Individual differences in moral judgment competence influence neural correlates of socio-normative judgments

Abstract

To investigate how individual differences in moral judgment competence are reflected in the human brain, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, while 23 participants made either socio-normative or grammatical judgments. Participants with lower moral judgment competence recruited the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the left posterior superior temporal sulcus more than participants with greater competence in this domain when identifying social norm violations. Moreover, moral judgment competence scores were inversely correlated with activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during socio-normative relative to grammatical judgments. Greater activity in right DLPFC in participants with lower moral judgment competence indicates increased recruitment of rule-based knowledge and its controlled application during socio-normative judgments. These data support current models of the neurocognition of morality according to which both emotional and cognitive components play an important role.

How the brain processes violations of the grammatical norm: An fMRI study

“…The whole-brain analyses revealed a norm specific effect for social norm violations, which is in line with the previous literature (Berthoz, Armony, Blair, & Dolan, 2002;Prehn et al, 2008;Spitzer, Fischbacher, Herrnberger, Grön, & Fehr, 2007). The left medial Superior Frontal Gyrus (LmSFG, BA 9, 32 and 10) was increasingly activated for social norm violations as opposed to neutral sentences and sentences containing a semantic violation (see Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Fig.…”

Construal Level Theory and Moral Judgments: How Thinking Abstractly Modifies Morality

“…As such, moral judgment requires the mental construal of these norms and values (Prehn et al, 2008). Different theories of moral judgment highlight different dimensions of these mental representations on which judgment is based.…”

Influence of the cortical midline structures on moral emotion and motivation in moral decision-making

“…Previous fMRI studies in the field of cognitive and social neurosciences have examined the neural correlates of human morality. For instance, diverse dimensions of morality including, but not limited to, moral judgment [25,26], moral sensibility [27][28][29], moral competence [30] and moral elevation [31,32] have been demonstrated. Furthermore, several social neuroscientists have proposed the presence of the coactivation of selfhood-related regions, particularly those in the cortical midline structures (CMS) 6 during the processing of moral tasks.…”