Back in March, in a post about cooperating with and helping others, I ended with this:

So I helped make things work better. Here was my interesting physical reaction. I actually felt a part of my brain feel warm and fuzzy. It’s hard to describe, but it was a pleasurable feeling and it’s one I’ve often had in social situations where I see a Pareto-improving move I can make and I make it.

My question: Have any of you had similar experience where you help make things better for others with no pecuniary reward and no expectation of such a reward, and then had that warm fuzzy feeling in your brain?

Or am I just weird?

I was reading Edward P. Stringham’s Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life, this morning–it’s excellent, by the way–and I came across the following:

The MRIs showed that certain parts of the brain light up when subjects cooperate with people but not when they interact with computers.

So it does appear that there’s some scientific corroboration for my “warm fuzzies.”