Moral competence and brain connectivity: A resting-state fMRI study

Jung, Wi Hoon; Prehn, Kristin; Fang, Zhuo; Korczykowski, Marc; Kable, Joseph W.; Rao, Hengyi; Robertson, Diana C.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.07.045

Cited by 25 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…In addition to the moral decision task, we also analyzed restingstate fMRI activity from the same younger and older participants. To our knowledge, very few studies have assessed the link between RSFC and morality (Jung et al, 2016), and here, we also provide a novel evaluation of age group differences in such a relationship. Our approach was guided by previous work demonstrating that the functional integration of the DN with the executive and attention networks observed in OAs is associated with their greater reliance on prior knowledge and autobiographical experience during goaldirected cognition (Brashier et al, 2017;Spreng et al, 2018;.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in intuitive moral decision-making: Associations with inter-network neural connectivity.

Huang¹,

Faul²,

Sevinc³

et al. 2021

Psychology and Aging

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Positions of power involving moral decision-making are often held by older adults (OAs). However, little is known about age differences in moral decision-making and the intrinsic organization of the aging brain. In this study, younger adults (YAs; n = 117, M age = 22.11) and OAs (n = 82, M age = 67.54) made decisions in hypothetical moral dilemmas and completed resting-state multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. Relative to YAs, OAs were more likely to endorse deontological decisions (i.e., decisions based on adherence to a moral principle or duty), but only when the choice was immediately compelling or intuitive. By contrast, there was no difference between YAs and OAs in utilitarian decisions (i.e., decisions aimed at maximizing collective well-being) when the utilitarian choice was intuitive. Enhanced connections between the posterior medial core of the default network (pmDN) and the dorsal attention network, and overall reduced segregation of pmDN from the rest of the brain, were associated with this increased deontological-intuitive moral decision-making style in OAs. The present study contributes to our understanding of age differences in decision-making styles by taking into account the intuitiveness of the moral choice, and it offers further insights as to how age differences in intrinsic brain connectivity relate to these distinct moral decision-making styles in YAs and OAs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in intuitive moral decision-making: Associations with inter-network neural connectivity.

Huang¹,

Faul²,

Sevinc³

et al. 2021

Psychology and Aging

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“…Sixty-four participants (35 males, average age = 27.11 ± 1.64) were involved in this study. These participants were selected from an overall sample of 730 students enrolled in a two-year Master of Business Administration (MBA) program based on their moral reasoning ability and are the same as those in our previous studies 5 , 69 . All subjects completed an online version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2; refs 2 , 63 ) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R; ref.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased ventral striatal activity at rest and during task

Fang

Jung

Korczykowski

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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People vary considerably in moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg’s theory, individuals who reach the highest level of post-conventional moral reasoning judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals rather than self-interest or adherence to laws and rules. Recent research has suggested the involvement of the brain’s frontostriatal reward system in moral judgments and prosocial behaviors. However, it remains unknown whether moral reasoning level is associated with differences in reward system function. Here, we combined arterial spin labeling perfusion and blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging and measured frontostriatal reward system activity both at rest and during a sequential risky decision making task in a sample of 64 participants at different levels of moral reasoning. Compared to individuals at the pre-conventional and conventional level of moral reasoning, post-conventional individuals showed increased resting cerebral blood flow in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral blood flow in these brain regions correlated with the degree of post-conventional thinking across groups. Post-conventional individuals also showed greater task-induced activation in the ventral striatum during risky decision making. These findings suggest that high-level post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased activity in the brain’s frontostriatal system, regardless of task-dependent or task-independent states.

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“…For example, the worker's self-control (e.g., preparing the BT jobs in advance) and self-monitoring (e.g., paying attention to feedback) behaviors were interpreted as higher morality; conversely, counter-productive behaviors for less morality (e.g., using mobile phones). A more recent development in moral decision-making (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging studies; Garrigan et al, 2016;Jung et al, 2016) might suggest a future research direction, and to address the limitation of this article with respect to measuring the baseline of morality.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Goldilocks conditions for workplace gamification: how narrative persuasion helps manufacturing workers create self-directed behaviors

Seo

Fels

Kang

et al. 2020

Human–Computer Interaction

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The paradox of the optimal flow experience (Engeser & Baumann, 2016) also makes gamification harder in reality. For instance, in Disneyland gamification, the real-time productivity of each employee was displayed on the leaderboards, and it became clear that this unexpectedly enforced them to compete with each other and destroyed their collaborative culture (Lopez, 2011). Omnicare, an American pharmacy and healthcare company, introduced a gamified customer relations system to reduce response time, but its employees felt very uncomfortable with covert monitoring of their performance, resulting in a higher turnover rate and accordingly lower customer satisfaction (Liu et al., 2017). Callois ( 2001) thus claimed gamified systems are too hot when they provide only a hedonic experience, or too cold when they exploit only productive behaviors, which suggests an appropriate gamification strategy needs to set the right balance for both the employers and employees. The focus of this study is to figure out the "Goldilocks" gamification conditions, in particular, for the manufacturing workers at Hyundai Motor Company (HMC).Recent research sheds light on workplace gamification (Funk et al., 2015;Korn, 2012;Warmelink et al., 2018a), but manufacturing workers are still reluctant to fully adopt the gamified system (Kim, 2018). The reason behind this is previous workplace gamification forced workers to focus exclusively on productivity performance (e.g., accuracy, task completion time) through reward systems (e.g., points, ranks). These pseudo-performance measurements eventually provoke the "give-and-take" feeling in the worker's mindset of what they had acted on (Kohn, 1999;Kramlinger & Huberty, 1990;Nicholson, 2015), so organizational moral problems would follow accordingly (Cable et al., 2013). Janakiraman et al. (1992) maintained, in management studies, that such performance-focused evaluation cannot fully assess the worker's effort level, in the sense that as the workers shift their efforts from a subset of tasks which they consider useful and constructive to a subset that they think "gives" or "returns" the highest benefits of being useful and constructive (i.e., subjectively more valuable; Baker, 1992;Prendergast, 1999). A well-known consequence of this approach is for the worker to be often hooked into off-the-job opportunities when not evaluated or observed (e.g., the Hawthorne effect; Stand, 2000).In this sense, many gamification studies (Deterding, 2012;Mekler et al., 2017) claimed that intrinsic motivators should be included. However, the conventional gamification approach has simply considered this by providing more enjoyable and exciting gaming experiences, believing that the game-play itself might serve for promoting one's intrinsic motivation to play. Unfortunately, the hedonic adaptation effect (i.e., the tendency for humans to quickly return to a relatively habitual level of happiness despite positive or negative experiences; Diener et al., 2009) thwarts this game-play motivation from lasting longer. Some intrin...

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Moral competence and brain connectivity: A resting-state fMRI study

Cited by 25 publications

References 60 publications

Age differences in intuitive moral decision-making: Associations with inter-network neural connectivity.

Age differences in intuitive moral decision-making: Associations with inter-network neural connectivity.

Post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased ventral striatal activity at rest and during task

Goldilocks conditions for workplace gamification: how narrative persuasion helps manufacturing workers create self-directed behaviors

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