clipped from: physorg.com   
The study sought to shed light on the neurological underpinnings of moral decision-making said Ming Hsu a fellow at the U. of I.s Beckman Institute and co-principal investigator. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer U. of I. News Bureau
Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share? A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity.
“Morality is a question of broad interest,” Hsu said. “What makes us moral, and how do we make tradeoffs in difficult situations?”
Every decision pitted efficiency (the total number of meals given) against equity (how much the burden of lost meals was shared among the children).
This dilemma illustrates the core issues of distributive justice, which involves tradeoffs between considerations that are at once compelling but which cannot be simultaneously satisfied,” the authors wrote.
The study was designed to address the psychological and neurological dimensions of two longstanding debates about distributive justice