonymously with partners and given $10 to spend. Half of them were told they could send any of their money, or nothing, to their partners. Whatever they sent would be tripled, and then their partners could send any amount back.

In previous studies, three-quarters of the people gave up some of their money, and an even higher proportion of the recipients sent some of their earnings back, Zak said. His explanation: People generally believe that when someone does something nice to them, they should reciprocate.

Although the testosterone study has not been completed, Zak said, the early findings might surprise some people. The alpha males, those who were given a dose of the hormone, were found to be more generous.

There are two truisms involved here: (1) morality is male; and, (2) the more law you have, the less morality.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2007 12:00 AM