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Why do people pirate? A neuroimaging investigation
Robert Eres1, Winnifred R Louis2, Pascal Molenberghs1
1a School of Psychological Sciences and Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences , Monash University , Melbourne , Australia.
Social Neuroscience
|May 10, 2016
Summary
People are more willing to steal intangible items, like digital information, than tangible goods. This difference in willingness may stem from how our brains represent these items and process moral decisions.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroeconomics
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Widespread online information piracy contrasts with reluctance to steal physical goods.
- Existing research lacks clear explanations for differential willingness to steal tangible versus intangible items.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the psychological and neural differences underlying the theft of tangible versus intangible items.
- To understand why individuals exhibit lower reservations when pirating information compared to stealing physical objects.
Main Methods:
- Utilized questionnaires to assess willingness to steal tangible and intangible goods across various conditions (Study 1).
- Employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural correlates of representing and stealing items (Studies 2a and 2b).
Main Results:
- Participants reported higher willingness to steal intangible items than tangible items.
- fMRI data revealed greater activation in object imagination networks for intangible items, suggesting representation difficulties.
- Stealing tangible items, compared to intangible, elicited greater activation in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, associated with moral processing.
Conclusions:
- Differential neural representation of tangible and intangible items contributes to the prevalence of intangible theft.
- Distinct neural responses during moral decision-making for tangible versus intangible theft highlight key differences in cognitive processing.
