Detestable or marvelous? Neuroanatomical correlates of character judgments

Abstract

As we learn new information about the social and moral behaviors of other people, we form and update character judgments of them, and this can profoundly influence how we regard and act towards others. In the study reported here, we capitalized on two interesting neurological patient populations where this process of complex "moral updating" may go awry: patients with bilateral damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and patients with bilateral damage to hippocampus (HC). We predicted that vmPFC patients, who have impaired emotion processing, would exhibit reduced moral updating, and we also investigated how moral updating might be affected by severe declarative memory impairment in HC patients. The vmPFC, HC, and brain-damaged comparison (BDC) participants made moral judgments about unfamiliar persons before and after exposure to social scenarios depicting the persons engaged in morally good, bad, or neutral behaviors. In line with our prediction, the vmPFC group showed the least amount of change in moral judgments, and interestingly, the HC group showed the most amount of change. These results suggest that the vmPFC and hippocampus play critical but complementary roles in updating moral character judgments about others: the vmPFC may attribute emotional salience to moral information, whereas the hippocampus may provide necessary contextual information from which to make appropriate character judgments.

Memory, autonoetic consciousness, and the self

“…They subsequently proposed that the main function of EAM may in fact be a social one. The possible contribution of EAM to social regulation was also implied by a recent study that showed that severe EAM deficits interfere with the updating of moral character judgments of others and consequently may influence the way we perceive and behave towards others (Croft et al, 2010).…”

Situationally appropriate behavior: translating situations into appetitive behavior modes

“…In humans, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, including the subgenual (subcallosal) anterior cingulate cortex (Brodmann's area 25), plays a role in attributing emotional salience to newly acquired social information (Croft et al, 2010). Uncertain threatening situations that demand a global response (rather than precise action) activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in humans, too.…”

1741 – Social cognition in a case of amnesia with neurodevelopmental mechanisms

“…In this vein, difficulties with recollecting emotional events and/or autonoetic consciousness were propounded to exist in offenders with psychopathy, who feature impairments in empathy and affective ToM (Shamay-Tsoory and Aharon-Peretz, Craig et al, 2009). Croft et al's (2010) results suggested that severe EAM impairments due to neurological incidents may affect the updating of moral character judgments and subsequently may influence the way these individuals perceive and behave toward others. The authors compared in their study the performance of patients with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex to that of patients with bilateral damage to the hippocampal formation (due to hypoxia/anoxia or herpes viral encephalitis) and that of a control brain-damaged group during a task that required the participants to make moral judgments about unfamiliar persons in two conditions (before and after being exposed to various social context scenarios).…”