American Psycho... logy

I recently read an article that looked to understand how people judged a piece of art or their preference in expensive wine. The conclusion was that people's perceptions and opinions of things are complicated, and driven by a number of factors such as, the taste, aesthetic qualities, and monetary value of something. In experiments done on how people preferred expensive wine over cheaper wine and how people preferred a real Rembrandt over a fake Rembrandt, a common reaction was increased blood flow to the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain. The article describes this part of the brain as focusing on monetary gain, pleasure and perceptions of reward.

I found it to be extremely interesting that there was a small piece of our brain which helped us prefer something simply on the basis of its associated value. This sort of brain activity (I assume) extends far outside of wines and paintings, and can be applied to things like clothing labels, foods, cigars and the like.

Now that their is a scientific understanding to how we incorporate financial worth in judging something, I wonder how we can apply that knowledge outside of psychology. More specifically, I am curious of the differences in development in specific part of the brain between cultures, communities, genders, races, occupations, socio-economic classes, ages, nationalities, political understandings etc etc.

It would be interesting to discover that an American has a more defined and larger orbitofrontal cortex than a European might. Or that a middle class woman has a less pronounced orbitofrontal cortex than a upper class man does. The variables and circumstances to this kind of experimentation are endless.

Fascinating...

JW