NeuroWelfare in Cash Transfers Measures (CTs): Do Welfare Cash Transfers Show Different Brain Activity and Improve Equality?

ongoing

NeuroWelfare in Cash Transfers Measures (CTs): Do Welfare Cash Transfers Show Different Brain Activity and Improve Equality? (NW) aims to pave the way for the interdisciplinary study of the brain functioning and the socio-cognitive impact on self and social perception in the experience of the two main paradigmatic cash transfer schemes: conditioned CTs (CCTs) and unconditioned CTs (UCTs). NW’s idea is born from my PhD effort, in which I studied a Basic Income pilot project, observing a mindset shift in the re-distributive beliefs and attitudes of community’ financiers, showing me the need for a neurophysiological understanding of CTs phenomena. NW’s achievability has been improved from the previous project’s application in its methodological operationalization, better defining the outcomes’ measurability and scalability to isolate effects of CTs’ on the brain. The assessment of social protection measures is usually done by looking at the behaviors of the welfare recipients. In addition, social neuroscience efforts are frequently focused on mental manifestations observed in the laboratory environments. What if the modern techniques to investigate brain activity would be applied to healthy individuals perceiving income support in their social environment? By utilizing an interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach, I pursue to combine the knowledge and the methodology of human sciences with those of social neurosciences, to detect and measure the effect of CTs’ on brain from three empirical intertwined perspectives: (1) neurophysiological, (2) cognitive and (3) interactional.I’ll train my interdisciplinary skills thanks to experienced supervisors in Iscte-CVTT and the University of Turin. NW tackles the complexity of redistribution social phenomena, advancing my career progress in the brand-new field of “Neurosociology”.