Abstract
Morality judgment usually refers to the evaluation of moral behavior`s ability to affect others` interests and welfare, while moral aesthetic judgment often implies the appraisal of moral behavior's capability to provide aesthetic pleasure. Both are based on the behavioral understanding. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared the brain activity of these two types of judgments. The present study recorded and analyzed brain activity involved in the morality and moral aesthetic judgments to reveal whether these two types of judgments differ in their neural underpinnings. Results reveled that morality judgment activated the frontal, parietal and occipital cortex previously reported for motor representations of behavior. Evaluation of goodness and badness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. In contrast, moral aesthetic judgment elicited specific activations in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex proved to be involved in the behavioral intentions and emotions. Evaluation of beauty and ugliness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. Our findings indicate that morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment recruit different cortical networks that might decode others' behaviors at different levels. These results contribute to further understanding of the essence of the relationship between morality judgment and aesthetic judgment.
Highlights
The individual object to reflect whether its form can cause some universal pleasure, in which the intermediary between the object and the subject is pleasant and unpleasant emotion[8]
This strong desire is called moral elevation, of which neural mechanism was found to be in line with the neural mechanism of m entalizing[11,12,13,14], both activate the mPFC/SFG and bilateral Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ) implicated in theory of mind (ToM), as well as the ACC, PCC/precuneus and anterior insula involved in empathic process
We found that compared with moral aesthetic judgment, morality judgment, both good reaction and bad reaction, recruited motor-related areas, including MFG/Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG)/PMv, Supplementary Motor Area (SMA), Superior Parietal Lobule (SPL)/Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL) and IOG/middle occipital gyrus (MOG), indicating that morality judgments might use motor representation through “body” reading, supported by the MNS93,97–99 which is part of a larger sensorimotor brain network, to complete assessments of whether a moral behavior is good or bad and how good or bad it is
Summary
The individual object to reflect whether its form can cause some universal pleasure, in which the intermediary between the object and the subject is pleasant and unpleasant emotion[8]. Luo et al asked subjects to make an integrated aesthetic judgment of facial portrait and moral description to investigate the neural underpinnings of the integration of facial beauty and moral beauty, and found that the appreciation of facial beauty and moral beauty recruited a common network involving the mOFC and middle occipital gyrus (MOG) They suggested that brain regions associated with sensory perception and reward might be recruited in the integrated aesthetic judgments[23]. Based on previous research results and theoretical discussion, we hypothesized that, on 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 g oodness[17], 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 Scientific Reports | (2021) 11:18232 |. Advanced brain networks generally engaged in the process of the internal processes that underlie a perceiver’s aesthetic experience
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