14 DAY TRIAL // Greed is a trait that can be found across our species. The recent SEC lawsuit and the Congressional hearings into the individuals running the corporation Goldman Sachs are just a few examples of this human behavior. While it's true that these people took greed to new extremes, in an environment that promotes exactly this type of action, the phenomenon is not by far contained to large companies and high-up individuals, but affects every single one of us, like a universal drive, LiveScience reports.
This drive is fueled by a simple chemical mechanism in the brain. As people collect more and more objects, food, resources, fame and material wealth, their cortices begin producing hormones associated with pleasure. These chemicals in turn act like drugs, causing what could best be defined as an addiction. The natural consequence of this is for these individuals to continue to accumulate the same things that give them pleasure, often at the expense of others.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Andrew Lo is an expert in studying the relationships that develop between the fields of economics and neuroscience. He explains that greed oftentimes occurs when this universal drive overwhelms the social constraints that society places on groups. “When we succeed, we feel good. When we gather resources, we feel good. And because we feel good, we want more,” the expert told Life’s Little Mysteries. He says that this idea can be translated directly into the corporate environment, where the last decade saw an aggressive promotion of the idea that CEOs need to earn vast sums of money for their companies and themselves.
One of the most worrying things about corporate greed is the fact that company heads do not necessarily view the millions of dollars they make a year as something to be spent. In other words, money is dissociated from its original value, and only serves as a reference point in measuring success. The numbers of zeros on a paycheck thus becomes a method for a CEO to compare his or her success to that of peers, explains Santa Clara University in California professor of finance, Hersh Shefrin.
“Corporate greed is only different in terms of the stakes. To a lot of people, it seems different because they are already making so much money. But their goals aren't just monetary, it’s about social achievement. When the only way to achieve those aspirations is to cross an ethical or legal line, you do something that is distinctly unsavory,” the expert adds.