Individual differences in the early recognition of moral information in lexical processing: An event-related potential study

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that intuitive moral cognition occurs at an early stage. However, inconsistent findings indicate that moral information is recognized at a relatively late stage. This study uses the recognition potential (RP) as a neural index and simultaneously measures individuals’ moral preferences using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire. We aim to investigate how individual differences in moral preferences modulate the processing of morality in the pre-semantic stage and provide some insights to explain the variation in rapid information processing linked to morality. The participants performed an implicit task in which recognizable words depicting geographical names or behaviors related to moral, disgusting or neutral content alternated with background stimuli at high rates of presentation. The results showed that the early recognition of moral information manifested in the RP depended on an individual’s moral concerns. Participants with a higher level of endorsement of the harm/care foundation exhibited a greater net moral effect, namely, greater mean amplitudes of the moral-neutral RP difference waves. Meanwhile, only the group that was more sensitive to the harm/care foundation showed a distinctively larger RP for the moral words than for the neutral words. Overall, these findings suggest that the early processing of moral cognition may hinge on individual differences in moral concerns about other people’s suffering.

The time-course of moral perception: An electroencephalography investigation

“…Finally, despite the relatively mixed ERP literature on moral cognition, we note that these results dovetail with previous findings indicating that morality exerts its influence on processing about 300 ms after the presentation of lexical information (Yang et al, 2014;Yang et al, 2017). We note that other research on the time-course of moral responses using photographic images as stimuli has observed morality-specific effects in earlier time windows (e.g., N1, Yoder & Decety, 2014;Gui et al, 2016; see also Decety & Cacioppo, 2012), while work examining the temporal dynamics of moral judgments using vignettes observes effects of morality in later time windows (e.g., LPP, Leuthold et al, 2015).…”

“…Indeed, recent work has used ERP analyses to examine the temporal dynamics underlying moral judgment and evaluation. In such studies, participants were recorded while processing morality-related words (e.g., Yang, Luo, & Zhang, 2017), behaviors (e.g., Yang, Li, Xiao, Zhang, & Tian, 2014), and images (e.g., Decety & Cacioppo, 2012), often in direct comparison to core disgust-related stimuli (e.g., Yang et al, 2014Yang et al, , 2017. Taken together, the extant ERP literature on morality is somewhat mixed: across this work, various researchers have observed morality-related changes in amplitudes in the N1 (Gui, Gan, & Liu, 2016;Yoder & Decety, 2014), N180 (successful versus attempted harm/help; Gan et al, 2016), recognition potential (versus neutral words; Yang et al, 2017), P200 (shame versus guilt; Zhu et al, 2019); P300 (versus neutral behaviors; Yang et al, 2014), N400 (versus neutral words; Luo et al, 2013), and late positive potential (LPP; Gui et al, 2016;Leuthold, Kunkle, Mackenzie, & Filik, 2015).…”

“…First, we replicated the moral pop-out effect behaviorally, and examined precisely when moral words were prioritized in the perceptual processing stream; Second, we used this method to examine if moral relevance affects visual experience at the level of perception, awareness, or only later in memory (for debate see Gantman & Van Bavel, 2015a;Firestone & Scholl 2015b;Gantman & Van Bavel, 2015c). Third, we have contributed to the growing literature investigating morality related changes in brain activity (as measured by ERPs; Luck, 2005;Luck, & Kappenman, 2011;Yang, Luo, & Zhang, 2017;Yang, et al, 2014;Decety & Cacioppo, 2012;Gui, Gan, & Liu, 2016;Yoder & Decety, 2014;Gan et al, 2016;Zhu et al, 2019;Luo et al, 2013;Leuthold, Kunkle, Mackenzie, & Filik, 2015).…”

Untitled

“…Sentence materials: The sentence materials were developed in prior research [23,24,66]. Because the word order in some sentences was slightly different from expressions in daily life, we modified the wording of some sentences before the ERP experiment (e.g., "At a public swimming pool, a person is shitting" was revised into "A person is shitting at a public swimming pool").…”

“…Studies using ERP data have also been helpful in identifying the time course of two kinds of moral violation. Yang and colleagues [23,24,37] conducted a series of ERP studies to examine this issue. In one study [37], they used a Go/No-Go paradigm to evoke lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) and found that moral information was processed prior to physical disgust.…”