Neural correlates of moral goodness and moral beauty judgments

Neural Underpinnings of Morality Judgment and Moral Aesthetic Judgment

“…In the left lateral OFC, the differences were mainly driven by a higher signal for good response as compared to bad response, t(21) = 6, p < 0.001, a higher signal for beautiful responses as compared to ugly, t(21) = 2.75, p = 0.04, and bad responses, t(21) = 6.23, p < 0.001; in the right lateral OFC, the differences were mainly driven by a higher signal for good response as compared to bad response, t(21) = 2.13, p = 0.04, a higher signal for beauty response as compared to ugly response, t(21) = 2.73, p = 0.009. These results revealed that the bilateral lateral OFC had stronger activation for goodness and beauty than badness and ugliness, which was consistent with a recent nding on the neural mechanism of moral goodness and moral beauty judgments (Cheng et al, 2020), namely, the lateral OFC is commonly engaged in the processing of both moral goodness and moral beauty.…”

“…ROIs were de ned as a 6 mm sphere centered on the peak voxel in areas identi ed by direct task contrasts MJ-MA and MA-MJ. Our recent study on the neural mechanisms of moral goodness and moral beauty (Cheng et al, 2020) found the common involvement of left lateral OFC (MNI peak coordinates: −36, 24, −15) in the processing of moral goodness and moral beauty. In the present study, we found that both morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment activated the right lateral OFC (MNI peak coordinates: 30, 27, 3), although the result of the conjunction analysis showed that there was no shared brain region between these two types of judgments.…”

“…Parameter design has proved valuable in exploring the relationship between experimental parameters and physiological responses to system changes (Büchel et al, 1998). Based on previous research results and theoretical discussion, we hypothesized that, on the one hand, morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment might share the common process, for example, in addition to what we've shown is the shared mechanism of moral beauty and moral goodness (Cheng et al, 2020), moral ugliness might rely on similar neural mechanisms with moral badness; on the other hand, but that compared with morality judgment, moral aesthetic judgment might involve more complex and advanced brain networks generally engaged in the process of the internal processes that underlie a perceiver's aesthetic experience.…”

“…Haidt & Keltner, 2004). Some studies have shown that aesthetic processing usually distinctly activate the cortical network involved in the theory of mind (ToM) and empathy (Cheng et al, 2020;Martín-Loeches et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2015;Wen et al, 2017), and better understanding of another's intentions and emotions is related to greater aesthetic appreciation (Iosifyan, 2021).…”

“…They measured brain activity of subjects judging the beauty of artistic images and the moral goodness of the actions depicted in the same images, and found both common and distinct representations for morality and aesthetic judgments in temporoparietal and prefrontal regions. Our recent study required subjects to rate the same positive moral behavior in terms of the good and beautiful extent to investigate the relationship between moral goodness and moral beauty from the neural perspective (Cheng et al, 2020). We found that lateral OFC was commonly involved in the processing of both goodness and beauty.…”