Valuable Objects Stimulate Brain More Than Junk

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego, visual areas of our brain respond more to valuable objects than other ones. In other words, our brain has stronger reactions when we see a diamond ring than we look at junk. Similarly, our brain vision areas are more excited by a Ferrari than, say, a Tata new Nano car. In this holiday season, I'm sure you've received gifts that excited your brain — and others that you already want to resell on an auction site."

Comments

Sorting Mechanism

[gbulmash]

The thing to note here is that value remains subjective. The actual test didn't show subjects diamond rings or big houses. It showed them simple images of neutral value that then paid off in varying amounts when selected. It was the amount of the payoff that influenced the subject's perception of the object. An object that paid off at $10 generated a stronger response than an item that had paid off at $0.10.

So the concept of a diamond ring registering more highly than junk depends on the "eye of the beholder." The images in the study were associated with receiving a reward. So a guy might not associate a diamond ring with a rewaed, but might see a pile of junk and think of all the fun he could have by building neat stuff with it.

They talk about how this research may give insight into addiction, but I really think it's just a sorting mechanism. It's our way of training ourselves from experience how to pick the most likely target from the herd, sort the best fruits from the pile, etc., in the shortest possible time.

Re:Sorting Mechanism

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. There's an old saying that says 'one man's junk is another man's treasure.' And it's 100% true. Try walking through a flea market sometime. Needless to say, most /.ers might go 'meh' at the piles of jewelry and coins laying on the tables, but when we get the used computer parts vendor, our eyes immediately start sorting out the good stuff -- the parts we have use for -- and the junk -- the stuff we'd never touch. The price doesn't matter so much -- value is entirely subjective. For example, I might not find any use for that pile of old Token Ring adapters, but a guy who works on IBM mainframes might.

Whose brains, exactly?

[RichardJenkins]

So would all people find a Ferrari more stimulating (neurologically speaking) than a Nano or does it depend on culture?

If it is inbuilt and not a cultural difference perhaps it is possible to extrapolate an idealised design of an object people will perceive as 'valuable'. Could be useful for marketing purposes.

also works with...

[ctk76]

slashdot headlines... informative and interesting ones stimulate my brain far more than non-news events that just clutter the main page.

Not at all surprising.

[MindlessAutomata]

Humans pay more attention to more salient or novel stimuli. Something valuable, or more desired, is going to pop out.

In evolutionary terms, food sources that were more scarce--food 'worth' more, you can say--would definitely demand more attention that random vegetable matter, be it prey or fruits or so on. Same thing with water, or more attractive mates, or perhaps good sources of shelter, or so on.

The result of this experiment is entirely what you would expect.

Re:Dear God

[sveard]

You must have bought a subscription while drunk

I know I was

Re:How old of a brain?

[Dachannien]

To a young brain, anything that somebody else picks up instantly becomes immeasurably valuable.

Christmas is not a holiday season

[glitch23]

In this holiday season, I'm sure you've received gifts that excited your brain -- and others that you already want to resell on an auction site."

Actually I received gifts for Christmas, not this holiday season, you insensitive clod! We have holidays all year round. Why should Christmas be recast as an entire holiday season (gift giving is irrelevant as far as calling it a holiday season) in its own right, other than for being able to ignore its existence by not calling it by name?

Mod me down if you want but only if you have good reason to; disagreement is not a valid reason. If this comment wasn't geared toward Christmas then it shouldn't have been posted the day after but instead near Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, but no one ever pays attention to those holidays anyway, at least, the retailers don't pay attention to them when they advertise sales. Their excuse for using "holiday season" is to falsely state their inclusion of other holidays. I guess lies don't matter as long as you turn a profit. What's your excuse for using "holiday season"?

Re:Christmas is not a holiday season

[dltaylor]

The "holiday season" around the winter solstice and its attendant celebrations pre-date Jesus by thousands of years.

Christmas, unlike Easter, was a minor feast until the Roman Catholic Church decided to do something about all the former pagans who still carried on many of their former traditions, rather than contributing all of their wealth to the Church. Whether many of those older traditions included gift giving is hard to say since the Church's agents tended to destroy pagan writing and other artifacts (except for a very few Greek and Roman texts), so it is possible that that part of the holiday season tradition is mostly (not strictly) Christian. More likely, the whole thing was cooked up by the merchant classes as a way to just make more money and people fell for it.

Re:Christmas is not a holiday season

[Veggiesama]

Even fanatical Christians celebrate New Year's and Christmas Eve, so "holiday season" is an accurate term to describe a number of separate single days usually associated with revelry and gift-giving. Some people even use these days for traveling and vacationing.

Since my birthday also falls in December, and since we got off school for weeks at a time, as a child I assumed the whole month of December was one big holiday.

Notice: I didn't even have to talk about the winter solstice, Roman festivals, Jews, Africans, or the War on Christmas to dispel your arbitrary outcries.

Re:One person's "junk" is another person's treasur

[shadowbearer]

  What about objects that are "valuable" to people without having any monetary value? Art, music... while some people put monetary value on those objects, I doubt that most people do.

  As an example, I have a portrait of myself done by an artist in a bar some years ago; it was done freely and given freely, yet I consider it one of the most "valuable" objects I own. I also have a considerable rock collection - none of it collected for any monetary value, but just for my memories of the trip I collected it on. I daresay many people have similar.

  There are an awful lot of things the people own that have "sentimental" value - value only to themselves, for their own reasons. Putting a monetary value on objects has to have skewed their results considerably.

  I'm no psych researcher, this is just my opinion... which isn't worth much to anyone but me, honestly ;)

Thanks
SB

duh

[tabby]

So they are telling us that we are easily dis

Look! A sparkly thingy!

Re:One person's "junk" is another person's treasur

[shadowbearer]

  So what they are actually measuring is how social and cultural stimuli of one sort - money - makes changes in the brain.

  If the concept of value differs from individual to individual - which it does - then what they've measured is only one facet of that sort of stimuli.

  They could put additional images in there, like, say, beautiful members of the opposite (or same) sex, music, art, sunrises and sunsets, and other things that don't necessarily have monetary value; would the results be the same? Would people's brains be stimulated in the same way? I doubt it.

  What they are measuring, as far as I can tell, is how the monetary value of an object stimulates the brain - not anything as general as the concept of "value".

  If they are limiting their concept of "value" to monetary value, then their study really doesn't prove anything, other than that their subjects value money, which as you point out is unfortunately a predisposition of modern society.

  This probably has a lot of relevance to economists, but I fail to see how it has any relevance at all to how the brain works. A rat scurrying across the floor could be seen as valuable to someone who is starving to death. That rat doesn't have monetary value - it has survival value. Perhaps they should have expanded their study a bit.

SB