Oddly Perhaps, Caring About Others Can Make You More Depressed

Well, if you think about it…

Here’s a new article entitled “Nice Brains Finish Last.” Let’s go ahead and set up a few concepts from within it. First we need to define out a few groups:

According to the model of “social value orientation,” humans can be placed into three rough categories, based on their reactions to economic inequity. 60% of people are pro-socials, meaning they prefer resources to be distributed equally among everyone. 30% are individualists, meaning they are primarily concerned with maximizing their own resources. Roughly 10% are competitive; to them, the most important outcome is that they have more than other people.

That’s kinda heartening that 6 in 10 people aren’t complete assholes, right? Even if they know equal distribution of resources isn’t really possible, at least they prefer that idea. Seems nice.

But now we come to a problem:

Haruno’s group found that having a prosocial…