Previous research has revealed that people value morality as a more important person characteristic than competence. In this study, we tested whether people adjust their less explicit behavior more to moral than competence values. Participants performed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that was either framed as a test of their morality or as a test of their competence. The behavioral results revealed a smaller IAT effect (i.e. a weaker negative implicit bias toward Muslims) in the morality condition than in the competence condition. Moreover, event-related potentials indicated increased social categorization of faces (as indexed by the N1 and P150) and enhanced conflict- and error monitoring (N450 and error-related negativity) in the morality condition compared to the competence condition. These findings indicate that an emphasis on morality can increase attentional and motivational processes that help to improve people's task performance.

In a Dutch interview in 2007, a journalist questioned the former CEO of ABN AMRO for receiving 26 million euros while the bank was taken over by a consortium bank. In the video of this interview, it can be observed that the former CEO had a very defensive response when being accused of acting disloyally towards his former colleagues at ABN. Moreover, he repeatedly referred to agreements that had been made about these types of payments in the financial world during a takeover. According to his group, receiving that much money did not correspond to violating any norms. However, the media and the general public saw this as a moral scandal. In the current article, we will present research findings indicating that a more successful strategy for the journalist (being an outsider) might have been to criticize the former CEO's competencies as a banker, rather than questioning his integrity. This might have stimulated a more open-minded discussion on how things can be changed in the future, rather than the defensive responses from the former CEO dominating the conversation. | Criticism from an ingroup versus outgroup sourceThe degree of the banker's defensive reaction might have been influenced by the journalist not being a banker himself. Whereas criticism from our ingroups (e.g., fellow bankers; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) is seen as helpful for the self and the ingroup, criticism from outgroups (e.g.,

Neurobiological and behavioral findings suggest that the development of delinquent behavior is associated with atypical social-affective processing. However, to date, no study has examined neural processes associated with social interactions in severely antisocial adolescents. In this study we investigated the behavioral and neural processes underlying social interactions of juvenile delinquents and a matched control group. Participants played the mini-Ultimatum Game as a responder while in the MRI scanner. Participants rejected unfair offers significantly less when the other player had 'no alternative' compared with a 'fair' alternative, suggesting that they took the intentions of the other player into account. However, this effect was reduced in the juvenile delinquents. The neuroimaging results revealed that juvenile delinquents showed less activation in the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). However, the groups showed similar activation levels in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the right anterior insula (AI) when norms were violated. These results indicate that juvenile delinquents with severe antisocial behavior process norm violations adequately, but may have difficulties with attending spontaneously to relevant features of the social context during interactions.