Norihiro Sadato of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), Aichi, Japan, and colleagues found that making money and making a reputation engage much of the same reward circuitry in the brain – a finding that they say yields insight into what drives complex social behaviors.

“By directly contrasting the brain activities of the same subjects in relation to the delivery of social and monetary rewards, our results clearly show that social approval shares the same neural basis as monetary rewards, thus providing strong support for the idea of a ‘common neural currency’ of reward,” concluded the researchers.

They wrote that their findings “indicate that the social reward of a good reputation should be incorporated into the neural model of human decision making in a similar manner to monetary rewards.” Thus, they wrote, experiments on decision making that use money-related games need to take into account that the subjects are exchanging more than money; they are also dealing in approval and reputation.

“Our findings indicate that the social reward of a good reputation in the eyes of others is processed in an anatomically and functionally similar manner to monetary rewards, and these results represent an essential step toward a complete neural understanding of human social behaviors,” concluded Sadato and colleagues.
In the end, it appears that money AND social approval go hand in hand. This explains why people are often happier in lower paying jobs with approving management than they are in higher paying jobs where nobody notices or where customers or management constantly berate or complain.

Now let’s personalize this a little. What might happen IN YOU if you rewarded yourself with self approval now and then? Especially, approving of the job your body is doing. Might your body enjoy the job a bit more? And how does one go about approving of their body’s job?

What do you think might happen to your body if when you thought about a part of it you smiled – you know, moved your mouth in that plate-shaped way and coupled the movement with a thought of “you are SO cool!”

Your body parts work for pay, too. Maybe it’s time to consider payments other than food and sex.