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Persons have different value preferences. Neuroimaging studies where value-based decisions in actual conflict situations were investigated suggest an important role of prefrontal and cingulate brain regions. General preferences, however, reflect a superordinate moral concept independent of actual situations as proposed in psychological and socioeconomic research. Here, the specific brain response would be influenced by abstract value systems and moral concepts. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying such responses are largely unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a forced-choice paradigm on word pairs representing abstract values, we show that the brain handles such decisions depending on the person's superordinate moral concept. Persons with a predominant collectivistic (altruistic) value system applied a “balancing and weighing” strategy, recruiting brain regions of rostral inferior and intraparietal, and midcingulate and frontal cortex. Conversely, subjects with mainly individualistic (egocentric) value preferences applied a “fight-and-flight” strategy by recruiting the left amygdala. Finally, if subjects experience a value conflict when rejecting an alternative congruent to their own predominant value preference, comparable brain regions are activated as found in actual moral dilemma situations, i.e., midcingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results demonstrate that superordinate moral concepts influence the strategy and the neural mechanisms in decision processes, independent of actual situations, showing that decisions are based on general neural principles. These findings provide a novel perspective to future sociological and economic research as well as to the analysis of social relations by focusing on abstract value systems as triggers of specific brain responses.

Two hundred and forty-seven students at a large West German city university were presented with the UCLA Loneliness Scale (a 20-item questionnaire; Russell, Peplau, & Cutona, 1980), with the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI; Fahrenberg, Selg, & Hempel, 1978;a personality assessment instrument widely used in German-speaking countries), and with various other questions. Loneliness was found to be correlated with several of the personality subscales of the FPI (psychosomatic complaints, depression, and neuroticism; negative correlations with social skills, self-esteem, extraversion, and masculinity). As in our prior research, a negative correlation was found with self-rated physical attractiveness. Participants giving internal and stable attributions of any loneliness they experienced had higher loneliness scores than did participants giving different attributions. Also, some relationships with social environmental variables were found (e.g., residential mobility was associated with loneliness). A subsample of students being clients at the University Psychological Advisory Service (n = 27) were also investigated. Our results by and large corroborate the findings from prior loneliness research with US samples.

Students of education at a large West German city university (n 154) filled out the UCLA twenty-item loneliness questionnaire (revised version) and also responded to some additional questions. The scale proved satisfactory on various criteria. Average loneliness is very close to a US comparison sample, with no gender differences. (Details on individual items and on scale construction have been reported by the same authors in a German publication.) Significant correlations with self-rated shyness, social contact difficulty, and lack of physical attractiveness were found. No significant d4ffcrences between men and women were found on these correlations, though there was a trend towards higher coefficients among men.

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