Moral dilemmas and moral principles: When emotion and cognition unite

Efficiency or equality? The utilitarianism-egalitarianism trade-off determines carbon allocation preference

International carbon allocation confronts the conflict between efficiency and equality. Previous research based on the intergroup bias perspective has attributed carbon allocation preference to the defence of ingroup interests (i.e., national interests) while overlooking the critical role of trade-offs between competing moral values. Integrating the contingency theory of justice and moral philosophical theories of utilitarianism and egalitarianism, we proposed that the moral-values trade-off between utilitarianism and egalitarianism determines carbon allocation preference through justice reasoning. Analysis of large-scale survey datasets (Study 1) revealed that aggregated national endorsement of utilitarianism over egalitarianism predicted greater efficiency preference in total and per capita carbon emission levels. Study 2 demonstrated that experimentally manipulating endorsement of utilitarianism versus egalitarianism boosted efficiency (vs. equality) preference in carbon allocation, and justice reasoning characterized by enhanced efficiency-focused justice and diminished equality-focused justice accounted for these effects. Using a 'manipulation-of-mediator' design, Study 3 further confirmed the causal link in the mediation model. By highlighting the significance of moral trade-offs in shaping carbon allocation preference, this research not only provides a novel moral perspective in understanding debates on international carbon allocation but also has important implications for fostering international carbon abatement cooperation.

Deontology and Utilitarianism in Real Life: A Set of Moral Dilemmas Based on Historic Events

Moral dilemmas are frequently used to examine psychological processes that drive decisions between adhering to deontological norms and optimizing the outcome. However, commonly used dilemmas are generally unrealistic and confound moral principle and (in)action so that results obtained with these dilemmas might not generalize to other situations. In the present research, we introduce new dilemmas that are based on real-life events. In two studies (a European student sample and a North American MTurk sample, total N = 789), we show that the new factual dilemmas were perceived to be more realistic and less absurd than commonly used dilemmas. In addition, factual dilemmas induced higher participant engagement. From this, we draw the preliminary conclusion that factual dilemmas are more suitable for investigating moral cognition. Moreover, factual dilemmas can be used to examine the generalizability of previous results concerning action (vs. inaction) and concerning a wider range of deontological norms.

Neural sensitivity to helping outcome predicts helping decision in real life

Prosocial helping behavior is a highly valued social practice across societies, but the willingness to help others varies among persons. In our opinion, that willingness should be associated with the sensitivity to helping outcome at the individual level - that is, increasing as a function of positive outcome sensitivity but decreasing as a function of negative outcome sensitivity. To examine this possibility, we asked participants to make helping decisions in a series of hypothetical scenarios, which provided outcome feedback (positive/negative) of those decisions. Event-related potential (ERP) response to helping outcome was recorded, such that the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300 were supposed to reflect the sensitivity to negative outcome and positive outcome, respectively. After the formal task, participants were asked if they would like to donate money to a charity. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that compared to those who were not willing to donate, the participants who donated money (22 of 41 individuals) showed a smaller FRN but a larger P300. Among these participants, the amount of donation was negatively correlated with FRN response to negative outcome, but positively correlated with P300 response to positive outcome. These findings support the importance of helping outcome sensitivity to prosocial behavior.

Using conflict negativity to index psychological tension between impartiality and status-upholding principles

People often endorse the moral principle that all human lives are equally valuable. At the same time, people often privilege high-status individuals over low-status individuals. These two inclinations come into conflict in a scenario involving the potential killing of a high-status person to save the lives of multiple low-status people. In the present study, participants viewed a series of sacrificial dilemmas in which the social status of the victims and beneficiaries was varied. We measured participants' choice (sacrifice vs. don't sacrifice), response time, and electroencephalographic activity, with an emphasis on conflict negativity (CN). Overall, we found no effects of victim/beneficiaries status on choice and response time. However, participants displayed a more pronounced CN effect when contemplating a high-status victim/low-status beneficiaries tradeoff than a low-status-victim/high-status beneficiaries tradeoff. Further analyses revealed that this effect was primarily driven by participants who endorsed deontological principles (e.g., "Some rules must never be broken, no matter the consequences"). In contrast, those who endorsed utilitarian principles displayed equivalent levels of conflict negativity, regardless of the social status of victims and beneficiaries. These findings shed light on the role of conflict in the phenomenology of moral decision making.

Trolley dilemma in the sky: Context matters when civilians and cadets make remotely piloted aircraft decisions

Crews operating remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs) in military operations may be among the few that truly experience tragic dilemmas similar to the famous Trolley Problem. In order to analyze decision-making and emotional conflict of RPA operators within Trolley-Problem-like dilemma situations, we created an RPA simulation that varied mission contexts (firefighter, military and surveillance as a control condition) and the social “value” of a potential victim. We found that participants (Air Force cadets and civilian students) were less likely to make the common utilitarian choice (sacrificing one to save five), when the value of the one increased, especially in the military context. However, in the firefighter context, this decision pattern was much less pronounced. The results demonstrate behavioral and justification differences when people are more invested in a particular context despite ostensibly similar dilemmas.

Episodic processes in moral decisions: Evidence from medial temporal lobe amnesia

Theoretical accounts of moral decision making imply distinct ways in which episodic memory processes may contribute to judgments about moral dilemmas that entail high conflict between a harmful action and a greater good resulting from such action. Yet, studies examining the status of moral judgment in amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) lesions have yielded inconsistent results. To examine whether and how episodic processes contribute to high conflict moral decisions, amnesic patients with MTL damage and control participants were asked to judge the moral acceptability of a harmful action across two conditions that differed in the framing of the moral question. We predicted that personal (but not abstract) framing would engage episodic processes involved in mental simulation, yielding a selective impairment in MTL patients in the personal framing condition. This prediction was not confirmed as neither patients nor controls were influenced by the framing of the moral question. With the exception of a patient whose lesion extended into the amygdala bilaterally, patients were less willing than controls to endorse the utilitarian option, rejecting the harmful action despite its beneficial outcome. They also rated actions as emotionally more intense than did controls. These findings suggest that episodic processes involved in mental simulation are necessary to prospectively evaluate action-outcome contingencies.

Moral Decision-Making, Stress, and Social Cognition in Frontline Workers vs. Population Groups During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Explorative Study

On March 9, 2020, Italy has gone into "lockdown" because of COVID-19 pandemic, with a national quarantine. All non-essential working activities and schools of all levels have been temporarily closed: consequently, the entire population have been forced to dramatically change their daily habits. The pandemic raised important psychological, moral, social, and economic issues. Our research focused on the moral decision-making of people during an emergency. This paper reports two studies. The aim of Study 1 was to evaluate moral decision-making, level of perceived stress, ability of mentalizing and empathy in university students and Italian workers. 224 front-line workers (FLW), 413 second-line workers (SLW), and 663 university students (US), during Italian Phase 1 of lockdown, completed an online questionnaire. The results of Study 1 showed that participants in the FLW group are more likely to choose utilitarian solutions and judge as morally acceptable actions finalized to saving lives of more people if this requires sacrificing a low number of individuals. At the same time, decision-making was experienced as less unpleasant and less arousing with respect to the other two groups, demonstrating a greater ability to keep emotional control under pressure. In Study 2, we compared the same variables used in Study 1, selecting two professional categories from the FLW group engaged in emergency during COVID-19, namely healthcare providers (n = 82) and public safety personnel (n = 117). Our results showed that healthcare providers were more stressed and emotionally involved than public safety personnel, with higher empathic concern and arousal in moral decision-making. We suggest it is essential providing immediate psychological support and monitoring physical and emotional well-being for workers in the front-line during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to prevent experiences of moral distress or mental health problems.

Interindividual neural differences in moral decision-making are mediated by alpha power and delta/theta phase coherence

As technology in Artificial Intelligence has developed, the question of how to program driverless cars to respond to an emergency has arisen. It was recently shown that approval of the consequential behavior of driverless cars varied with the number of lives saved and showed interindividual differences, with approval increasing alongside the number of lives saved. In the present study, interindividual differences in individualized moral decision-making at both the behavioral and neural level were investigated using EEG. It was found that alpha event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) and delta/theta phase-locking - intertrial coherence (ITC) and phase-locking value (PLV) - play a central role in mediating interindividual differences in Moral decision-making. In addition, very late alpha activity differences between individualized and shared stimuli, and delta/theta ITC, where shown to be closely related to reaction time and subjectively perceived emotional distress. This demonstrates that interindividual differences in Moral decision-making are mediated neuronally by various markers - late alpha ERSP, and delta/theta ITC - as well as psychologically by reaction time and perceived emotional distress. Our data show, for the first time, how and according to which neuronal and behavioral measures interindividual differences in Moral dilemmas can be measured.

Selective changes in moral judgment by noninvasive brain stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex

Multiple cortical networks intervene in moral judgment, among which the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the medial prefrontal structures (medial PFC) emerged as two major territories, which have been traditionally attributed, respectively, to cognitive control and affective reactions. However, some recent theoretical and empirical accounts disputed this dualistic approach to moral evaluation. In the present study, to further assess the functional contribution of the medial PFC in moral judgment, we modulated its cortical excitability by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and tracked the change in response to different types of moral dilemmas, including switch-like and footbridge-like moral dilemmas, with and without personal involvement. One hundred participants (50 males) completed a questionnaire to assess the baseline levels of deontology. Next, participants were randomly assigned to receive anodal, sham, or cathodal tDCS over the medial prefrontal structures and then were asked to address a series of dilemmas. The results showed that participants who received anodal stimulation over the medial PFC provided more utilitarian responses to switch-like (but not footbridge-like) dilemmas than those who received cathodal tDCS. We also found that neurostimulation modulated the influence that deontology has on moral choices. Specifically, in the anodal tDCS group, participants' decisions were less likely to be influenced by their baseline levels of deontology compared with the sham or cathodal groups. Overall, our results seem to refute a functional role of the medial prefrontal structures purely restricted to affective reactions for moral dilemmas, providing new insights on the functional contribution of the medial PFC in moral judgment.

Are Moral and Socio-conventional Knowledge Impaired in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury?

Objective

The aim of this study was to investigate explicit moral and socio-conventional knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients.

Method

A group of 28 TBI patients was tested on a new set of moral and socio-conventional items. Responses of TBI patients were compared with those of 28 matched controls. Participants had to report how hard would be to perform specific moral or socio-conventional transgressions, using a 10-point Likert scale. We analyzed our data through mixed-effects models, to jointly assess by-participants and by-items variance. The factors considered were Type of Item (Moral vs. Socio-conventional) and Group (TBI vs. Controls).

Results

Results revealed a significant interaction between Type of Item and Group (χ2[1] = 25.5, p < .001). Simple-effects analyses showed that TBI, as Controls, were able to differentiate moral and socio-conventional transgressions (χ2[1] = 72.3, p < .001), as they deemed the former as more difficult to enact. TBI patients, however, evaluated moral transgressions as easier to fulfill (χ2[1] = 12.2, p = .001).

Conclusions

TBI patients can clearly differentiate moral and socio-conventional transgressions, suggesting that the explicit knowledge of these two dimensions is spared. TBI patients, however, considered moral transgressions as easier to fulfill with respect to Controls. This finding may suggest a tendency in TBI patients to underestimate the weight of moral transgressions.

Two Models of Moral Judgment

This paper compares two theories and their two corresponding computational models of human moral judgment. In order to better address psychological realism and generality of theories of moral judgment, more detailed and more psychologically nuanced models are needed. In particular, a motivationally based theory of moral judgment (and its corresponding computational model) is developed in this paper that provides a more accurate account of human moral judgment than an existing emotion-reason conflict theory. Simulations based on the theory capture and explain a range of relevant human data. They account not only for the original data that were used to support the emotion-reason conflict theory, but also for a wider range of data and phenomena.

Adolescent Emotional Maturation through Divergent Models of Brain Organization

In this article we introduce the hypothesis that neuropsychological adolescent maturation, and in particular emotional management, may have opposing explanations depending on the interpretation of the assumed brain architecture, that is, whether a componential computational account (CCA) or a dynamic systems perspective (DSP) is used. According to CCA, cognitive functions are associated with the action of restricted brain regions, and this association is temporally stable; by contrast, DSP argues that cognitive functions are better explained by interactions between several brain areas, whose engagement in specific functions is temporal and context-dependent and based on neural reuse. We outline the main neurobiological facts about adolescent maturation, focusing on the neuroanatomical and neurofunctional processes associated with adolescence. We then explain the importance of emotional management in adolescent maturation. We explain the interplay between emotion and cognition under the scope of CCA and DSP, both at neural and behavioral levels. Finally, we justify why, according to CCA, emotional management is understood as regulation, specifically because the cognitive aspects of the brain are in charge of regulating emotion-related modules. However, the key word in DSP is integration, since neural information from different brain areas is integrated from the beginning of the process. Consequently, although the terms should not be conceptually confused, there is no cognition without emotion, and vice versa. Thus, emotional integration is not an independent process that just happens to the subject, but a crucial part of personal growth. Considering the importance of neuropsychological research in the development of educational and legal policies concerning adolescents, we intend to expose that the holistic view of adolescents is dependent on whether one holds the implicit or explicit interpretation of brain functioning.

Behavioral and autonomic reactivity to moral dilemmas in frontotemporal dementia versus Alzheimer's disease

The personal/impersonal distinction of moral decision-making postulates intuitive emotional responses from medial frontal activity and rational evaluation from lateral frontal activity. This model can be analyzed in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a disorder characterized by impaired emotional intuitions, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) involvement, and relative sparing of lateral frontal regions. Moral dilemmas were presented to 10 bvFTD, 11 Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 9 healthy control (HC) participants while recording skin conductance responses, a measure of emotional arousal. We evaluated their personal versus impersonal conflict, subjective discomfort, and adherence to social norms. Replicating prior work, bvFTD participants were more willing to harm in the personal, but not the impersonal, dilemma compared to AD and HC groups. BvFTD participants had lower arousal and less of an increase in conflict on the personal versus the impersonal dilemma, in contrast to increased arousal and conflict for the AD and HC groups. Furthermore, bvFTD participants verbalized less discomfort, a correlate of low adherence to social norms. These findings support impaired emotional reactions to moral dilemmas in bvFTD and vmPFC lesions and the personal/impersonal model. It suggests a reversion to utilitarian-like considerations when emotional intuition is impaired in the brain.

United we stand, divided we fall: Cognition, emotion, and the moral link between them

Contrary to Greene's dual-process theory of moral judgment (Greene 2013), this commentary suggests that the network view of the brain proposed by Pessoa, in which emotion and cognition may be used as labels in the context of certain behaviors, but will not map clearly into compartmentalized pieces of the brain, could represent a better explanation of the rationale behind people's moral behavior.

Surviving at any cost: guilt expression following extreme ethical conflicts in a virtual setting

Studying human behavior in response to large-scale catastrophic events, particularly how moral challenges would be undertaken under extreme conditions, is an important preoccupation for contemporary scientists and decision leaders. However, researching this issue was hindered by the lack of readily available models. Immersive virtual worlds could represent a solution, by providing ways to test human behavior in controlled life-threatening situations. Using a massively multi-player zombie apocalypse setting, we analysed spontaneously reported feelings of guilt following ethically questionable actions related to survival. The occurrence and magnitude of guilt depended on the nature of the consequences of the action. Furthermore, feelings of guilt predicted long-lasting changes in behavior, displayed as compensatory actions. Finally, actions inflicting immediate harm to others appeared mostly prompted by panic and were more commonly regretted. Thus, extreme conditions trigger a reduction of the impact of ethical norms in decision making, although awareness of ethicality is retained to a surprising extent.