Neural correlates of conventional and harm/welfare-based moral decision-making

Abstract

The degree to which social norms are processed by a unitary system or dissociable systems remains debated. Much research on children’s social-cognitive judgments has supported the distinction between “moral” (harm/welfare-based) and “conventional” norms. However, the extent to which these norms are processed by dissociable neural systems remains unclear. To address this issue, 23 healthy participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they rated the wrongness of harm/welfare-based and conventional transgression and neutral vignettes. Activation significantly greater than the neutral vignette baseline was observed in regions implicated in decision-making regions including rostral/ventral medial frontal, anterior insula and dorsomedial frontal cortices when evaluating both harm/welfare-based and social conventional transgressions. Greater activation when rating harm/welfare-based relative to social-conventional transgressions was seen through much of ACC and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. Greater activation was observed in superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left PCC, and temporal-parietal junction when rating social-conventional transgressions relative to harm/welfare-based transgressions. These data suggest that decisions regarding the wrongness of actions, irrespective of whether they involve care/harm-based or conventional transgressions, recruit regions generally implicated in affect-based decision-making. However, there is neural differentiation between care/harm based and conventional transgressions. This may reflect the particular importance of processing the intent of transgressors of conventional norms and perhaps the greater emotional content or salience of care/harm based transgressions.

<p>The Characteristics of Moral Judgment of Psychopaths: The Mediating Effect of the Deontological Tendency</p>

“…This relation is affected by the reaction of the amygdala to pain signals. 43 In short, a weak reaction ability to others' pain is correlated to a reduced sense of guilt and empathy and a rise in instrumental aggression. Functional magnetic resonance imaging research indicates that the amygdala is one of the core regions for moral judgment and is always in an active state in moral judgment tasks.…”

Origins and Development of Morality

“…Furthermore, Blair and his colleagues (White, Leong, Smetana, Nucci, & Blair, 2013) have recently used fMRI techniques to demonstrate both similarities and differences in the brain regions activated when normal, healthy adults made judgments about moral (welfare and harm-based) and conventional transgressions. Blair et al (2013) observed increased neural activation in the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex when adults rated harm-based transgressions as compared to conventional transgressions, but there was also activation in several regions in the frontal cortex when adults processed both types of transgressions. These findings provide interesting new evidence regarding distinctions between morality and social convention, specifically that judgments about morality involve both emotion and cognition.…”

Social knowledge and social reasoning abilities in a neurotypical population and in children with Down syndrome

“…Moral transgressions are generally judged by neurotypical (NT) children as more serious and less permissible than conventional transgressions [ 4 , 14 ]. A recent neuroimaging study revealed the existence of a core set of regions that processes social rules in general comprising judgments of conventional and moral rules and that reflects valence-based decision-making [ 15 ]. However, judgments of the two types of social rules also involved differential responsiveness of cerebral areas, supporting the theoretical distinction between moral and conventional rules.…”