Anticipation of guilt for everyday moral transgressions: The role of the anterior insula and the influence of interpersonal psychopathic traits

Abstract

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by atypical moral behaviour likely rooted in atypical affective/motivational processing, as opposed to an inability to judge the wrongness of an action. Guilt is a moral emotion believed to play a crucial role in adherence to moral and social norms, but the mechanisms by which guilt (or lack thereof) may influence behaviour in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits are unclear. We measured neural responses during the anticipation of guilt about committing potential everyday moral transgressions, and tested the extent to which these varied with psychopathic traits. We found a significant interaction between the degree to which anticipated guilt was modulated in the anterior insula and interpersonal psychopathic traits: anterior insula modulation of anticipated guilt was weaker in individuals with higher levels of these traits. Data from a second sample confirmed that this pattern of findings was specific to the modulation of anticipated guilt and not related to the perceived wrongness of the transgression. These results suggest a central role for the anterior insula in coding the anticipation of guilt regarding potential moral transgressions and advance our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms that may underlie propensity to antisocial behaviour.

A Systematic Literature Review of Neuroimaging of Psychopathic Traits

“…Several studies implicated dysfunction of the limbic system in psychopathy in the context of moral evaluations (59,63,99,101,114). Activity in the anterior insular cortex, which modulates anticipated guilt, was attenuated in psychopathic subjects, and the activity negatively correlated with interpersonal psychopathic traits (98).…”

Commentary: Investigating the Effects of Anger and Guilt on Unethical Behaviour: A Dual-Process Approach

“…They are also highly strategic (Jones and Paulhus, 2012 ) and this bring them to a great deal of deception during their everyday life (Kashy and DePaulo, 1996 ). Similarly, psychopaths are more likely to perform premeditated (deliberate) than impulsive crimes (Swogger et al, 2010 ), and show a weaker modulation of anticipated guilt in anterior insula (Seara-Cardoso et al, 2016 ).…”

Impairment in judgement of the moral emotion guilt following orbitofrontal cortex damage

“…Third, we did not distinguish the lateral and medial side of the orbitofrontal cortex, which are supposed to have separate roles (Stalnaker et al ., ). While Wagner, N'Diaye, Ethofer, and Vuilleumier () reported that guilt episodes specifically recruited the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, the regions found most consistently in functional MRI studies to be associated with guilt are the frontopolar cortex (Broadmann area 10) (Kédia, Berthoz, Wessa, Hilton, & Martinot, ; Moll et al ., ; Seara‐Cardoso et al ., ; Takahashi et al ., ; Zahn, de Oliveira‐Souza, et al ., ; Zahn, Moll, et al ., ) and the subgenual and adjacent subcortical septal region (Basile et al ., ; Green, Lambon Ralph, Moll, Deakin, & Zahn, ; Zahn, de Oliveira‐Souza, et al ., ; Zahn, Moll, et al ., ). However, the number of patients in the present study was not large enough to distinguish the lateral and medial side of the orbitofrontal cortex Fourth, no perfusion measures to ensure functioning of the non‐lesioned area were carried out, and thus, there might have been some non‐lesioned cortices with functional depression that was not detected in our study.…”