All people have personal values they hold dear, principles they live by. Granted, some of these may have shaky foundations, but there are others that people commit to upholding throughout their lives. According to a new study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, people process these sacred values differently from those they can more easily give up. They provoke a different kind of reaction from the brain, activating the area associated with "right or wrong" thought processes.

In an experiment that made use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs), researchers observed the way people process different thoughts. The 32 American adults recruited for the study were shown statements like "You support gay marriage" or "You are a tea drinker." Each statement came in pairs, with one being the complete opposite of the original statement. The volunteers were then prompted to choose one option. In the next leg of the experiment, the participants were given the chance to earn as much as $100 per statement if they agreed to sign a document that meant they were retracting their earlier choices.

"If a person refused to take money to change a statement, then we considered that value to be personally sacred to them. But if they took money, then we considered that they had low integrity for that statement and that it wasn't sacred," explained Gregory Berns, director at the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study.

As the study progressed, researchers were able to discover that, when the participants started making decisions based on the prospect of getting rewarded, their brains didn’t process the information any differently. Only those values they could not be swayed, persuaded, or bribed to change prompted a different reaction in the participants. To be more specific, results showed activation in the neural systems associated with evaluating right and wrong things as well as semantic rule retrieval.

But how does this study impact us? Berns explains that as cultures change, so will our values, and this will be reflected in the way our brains process the values. He also says that major issues, such as those in women's reproductive rights and gay marriage or conflicts in politics or religion, will involve a biological factor, positing that cultural neuroscience will help reveal this element.

For more on values, check out these articles:

• New Study: World Is Becoming More Corrupt + 5 Ways to Raise Children with Integrity
• Survey Shows Charity Is Natural to Filipinos + 5 Ways to Teach Your Children to be Giving

(Photo by Jamie87 via sxc.hu)