Neural evidence for "intuitive prosecution": The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts
Name
SAxe-2011-IntuitiveProsecution.pdf
Size
573.83 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3072faaddcc3a6bd0a3839145c75f885
Author(s)
Saxe, Rebecca R.
Scholz, Jonathan
Young, Liane
Date Issued
January 2011
Journal
Social Neuroscience
Publisher
Informa UK (Taylor & Francis)
Citation
Young, Liane, Jonathan Scholz, and Rebecca Saxe. “Neural Evidence for ‘intuitive Prosecution’: The Use of Mental State Information for Negative Moral Verdicts.” Social Neuroscience 6.3 (2011): 302–315. Web. 13 Apr. 2012.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Moral judgment depends critically on theory of mind (ToM), reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions. People assign blame for failed attempts to harm and offer forgiveness in the case of accidents. Here we use fMRI to investigate the role of ToM in moral judgment of harmful vs. helpful actions. Is ToM deployed differently for judgments of blame vs. praise? Participants evaluated agents who produced a harmful, helpful, or neutral outcome, based on a harmful, helpful, or neutral intention; participants made blame and praise judgments. In the right temporo-parietal junction (right TPJ), and, to a lesser extent, the left TPJ and medial prefrontal cortex, the neural response reflected an interaction between belief and outcome factors, for both blame and praise judgments: The response in these regions was highest when participants delivered a negative moral judgment, i.e., assigned blame or withheld praise, based solely on the agent's intent (attempted harm, accidental help). These results show enhanced attention to mental states for negative moral verdicts based exclusively on mental state information.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2010.529712
