Impaired Decoding of Fear and Disgust Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment in Alcohol-Dependent Individuals

Carmona-Perera, Martina; Clark, Luke; Young, Liane; Pérez-Garcı́a, Miguel; Verdejo-García, Antonio

doi:10.1111/acer.12245

Cited by 33 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…As hypothesized, we identified an alcohol‐related deficit in accuracy on a 2‐choice emotion discrimination. Also consistent with predictions and published work (e.g., Carmona‐Perera et al., ; Frigerio et al., ; Kornreich et al., ; Quaglino et al., ; Salloum et al., but see Maurage et al., ,; Kornreich et al., ,), we found some support for the prediction that negative emotions are more sensitive to alcohol effects than are positive emotions. Interestingly, we observed an effect largely limited to anger processing, a finding consistent with outcomes of a recent meta‐analysis (Bora and Zorlu, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Neurophysiological and Interpersonal Correlates of Emotional Face Processing in Alcohol Use Disorder

Hoffman

Lewis

Nixon

2019

Alcoholism Clin & Exp Res

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Background: A growing literature suggests deficient emotional facial expression (EFE) processing among recently abstinent individuals with alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Further investigation is needed to clarify valence-related discrepancies and elucidate neural and psychosocial correlates. We examined neurobehavioral indices of EFE processing and interpersonal problems in treatment seekers with AUDs and healthy community controls (CCs).Methods: Thirty-four individuals with AUDs and 39 CCs completed an emotion judgment task (EJT), requiring discrimination between happy, angry, and sad EFEs. A second task requiring discrimination of male and female faces with neutral expressions served as the control task (i.e., sex judgment task, SJT). Neurophysiological (i.e., N170 and P3) and behavioral measures were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models (GLMM). Interpersonal problems were assessed with the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-64 (IIP-64). The relationship of IIP-64 and EJT performance was investigated via within-group correlations.Results: Analysis of the SJT revealed no group differences in behavioral measures, N170 amplitude, or P3 latency. P3 amplitudes, however, were significantly lower in the AUD group. For the EJT, initial observations of group differences in P3 amplitude were accounted for by differences in the control task. Behavioral analyses indicated that the AUD group was significantly less accurate than the CC group. Hypothesis-driven analyses using GLMM-estimated group differences indicated that anger processing was affected to a greater degree than were other emotions. Significant EJT/IIP-64 correlations were observed for anger processing within the AUD group and were confined to IIP-64 subscales with relatively high ratings on the affiliation dimension.Conclusions: Findings provide partial support for an emotion-specific processing deficit in persons with AUDs. Anger processing was more robustly affected than other emotions and was associated with interpersonal problems characterized by being overly needy, nonassertive, and overly accommodating. Results extend prior reports and reinforce the need for comprehensive study of emotion processing and its real-world implications.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Neurophysiological and Interpersonal Correlates of Emotional Face Processing in Alcohol Use Disorder

Hoffman

Lewis

Nixon

2019

Alcoholism Clin & Exp Res

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“…In agreement with previous findings, we showed that decision-making in healthy populations is sensitive to the impact of moral vs. non-moral content scenarios (Moll et al, 2001; Harenski and Hamann, 2006; Tassy et al, 2013; Van Bavel et al, 2013), and to the impact of personal vs. impersonal involvement within these moral scenarios (Greene et al, 2001, 2004; Moretto et al, 2010; Koenigs et al, 2007; Carmona-Perera et al, 2013a). Difficulty of judgment may also contribute to describe the emotional weight attached to these choices.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…By contrast, deontological choices are preferentially supported by aversive emotional processing (Greene et al, 2001, 2004; Koenigs et al, 2007; Moretto et al, 2010; Carmona-Perera et al, 2013a,b). Recent studies have demonstrated that transient manipulation of specific emotions can bias moral decision-making toward utilitarian or deontological choices in response to moral dilemmas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Valence of emotions and moral decision-making: increased pleasantness to pleasant images and decreased unpleasantness to unpleasant images are associated with utilitarian choices in healthy adults

Carmona-Perera¹,

Martí‐García²,

Pérez-Garcı́a³

et al. 2013

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Moral decision-making is a key asset for humans’ integration in social contexts, and the way we decide about moral issues seems to be strongly influenced by emotions. For example, individuals with deficits in emotional processing tend to deliver more utilitarian choices (accepting an emotionally aversive action in favor of communitarian well-being). However, little is known about the association between emotional experience and moral-related patterns of choice. We investigated whether subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli, in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance, is associated with moral decision-making in 95 healthy adults. They answered to a set of moral and non-moral dilemmas and assessed emotional experience in valence, arousal and dominance dimensions in response to neutral, pleasant, unpleasant non-moral, and unpleasant moral pictures. Results showed significant correlations between less unpleasantness to negative stimuli, more pleasantness to positive stimuli and higher proportion of utilitarian choices. We also found a positive association between higher arousal ratings to negative moral laden pictures and more utilitarian choices. Low dominance was associated with greater perceived difficulty over moral judgment. These behavioral results are in fitting with the proposed role of emotional experience in moral choice.

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“…Furthermore, sometimes utilitarianism is operationalized with a non-standardized set of dilemmas which are only used once in a single study (e.g. refs 9 , 41 and 50 ), making it challenging to compare results produced by different studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Moral Disgust Do Not Predict Utilitarian Judgments, Sexual and Pathogen Disgust Do

Laakasuo

Sundvall

Drosinou

2017

Sci Rep

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The role of emotional disgust and disgust sensitivity in moral judgment and decision-making has been debated intensively for over 20 years. Until very recently, there were two main evolutionary narratives for this rather puzzling association. One of the models suggest that it was developed through some form of group selection mechanism, where the internal norms of the groups were acting as pathogen safety mechanisms. Another model suggested that these mechanisms were developed through hygiene norms, which were piggybacking on pathogen disgust mechanisms. In this study we present another alternative, namely that this mechanism might have evolved through sexual disgust sensitivity. We note that though the role of disgust in moral judgment has been questioned recently, few studies have taken disgust sensitivity to account. We present data from a large sample (N = 1300) where we analyzed the associations between The Three Domain Disgust Scale and the most commonly used 12 moral dilemmas measuring utilitarian/deontological preferences with Structural Equation Modeling. Our results indicate that of the three domains of disgust, only sexual disgust is associated with more deontological moral preferences. We also found that pathogen disgust was associated with more utilitarian preferences. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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Impaired Decoding of Fear and Disgust Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment in Alcohol-Dependent Individuals

Cited by 33 publications

References 48 publications

Neurophysiological and Interpersonal Correlates of Emotional Face Processing in Alcohol Use Disorder

Neurophysiological and Interpersonal Correlates of Emotional Face Processing in Alcohol Use Disorder

Valence of emotions and moral decision-making: increased pleasantness to pleasant images and decreased unpleasantness to unpleasant images are associated with utilitarian choices in healthy adults

Individual Differences in Moral Disgust Do Not Predict Utilitarian Judgments, Sexual and Pathogen Disgust Do

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