A functional imaging investigation of moral deliberation and moral intuition - PubMed (original) (raw)

A functional imaging investigation of moral deliberation and moral intuition

Carla L Harenski et al. Neuroimage. 2010.

Abstract

Prior functional imaging studies of moral processing have utilized 'explicit' moral tasks that involve moral deliberation (e.g., reading statements such as 'he shot the victim' and rating the moral appropriateness of the behavior) or 'implicit' moral tasks that involve moral intuition (e.g., reading similar statements and memorizing them for a test but not rating their moral appropriateness). Although the neural mechanisms underlying moral deliberation and moral intuition may differ, these have not been directly compared. Studies using explicit moral tasks have reported increased activity in several regions, most consistently the medial prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction. In the few studies that have utilized implicit moral tasks, medial prefrontal activity has been less consistent, suggesting the medial prefrontal cortex is more critical for moral deliberation than moral intuition. Thus, we hypothesized that medial prefrontal activity would be increased during an explicit, but not an implicit, moral task. Participants (n=28) were scanned using fMRI while viewing 50 unpleasant pictures, half of which depicted moral violations. Half of the participants rated pictures on moral violation severity (explicit task) while the other half indicated whether pictures occurred indoors or outdoors (implicit task). As predicted, participants performing the explicit, but not the implicit, task showed increased ventromedial prefrontal activity while viewing moral pictures. Both groups showed increased temporo-parietal junction activity while viewing moral pictures. These results suggest that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may contribute more to moral deliberation than moral intuition, whereas the temporo-parietal junction may contribute more to moral intuition than moral deliberation.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

(A) Example moral, non-moral, and neutral pictures. (B) Example ‘moral trial’ for the explicit and implicit tasks.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

(A) Moral violation severity ratings by condition, indicating higher violation severity ratings in response to moral relative to non-moral and neutral pictures (Harenski et al., 2008). (B) Accuracy of indoor/outdoor ratings by condition, indicating higher accuracy for neutral relative to moral and non-moral pictures, but no significant difference for moral vs. non-moral pictures.

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Post-scan arousal ratings across conditions for explicit and implicit task participants. Both explicit and implicit task participants rated moral and non-moral pictures significantly higher on emotional arousal relative to neutral pictures. Participants who performed the explicit task rated moral pictures significantly higher on arousal relative to non-moral pictures, whereas no such effect was present in participants who performed the implicit task.

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

(A) Increased ventromedial prefrontal activity during moral picture viewing in explicit vs. implicit task participants. (B) Increased dorsolateral prefrontal activity during moral picture viewing in implicit vs. explicit task participants. (C) Percent signal change values for ventromedial prefrontal activity across moral and non-moral condition in explicit and implicit task participants. (D) Percent signal change values for dorsolateral prefrontal activity across moral and non-moral condition in explicit and implicit task participants.

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

(A) Positive correlation between ventromedial prefrontal activity (BA 10/11) and violation severity ratings of moral pictures in participants who performed the explicit task. (B) Positive correlation between medial prefrontal activity (BA 10) and post-scan emotional arousal ratings of moral pictures in participants who performed the implicit task.

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