Neural and Cognitive Signatures of Guilt Predict Hypocritical Blame

Abstract

A common form of moral hypocrisy occurs when people blame others for moral violations that they themselves commit. It is assumed that hypocritical blamers act in this manner to falsely signal that they hold moral standards that they do not really accept. We tested this assumption by investigating the neurocognitive processes of hypocritical blamers during moral decision-making. Participants (62 adult UK residents; 27 males) underwent functional MRI scanning while deciding whether to profit by inflicting pain on others and then judged the blameworthiness of others’ identical decisions. Observers (188 adult U.S. residents; 125 males) judged participants who blamed others for making the same harmful choice to be hypocritical, immoral, and untrustworthy. However, analyzing hypocritical blamers’ behaviors and neural responses shows that hypocritical blame was positively correlated with conflicted feelings, neural responses to moral standards, and guilt-related neural responses. These findings demonstrate that hypocritical blamers may hold the moral standards that they apply to others.

Mindfulness training reduces slippery slope effects in moral decision-making and moral judgment

“…Previous studies have shown that, from the Decider’s perspective, the neurocognitive processing of material profits drives the decision to maximize the Decider’s self-interest, while the neurocognitive processing of harm to another person (relative to oneself) drives the decision to minimize harming others 31 , 32 . From a third-party evaluator’s perspective, these two cognitive processes also influence the blameworthiness they assign to a given choice—everything else being equal, a choice that leads to more harm to another is judged as more blameworthy, whereas a choice that results in more profits to the Decider is judged as less blameworthy 28 , 29 , 33 . Because of these tasks allow researchers to quantify these cognitive processes, they have been applied to address a number of critical questions in moral psychology (for a review, see 27 ), such as the neural basis of prosocial behaviors 28 , 34 , the cognitive mechanisms underlying moral impression updating 35 , and moral influence 32 .…”

A cost-benefit framework for prosocial motivation – advantages and challenges

“…Indeed, recently we found that people are highly hypocritical in a cost-benefit, harm aversion context, judging others' misconduct harshly even when they themselves have committed the same transgressions (53). This hypocritical behaviour was associated with behavioural and neural markers of guilt, suggesting that people might desire a prosocial goal, but feel frustrated when their will fails.…”