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Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values.They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness,which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors,even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocalfairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, whereplayers often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers.Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known abouthow the human brain limits the impact of selfish motives andimplements fair behavior. Here we show that disruption of theright, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulationsubstantially reduces subjects' willingness to reject theirpartners' intentionally unfair offers, which suggests that subjectsare less able to resist the economic temptation to accept theseoffers. Importantly, however, subjects still judge such offersas very unfair, which indicates that the right DLPFC plays akey role in the implementation of fairness-related behaviors.
1 Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland. 2 Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. 3 Collegium Helveticum, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. 4 Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA 02115, USA. 5 PET Center, Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, University Hospital, 8091 Zurich, Switzerland.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dknoch{at}iew.unizh.ch; efehr{at}iew.unizh.ch
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