HHS HealthBeat (May 18, 2010)

Who needs money?

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Even for competitive people who really like money, money might not be everything. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis saw signs of that in brain scans of 31 people who took tests to see how competitive they were before they played word games. Sometimes, they could win small money prizes by playing; other times, there was no prize.

The researchers looked for brain signals that indicated the interest of money-driven competitive types would slacken when there was no money. But Koji Jimura says the competitors stayed just as excited:

"The effect of rewarding performance can carry over even to nonrewarded events." (5 seconds)

The study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011