Moral Judgment Task Research Articles

Moral Injury and Its Consequences Among Combat Veterans: Preliminary Findings on the Role of Moral Judgment.

Exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) among combat veterans has been acknowledged as a significant stressful combat event that may lead to various mental health problems, including depression and moral injury (MI), outcomes of shame and guilt. Recent studies have examined both risk and protective factors that can contribute to PMIEs and their consequences. However, while the general level of one's moral judgment is a logical contributor to moral injuries, it has yet to be examined empirically. In the current study, we examined the unique impact of moral judgment levels on the experience of PMIEs among combat veterans. We also examined the moderating role of moral judgment in the relationship between PMIEs and MI outcomes and depressive symptoms. A volunteer sample of 70 male Israeli combat veterans completed self-report questionnaires and a moral judgment task in a cross-sectional design study. Our findings indicate that moral judgment contributed to higher levels of perceiving others' actions as transgressive (PMIE-Other), above and beyond combat exposure. Moreover, we found that moral judgment has a moderating role in the link between PMIEs and their negative outcomes: Among veterans with higher levels of moral judgment, the association between PMIEs and their expressions was stronger than for those with lower levels of moral judgment. Our finding highlights the unique contribution of moral judgment level to PMIEs and their mental health consequences. It can be cautiously suggested that moral judgment should be viewed as a pre-recruitment risk factor that can help identify those at greater risk for mental health problems following exposure to PMIEs.

Fear facilitates utilitarian moral judgments: Evidence from a moral judgment task.

Previous research on moral judgment (MJ) has focused on understanding the cognitive processes and emotional factors that influence different types of moral judgment tasks, such as personal and impersonal dilemmas. However, few studies have distinguished between the emotions related to cognition and the complex emotions specifically caused by MJ tasks. This gap in knowledge is important to address to have a better understanding of how emotions influence moral judgment. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of fear and the role of moral emotions on MJ. Data were collected from 145 participants through jsPsych and analyzed using mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlation analysis. The study found that individuals who were triggered by the fear increased the number of utilitarian moral judgments in personal moral scenarios and lengthened the cognitive process, but not in impersonal moral dilemmas. Hence, we speculate that fear may play a cognitive role in personal moral dilemmas and an emotional role in impersonal moral dilemmas. Another finding is that the complex moral emotions arising from the moral decision-making process may affect the effectiveness of fear and potentially influence moral judgments. However, this study adopts a cautious attitude toward these discoveries, and further verification of this hypothesis should be conducted in the future.

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

Extant research has demonstrated the positive intrapersonal effects of mindfulness training. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of mindfulness training on interpersonal processes are less clear. Here, we combined a randomized control mindfulness training design with computational approach to moral decision-making and moral judgments. Participants were randomly assigned to a Training group (N = 32) who received an 8-week mindfulness training or a Control group (N = 26) who waited for the same period of time. Before and after the 8-week period, participants completed a moral decision-making task, where they made tradeoff between money for themselves and unpleasant electric shocks to another person, and a moral judgment task, where they evaluated the blameworthiness of someone else’s choices in the same moral decision-making task. Trait mindfulness, as measured by the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, significantly increased from the pre- to post-training session for the Training group, but not the Control group, demonstrating the effectiveness of the mindfulness manipulation. For the Control group, participants’ moral preference in both the decision-making task and the judgment task declined over time, exhibiting a “slippery slope” effect. In contrast, for the Training group, mindfulness training prevented moral preferences from declining. Computational modeling revealed that mindfulness training specifically reduced the increase in the weights of money over time in both the decision-making and judgment tasks, thereby curbing the “slippery slope” effects. These findings provide a cognitive account of the prosocial effects of mindfulness training on moral decision-making and moral judgments.

The role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in moral cognition: A value-centric hypothesis

ABSTRACT Trends in moral psychology largely support the role that emotion plays in moral cognition with human lesion studies offering the most compelling evidence to date. Specifically, data from ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) patients on moral judgment tasks has suggested the necessity of having intact emotion to behave in morally appropriate ways. However, patients with vmPFC damage also have deficits in a variety of complex judgment and decision-making tasks, regardless of whether emotion is involved. This paper argues that a basic information processing perspective of vmPFC functionality is a better interpretation of vmPFC patient deficits, specifically with the vmPFC being necessary for value assessment rather than being specific to emotion.

Effects of Core Disgust and Moral Disgust on Moral Judgment: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Core disgust is elicited by physical or chemical stimuli, while moral disgust is evoked by abstract violations of moral norms. Although previous studies have pointed out these two types of disgust can affect behavior and spatial dimensions of moral judgment, less is known about how moral and core disgust affect the temporal neural processing of moral judgment. In addition, whether moral and core disgust are only related to purity-based moral judgment or all kinds of moral judgment is still controversial. This study aimed to explore how core and moral disgust affect the neural processing of purity-based moral judgment by using affective priming and moral judgment tasks. The behavioral results showed that the severity of moral violation of non-purity ones is higher than purity ones. The event-related potentials (ERP) results mainly revealed that earlier P2 and N2 components, which represent the automatic moral processes, can differentiate neutral and two types of disgust rather than differentiating moral domain, while the later N450, frontal, and parietal LPP components, which represent the conflict detection and, later, cognitive processing can differentiate the purity and non-purity ones rather than differentiating priming type. Moreover, core and moral disgust priming mainly differed in the purity-based moral processing indexed by parietal LPP. Our findings confirmed that the disgusting effect on moral judgments can be explained within the framework of dual-process and social intuitionist models, suggesting that emotions, including core and moral disgust, played an essential role in the automatic intuition process. The later parietal LPP results strongly supported that core disgust only affected the purity-based moral judgment, fitting the primary purity hypothesis well. We show how these theories can provide novel insights into the temporal mechanisms of moral judgment.

More utilitarian judgment in Internet addiction? An exploration using process dissociation and the CNI model.

BackgroundInternet addiction (IA), which is disadvantageous for decision making, such as moral judgment, is a pernicious threat to contemporary societies. However, few studies consider social cognition abilities as an important variable in IA.ObjectivesThis study explores the psychological mechanism of IA facing the moral dilemma.MethodsForty participants with IA and 89 healthy participants were recruited. They finished the Internet Addiction Test and completed the moral judgment task. The process dissociation (PD) method and the consequences, norms, and generalized inaction (CNI) model were used to analyze moral judgment data.ResultsCompared with the healthy control (HC) group, the traditional analysis showed that the IA group made more utilitarian judgment regarding moral dilemmas. PD analysis showed that the IA group had decreased deontological inclination, without utilitarian inclination. The CNI model further showed that the sensitivity of the IA group to moral rules was significantly lower than that of the HC group, while there was no significant difference between groups in the sensitivity to the consequences and the general preference for action.ConclusionsIndividuals with IA make more utilitarian judgment when faced with a moral dilemma, which is related to their weak sensitivity to moral norms.

When Dark Humor and Moral Judgment Meet in Sacrificial Dilemmas: Preliminary Evidence With Females.

The influence of dark humor on moral judgment has never been explored, even though this form of humor is well-known to push the boundaries of social norms. In the present study, we examined whether the presence of dark humor leads female participants to approve a utilitarian response (i.e., to kill one to save many) in sacrificial dilemmas. The effects of two types of humorous contexts were compared (i.e., dark vs. nondark) on dilemmas, which differed according to whom benefits from the crime (i.e., oneself and others vs. others only). In addition to collecting moral responses, individuals’ emotional states were assessed at three critical steps: Before and after reading the jokes and also after performing the moral judgment task. Our results revealed that dark and nondark humor similarly elicited a positive emotional state. However, dark humor increased the permissiveness of the moral violation when this violation created benefits for oneself. In self and other beneficial dilemmas, female participants in the dark humorous condition judged the utilitarian response more appropriate than those in the nondark condition. This study represents a first attempt in deepening our understanding of the context-dependent nature of moral judgment usually assessed in sacrificial dilemmas.

The Role of Temperature in Moral Decision-Making: Limited Reproducibility.

Temperature is one of the major environmental factors that people are exposed to on a daily basis, often in conditions that do not afford control. It is known that heat and cold can influence a person’s productivity and performance in simple tasks. With respect to social cognition, it has also been suggested that temperature impacts on relatively high-level forms of decision-making. For instance, previous research demonstrated that cold temperature promotes utilitarian judgment in a moral dilemma task. This effect could be due to psychological processing, when a cool temperature primes a set of internal representations (associated with “coldness”). Alternatively, the promotion of utilitarian judgment in cold conditions could be due to physiological interference from temperature, impeding on social cognition. Refuting both explanations of psychological or physiological processing, however, it has been suggested that there may be problems of reproducibility in the literature on temperature modulating complex or abstract information processing. To examine the role of temperature in moral decision-making, we conducted a series of experiments using ambient and haptic temperature with careful manipulation checks and modified task methodology. Experiment 1 manipulated room temperature with cool (21°C), control (24°C) and hot (27°C) conditions and found only a cool temperature effect, promoting utilitarian judgment as in the previous study. Experiment 2 manipulated the intensity of haptic temperature but failed to obtain the cool temperature effect. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the generalizability of the cool ambient temperature effect with another moral judgment task and with manipulation of exposure duration. However, again there were no cool temperature effects, suggesting a lack of reproducibility. Despite successful manipulations of temperature in all four experiments, as measured in body temperature and the participants’ self-reported perception, we found no systematic influence of temperature on moral decision-making. A Bayesian meta-analysis of the four experiments showed that the overall data tended to provide strong support in favor of the null hypothesis. We propose that, at least in the range of temperatures from 21 to 27°C, the cool temperature effect in moral decision-making is not a robust phenomenon.

Dopamine, religiosity, and utilitarian moral judgment

ABSTRACT Our goal was to examine the relationship between biological and sociocultural factors that predict utilitarian moral judgment. Utilitarian moral judgments occur when a specific action is based on the outcome rather than its consistency with social norms. We predicted that (1) individuals with higher levels of dopamine will make more utilitarian decisions and (2) individuals who express greater religiosity will make less utilitarian judgments. We measured dopamine using spontaneous eyeblink rate, an indirect measure associated with striatal dopaminergic transmission. A total of 96 participants completed a utilitarian moral judgment task where they made judgments regarding nonmoral, impersonal, personal low-conflict, and personal high-conflict moral dilemmas. Then, participants completed a questionnaire measuring religiosity. We found a negative relationship between religiosity and the proportion of “yes” judgments participants made in the high-conflict personal dilemmas, which was consistent with our second hypothesis. None of our other hypotheses were supported. Understanding biological and cultural factors that relate to utilitarian moral judgment may also help in developing artificial intelligence that more closely mimic human behavior.

Tryptophan-rich diet is negatively associated with depression and positively linked to social cognition

The essential amino acid tryptophan (TRP) is discussed as a potential protective factor for physical and mental health. Besides positive effects via the microbiota of the gut on many physiological processes, TRP is the precursor of the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT), thereby playing a role for affective disorders. The present study investigated the effects of a TRP-rich diet on depressiveness and on one of its endophenotypes, impaired social cognition, in a population based sample. N = 482 subjects participated in an online study, assessing the ability to properly recognize emotional states from the eye region of faces (Reading the Mind in the Eye Test, RMET) and asking for subjective ratings of condemnability in a moral judgment task. Moreover, the habitual TRP intake was measured. It was hypothesized that a low-TRP diet is associated with higher depressiveness and worse performance in the social cognition tasks. The main hypotheses could be supported. However, contrary to the expectations, the effect of TRP on social cognition was not mediated by depressiveness. Results show that a tryptophan-rich diet is a potential protective factor against depression and is positively related to functioning in social cognition.

Different influences of facial attractiveness on judgments of moral beauty and moral goodness

Are beauty and goodness the same? The relationship between beauty and goodness has long been a controversial issue in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, ethics and psychology. Although many empirical studies have explored moral judgment and aesthetic judgment separately, only a few studies have compared the two. Whether these two judgments are two different processes or the same process with two different labels remains unclear. To answer this question, the present study directly compared the influence of facial attractiveness on judgments of moral goodness and moral beauty and revealed distinct contributions of imaging perceptions to these two judgments. The results showed that in the moral beauty judgment task, participants gave higher scores to characters with attractive faces compared with characters with unattractive faces, and larger P200 and LPP were elicited in the unattractive-face condition compared with the attractive-face condition; while in the moral goodness judgment task, there was no significant difference between the two conditions of either behaviour or ERP data. These findings offer important insights into the understanding and comparison of the processes of moral judgment and aesthetic judgment.

Alcohol, empathy, and morality: acute effects of alcohol consumption on affective empathy and moral decision-making

RationaleHypothetical moral dilemmas, pitting characteristically utilitarian and non-utilitarian outcomes against each other, have played a central role in investigations of moral decision-making. Preferences for utilitarian over non-utilitarian responses have been explained by two contrasting hypotheses; one implicating increased deliberative reasoning, and the other implicating diminished harm aversion. In recent field experiments, these hypotheses have been investigated using alcohol intoxication to impair both social and cognitive functioning. These studies have found increased utilitarian responding, arguably as a result of alcohol impairing affective empathy.ObjectivesThe present research expands existing investigations by examining the acute effects of alcohol on affective empathy and subsequent moral judgments in traditional vignettes and moral actions in virtual reality, as well as physiological responses in moral dilemmas.MethodsParticipants (N = 48) were administered either a placebo or alcohol in one of two dosages; low or moderate. Both pre- and post intervention, participants completed a moral action and moral judgment task alongside behavioural measures of affective empathy.ResultsHigher dosages of alcohol consumption resulted in inappropriate empathic responses to facial displays of emotion, mirroring responses of individuals high in trait psychopathy, but empathy for pain was unaffected. Whilst affective empathy was influenced by alcohol consumption in a facial responding task, both moral judgments and moral actions were unaffected.ConclusionsThese results suggest that facets, beyond or in addition to deficits in affective empathy, might influence the relationship between alcohol consumption and utilitarian endorsements.

Asking 'why?' enhances theory of mind when evaluating harm but not purity violations.

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed important differences in the cognitive processes underlying judgments of harm and purity violations. In particular, research has demonstrated that whether a violation was committed intentionally vs accidentally has a larger impact on moral judgments of harm violations (e.g. assault) than purity violations (e.g. incest). Here, we manipulate the instructions provided to participants for a moral judgment task to further probe the boundary conditions of this intent effect. Specifically, we instructed participants undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging to attend to either a violator’s mental states (why they acted that way) or their low-level behavior (how they acted) before delivering moral judgments. Results revealed that task instructions enhanced rather than diminished differences between how harm and purity violations are processed in brain regions for mental state reasoning or theory of mind. In particular, activity in the right temporoparietal junction increased when participants were instructed to attend to why vs how a violator acted to a greater extent for harm than for purity violations. This result constrains the potential accounts of why intentions matter less for purity violations compared to harm violations and provide further insight into the differences between distinct moral norms.

The truth about cognitive impairment in functional motor symptoms: An experimental deception study with the Guilty Knowledge Task

BackgroundA century ago, Janet was the first to conceptualize conversion reactions as having a neurocognitive component, as disorders of memory processing that arise in the wake of trauma. The available evidence suggests that this impairment might arise from dysfunction in the fronto-subcortical circuits. Our aim was to examine the cognitive functions regulating deception in patients with functional motor symptoms (FMS), using a computerised task, the Guilty Knowledge Task (GKT). We also tested a group of healthy subjects (HS) as a control group. Materials and methodsThirteen patients affected by FMS and 14 HS underwent a modified version of the GKT, a computer-controlled procedure used to detect truthful and deceptive responses. All participants were also screened for depression, anxiety, alexithymia and for moral sense (moral judgment task). ResultsThe reaction times (RTs) were significantly longer for lie responses than for true responses (F(1,26) = 50.47; p < 0.001) in the two groups. Total RTs were significantly longer for patients with FMS than for HS, in true responses (F(1,25) = 4,36; p = 0.047) and lie responses (F(1,25) = 4.26; p = 0.05). No differences were found between the two groups for accuracy in producing true responses (F(1,25) = 0.09, p = 0.77), and lie responses (F(1,25) = 0,12, p = 0.73. ConclusionsWhen tested with the GKT, patients with FMS were slower than HS in producing truthful and lying responses. Current knowledge along with our new findings in patients with FMS – possibly arising from individually unrecognised extremely mild, cognitive difficulties – should help in designing specific rehabilitative programmes to improve cognitive and behavioural disturbances in these patients.

Canonical correlation analysis of brain prefrontal activity measured by functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS) during a moral judgment task

Individuals differ in the extent to which they make decisions in different moral dilemmas. In this study, we investigated the relationship between functional brain activities during moral decision making and psychopathic personality traits in a healthy population. We measured the hemodynamic activities of the brain by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). FNIRS is an evolving non-invasive neuroimaging modality which is relatively inexpensive, patient friendly and robust to subject movement. Psychopathic traits were evaluated through a self-report questionnaire called the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised (PPI-R). We recorded functional brain activities of 30 healthy subjects while they performed a moral judgment (MJ) task. Regularized canonical correlation analysis (R-CCA) was applied to find the relationships between activation in different regions of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the core psychopathic traits. Our results showed a significant canonical correlation between PFC activation and PPI-R content scale (PPI-R-CS). Specifically, coldheartedness and carefree non-planfulness were the only PPI-R-CS factors that were highly correlated with PFC activation during personal (emotionally salient) MJ, while Machiavellian egocentricity, rebellious nonconformity, coldheartedness, and carefree non-planfulness were the core traits that exhibited the same dynamics as PFC activation during impersonal (more logical) MJ. Furthermore, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and left lateral PFC were the most positively correlated regions with PPI-R-CS traits during personal MJ, and the right vmPFC and right lateral PFC in impersonal MJ.

The role of prefrontal cortex in a moral judgment task using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

BackgroundUnderstanding the neural basis of moral judgment (MJ) and human decision‐making has been the subject of numerous studies because of their impact on daily life activities and social norms. Here, we aimed to investigate the neural process of MJ using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a noninvasive, portable, and affordable neuroimaging modality.MethodsWe examined prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation in 33 healthy participants engaging in MJ exercises. We hypothesized that participants presented with personal (emotionally salient) and impersonal (less emotional) dilemmas would exhibit different brain activation observable through fNIRS. We also investigated the effects of utilitarian and nonutilitarian responses to MJ scenarios on PFC activation. Utilitarian responses are those that favor the greatest good while nonutilitarian responses favor moral actions. Mixed effect models were applied to model the cerebral hemodynamic changes that occurred during MJ dilemmas.Results and conclusionsOur analysis found significant differences in PFC activation during personal versus impersonal dilemmas. Specifically, the left dorsolateral PFC was highly activated during impersonal MJ when a nonutilitarian decision was made. This is consistent with the majority of relevant fMRI studies, and demonstrates the feasibility of using fNIRS, with its portable and motion tolerant capacities, to investigate the neural basis of MJ dilemmas.

Julgamento Moral do Aborto: Influência da Atitude Prévia, Princípios Deontológicos e Utilitaristas

Resumo Julgamentos morais fazem parte do cotidiano das pessoas e processos cognitivos são utilizados como base para a formulação de um julgamento moral. Este trabalho tem como objetivo mensurar o efeito covariante da atitude prévia em relação a um tema moral na relação entre a sobrecarga cognitiva e o julgamento de um cenário moral. O Experimento 1 testou a relação direta entre princípios morais (i.e., deontológico e utilitarista) e sobrecarga cognitiva em uma tarefa de julgamento moral. No Experimento 2, foi testada a interferência da atitude prévia em tarefa de julgamento moral. Em ambos os experimentos, a amostra foi composta por estudantes universitário, em sua maioria homens. Os resultados sugerem que a sobrecarga cognitiva induz um julgamento de origem deontológica e que a atitude prévia em relação a um objeto moral interfere significativamente na tarefa de julgamento moral independente do cenário.

Perceptual but not complex moral judgments can be biased by exploiting the dynamics of eye-gaze.

Can judgments be biased via passive monitoring of eye-gaze? We examined this question using a perceptual discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a complex moral judgment task (Experiment 2). Information about the location of participants' gaze at particular time-points in a trial was used to prompt responses. When there was no objective perceptual information available to decision-makers, the timing of the prompt had a small, but detectable effect on judgments (Experiment 1). However, this small effect did not scale up to more complex judgments about moral issues (Experiment 2). Our results are consistent with the well-established idea that participants' judgments are reflected in their eye-gaze, but do not support the recent bold claim of a causal link wherein the timing of a gaze-contingent response-prompt influences complex judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record

Moral judgment modulation by disgust priming via altered fronto-temporal functional connectivity

Moral judgments are not just the product of conscious reasoning, but also involve the integration of social and emotional information. Irrelevant disgust stimuli modulate moral judgments, with individual sensitivity determining the direction and size of effects across both hypothetical and incentive-compatible experimental designs. We investigated the neural circuitry underlying this modulation using fMRI in 19 individuals performing a moral judgment task with subliminal priming of disgust facial expressions. Our results indicate that individual changes in moral acceptability due to priming covaried with individual differences in activation within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). Further, whole-brain analyses identified changes in functional connectivity between the dmPFC and the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ). High sensitivity individuals showed enhanced functional connectivity between the TPJ and dmPFC, corresponding with deactivation in the dmPFC, and rating the moral dilemmas as more acceptable. Low sensitivity individuals showed the opposite pattern of results. Post-hoc, these findings replicated in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (daMCC), an adjacent region implicated in converting between objective and subjective valuation. This suggests a specific computational mechanism – that disgust stimuli modulate moral judgments by altering the integration of social information to determine the subjective valuation of the considered moral actions.

Emotion-based learning systems and the development of morality

In this paper it is proposed that important components of moral development and moral judgment rely on two forms of emotional learning: stimulus-reinforcement and response-outcome learning. Data in support of this position will be primarily drawn from work with individuals with the developmental condition of psychopathy as well as fMRI studies with healthy individuals. Individuals with psychopathy show impairment on moral judgment tasks and a pronounced increased risk for instrumental antisocial behavior. It will be argued that these impairments are developmental consequences of impaired stimulus-aversive conditioning on the basis of distress cue reinforcers and response-outcome learning in individuals with this disorder.