Praise as Good as Cash to Brain

The researchers created an artificial social hierarchy in which 72 participants played an interactive computer game for money.

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Participants were assigned a social status they were told was based on their playing skill. Researchers monitored their brain activity as the participants were shown pictures of inferior and superior players who were supposedly playing the game in different rooms.

Zink and colleagues saw increased activity in the brain's reward center when people won money or saw their social standing rise.

"The processing of hierarchical information seems to be hard-wired ... underscoring how important it is for us," Zink said in a statement.