Why we stick to our own class – it's a meeting of minds

Researchers found that a part of our brain that controls motivation and emotion becomes more active when we meet people "like us".

The findings seem to turn on their head the idea that we are more excited about meeting people above our station and that we aspire to a higher class.

Dr Caroline Zink, at National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland, assessed the socioeconomic status of 23 individuals and then showed them information about someone of relatively higher, lower or similar social standing.

Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner they measured the activity in an area of the central brain known as the ventral striatum.

This area is known to be involved in deciding what motivates us and what stirs our emotions.

The researchers found that the closer the person we were looking at was to our own standing, the more area of the brain lit up with activity.

That means the brains of high social status people lit up when meeting other high social class individuals, and lower status individuals' brains lit up when they met others from the same background

The findings in humans are largely consistent with earlier observations in monkeys.

Researchers had shown that monkeys direct their attention to others of higher or lower status depending on their own position in the troop.

"The way we interact with and behave around other people is often determined by their social status relative to our own, and therefore information regarding social status is very valuable to us," said Dr Zink.

However Dr Zink said that as our social status changes, so would the people we associate with.

"As humans, we have the capacity to assess our surroundings and context to determine appropriate feelings and behaviour," Dr Zink said.

Read more at The Telegraph