I call shenanigans
around lunchtime on Thursday, the 14th of June 2007 by Chad
I call shenanigans on this “study”!
Paying taxes feels good, say researchers.The surprising discovery, based on brain scans, can also predict which people are most likely to donate cash to charity.
Bill Harbaugh at the University of Oregon in Eugene, US, and colleagues gave 19 female university students $100, and told them some of this money would have to go towards taxes.
Each volunteer then read a series of 60 separate taxation scenarios involving $0 to $45 in taxes, knowing that one of the scenarios would be selected at random and the related amount be subtracted from their $100.
Secret pleasureAs the participants viewed the tax scenarios, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Surprisingly, whenever the students read the taxation scenarios, scientists saw a spike in activity within two of the brain’s reward centres – the nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus.
Harbaugh says that people probably like paying taxes more than they admit. He believes the results of his new study help explain the widespread compliance with tax laws. “We like to complain about it, but based on what we do, we are not as opposed to it as we like to say,” Harbaugh says.
So I want to know: Was my taxes involved in paying for this research!!! Especially on a day like today when I have to cut a big frickin’ check to the feds for quarterly estimated taxes… And I guarantee, I don’t like it one bit!
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June 14th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
yup i can confirm that chad hates paying this excessive sums, he gets cranky.
now the Females they chose, gotta wonder (how old, how dim, etc) .. and why did they not try men too? but seriously why did they choose just women?
June 15th, 2007 at 8:31 am
It’s not the paying of taxes that is vexing, it’s the amount paid. If I knew before filing that my taxes would be somewhere between $0 and $45, I’d be pretty happy about paying them too.