Neural correlations of the influence of self‐relevance on moral decision‐making involving a trade‐off between harm and reward

Abstract

Although economists have suggested that humans generally prioritize maximizing their own self-interest rather than others' when distributing rewards, recent psychological studies have shown that people are hyperaltruistic when allocating physical harm to themselves and others during moral decision-making. However, little is known about how the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying self-relevance modulate this behavioral tendency under different degrees of physical harm. This study adopted a moral decision-making task to investigate behavioral and neural processes during moral decision-making involving different levels of self-relevance and physical harm. Event-related potentials were measured while participants made trade-offs of different monetary gains for themselves against painful electric shocks experienced by the receivers (self, friend, or stranger). These results suggest that early anterior N1, indexing fast and automatic moral intuitional process, decreased during the strong conflict trade-off decisions involving strong painful electric shocks and much monetary gains. Lower self-relevance enhanced the aversive experience and increased the mental cost of resolving moral conflict, reflected by a larger P260-LPP (300-450 ms) effect during weaker conflict decisions toward strangers than themselves and friends. However, this effect was weaker during strong conflict decisions. When making decisions about whether to shock others to gain money for themselves, participants were hyperaltruistic, foregoing greater self-interest to restrain harm directed toward strangers than themselves or friends. These findings shed light on the neural basis of the tension between egoistic and altruistic tendencies during moral decision-making integrating benefits and harms. K E Y W O R D S cognitive reasoning process, ERPs, moral decision-making, moral emotional process, moral intuitional process, self-relevance 2 of 15 | ZHAN et Al. XJK17BXL002), the Foundation of Social Science Evaluation Committee of Hunan province (XSP19YBZ082, XSP20YBZ030), and the Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province.

Me first: Neural representations of fairness during three-party interactions

“…Importantly, this P260 response is specifically correlated with egoistic empathic dispositions (i.e., personal distress), but not altruistic empathic dispositions (i.e., empathic concern), suggesting that self-relevance may play an important role at this early stage of information processing (Sarlo et al, 2014). In fact, posterior scalp voltages during the same time period distinguish between decisions on behalf of strangers compared to decisions on behalf of a close friend or oneself (Zhan et al, 2020). However, it is not currently known how selfinterest and concern for others impact this stage of information processing when both motivations are directly relevant to a making a decision.…”

Seeking reputation or money? The influence of sociality mental modes on sense of agency in social contexts

“…Money is essential in life, but its value should not be overemphasized. It is helpful to think rationally about the role of money in life (Zhan et al, 2020). Eye gaze also enhances people's prosocial motivation, and social rejection enhances people's need for belonging, so they seek more signals related…”

The effects of ritual and self‐control resources depletion on deceptive behavior: Evidence from behavioral and ERPs studies

“…We speculated that individuals with depleted self-control resources would invest more cognitive or attentional resources into managing deceptive ideas after performing a ritual, thus reducing their deceptive behaviors. According to previous ERP studies of moral conflict involving cognitive or attentional resources and cognitive efforts (Bian et al, 2021;Foti et al, 2010;Hajcak et al, 2013;Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006;Hajcak & Olvet, 2008;Johnstone et al, 2009;Mecklinger et al, 2009;Weinberg & Hajcak, 2011;Zhan et al, 2020), there are two main ERP components related to such moral processing.…”

“…The first component is the central‐parietal P2, which is a positive wave peaking around 200–300 ms after stimulus onset that has been suggested to reflect the cognitive resources required for a task and the enhanced selective attention triggered by a task‐related stimulus (Bian et al, 2021; Johnstone et al, 2009; Mecklinger et al, 2009; Zhan et al, 2020). Enhanced P2 was generally considered to be associated with the degree of attention allocated to tasks (Mecklinger et al, 2009).…”

“…Evidence from studies of children with attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder also showed reduced P2 in an attention selection task relative to a control group (Johnstone et al, 2009). Participants recruited more attentional resources and cognitive efforts to weigh whether to deliver the painful electric shocks to strangers than regarding themselves or their friends, reflected in an enhanced P2 effect in the trade‐off decisions toward strangers (Zhan et al, 2020). A recent study has revealed that individuals who diet must allocate more cognitive resources to focus on a task; this is manifested by an increase in P2 amplitude (Bian et al, 2021).…”