Abstract
Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and also on the actual harm caused–even when unintended. Much prior research asks how intent information is represented neurally, but little asks how even unintended harms influence judgment. We interrogate the psychological and neural basis of this process, focusing especially on the role of empathy for the victim of a harmful act. Using fMRI, we found that the ‘empathy for pain’ network was involved in encoding harmful outcomes and integrating harmfulness information for different types of moral judgments, and individual differences in the extent to which this network was active during encoding and integration of harmfulness information determined severity of moral judgments. Additionally, activity in the network was down-regulated for acceptability, but not blame, judgments for accidental harm condition, suggesting that these two types of moral evaluations are neurobiologically dissociable. These results support a model of “empathic blame”, whereby the perceived suffering of a victim colors moral judgment of an accidental harmdoer.
Highlights
Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and on the actual harm caused–even when unintended
In Study 1, we found that participants scoring high on dispositional empathic concern (EC, assessed with Interpersonal Reactivity Index or IRI42) judged accidental harms to be less morally permissible (r = −0.177, 95% CI [−0.306, −0.042], t(205) = −2.574, p = 0.011)
In Study 4, we found that trial-by-trial ratings of perceived victim suffering for each moral vignette predicted harsher moral condemnation only for the accidental harms (r = 0.496, 95% CI [0.106, 0.754], t(21) = 2.618, p = 0.016)
Summary
Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and on the actual harm caused–even when unintended. Activity in the network was down-regulated for acceptability, but not blame, judgments for accidental harm condition, suggesting that these two types of moral evaluations are neurobiologically dissociable These results support a model of “empathic blame”, whereby the perceived suffering of a victim colors moral judgment of an accidental harmdoer. Far less research interrogates the behavioral and neural basis of the second major contributor to moral judgment: Representations of the actual harm caused by an act[16,17,18]. These play a crucial role in “moral luck”, the phenomenon of chance outcomes influencing moral judgments . We ask whether, and how, a network of brain regions associated with empathy for the victim contribute to the moral judgment of third party actions
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