An interest in such issues kept the study subjects in the scanner, despite the pain of grappling with difficult choices, Hsu said. “Quite a few came out saying: ‘This is the worst experiment I’ve ever been in. I never want to do anything like this again!’ ”

Perhaps some of the difficulty, was a scenario that presented a reality as a hypothetical.
While the test was for the sake of neurologists, and the questions may have prompted some noble answers, I can imagine the whole exercise making those taking the test feel powerless, and of course, starvation, and poverty were presented in a manner, which made them much harder to ignore.