Simulating murder: the aversion to harmful action

A large-scale investigation of everyday moral dilemmas

Questions of right and wrong are central to daily life, yet scientific understanding of everyday moral dilemmas is limited. We conducted a data-driven analysis of these phenomena by combining state-of-the-art tools in machine learning with survey-based methods. We extracted and analyzed 369,161 descriptions ("posts") and 11 M evaluations ("comments") of dilemmas from the largest known online repository of everyday moral dilemmas: Reddit's "Am I the Asshole?" Users described a wide variety of everyday dilemmas on topics ranging from broken promises to privately held emotions. Dilemmas involving relational obligations were the most frequently reported, while those pertaining to honesty were the most frequently condemned. The types of dilemmas people experienced depended on the interpersonal closeness of the interactants, with some dilemmas (e.g. politeness) more prominent in distant-other interactions and others (e.g. relational transgressions) more prominent in close-other interactions. A preregistered follow-up investigation showed that similar dilemmas are reported in a census-stratified representative sample of the US population (n = 510). Overall, this paper highlights the diversity of moral dilemmas experienced in daily life and contributes to the development of a moral psychology grounded in the vagaries of everyday experience.

Children's moral self-concept relates to moral judgment, but not to arousal

We investigated the relationships among the moral self-concept, arousal reactions to third-party moral situations, and moral judgment in 5- to 7-year-old children (N = 59). Children's moral self-concept was assessed using a puppet task. In addition, children were shown audiovisual scenes depicting prosocial, antisocial, and neutral interactions between children. We measured phasic pupil dilation responses to the actions and collected children's judgments of the actions. The results show that children judged antisocial behavior as more negative and prosocial behavior as more positive than neutral behavior. In addition, children showed significantly higher arousal when observing antisocial behavior compared with neutral and prosocial behavior. Moreover, children's moral judgment related to their arousal: the more negative the moral judgment, the higher the arousal, even in prosocial and neutral scenarios. Finally, children's moral self-concept correlated with their explicit judgments, but not with their physiological arousal. These results support developmental theories suggesting a relationship between the moral self and moral judgment.

The closer you are, the more it hurts: the impact of proximity on moral decision-making

Moral dilemmas arise when individuals must navigate conflicts between competing moral principles. Sacrificial dilemmas are widely used to examine factors influencing decision-making (DM). This study explored how proximity affects moral DM using computer-based interactive videos depicting variations of the Footbridge Dilemma, aiming to clarify how contextual factors shape moral evaluations. In Study 1, scenarios required varying levels of physical proximity between the decision-maker and the victim, mirroring real-world behavioural patterns. Participants' choices (utilitarian vs. deontological), response times (RTs), and emotional responses (factual and counterfactual) were analysed. Study 2 controlled for action type while manipulating only the visual representation of distance, allowing for an isolated examination of perceived proximity's impact. The findings suggest that significant differences in physical perceived distance influence moral choices, whereas minor variations do not meaningfully affect decisions. Counterfactual emotions emerged as key drivers of moral judgment, shaping participants' responses to dilemmas. Future research should extend these findings to non-hypothetical contexts. The implications span clinical practice, legal systems, and artificial intelligence, offering insights for both theoretical advancements and practical applications.

How Moral Beliefs Influence Collective Violence. Evidence From Lynching in Mexico

How do moral beliefs influence favorability to collective violence? In this article, I argue that, first, moral beliefs are influential depending on their salience, as harm avoidance is a common moral concern. The more accessible moral beliefs in decision-making, the more they restrain harmful behavior. Second, moral beliefs are influential depending on their content. Group-oriented moral beliefs can overturn the harm avoidance principle and motivate individuals to favor collective violence. Analysis is based on a representative survey in Mexico City and focuses on a proximate form of collective violence, locally called lynching. Findings support both logics of moral influence. Experimentally induced moral salience reduces favorability to lynching, and group-oriented moral beliefs are related to more favorability. Against existing theories that downplay the relevance of morality and present it as cheap talk, these findings demonstrate how moral beliefs can both restrain and motivate collective violence.

Morality in Our Mind and Across Cultures and Politics

Moral judgments differ across cultures and politics, but they share a common theme in our minds: perceptions of harm. Both cultural ethnographies on moral values and psychological research on moral cognition highlight this shared focus on harm. Perceptions of harm are constructed from universal cognitive elements-including intention, causation, and suffering-but depend on the cultural context, allowing many values to arise from a common moral mind. This review traces the concept of harm across philosophy, cultural anthropology, and psychology, then discusses how different values (e.g., purity) across various taxonomies are grounded in perceived harm. We then explore two theories connecting culture to cognition-modularity and constructionism-before outlining how pluralism across human moral judgment is explained by the constructed nature of perceived harm. We conclude by showing how different perceptions of harm help drive political disagreements and reveal how sharing stories of harm can help bridge moral divides.

Neurostructural correlates of harm action/outcome aversion: The role of empathy

Harm aversion is essential for normal human functioning; however, the neuroanatomical mechanisms underlying harm aversion remain unclear. To explore this issue, we examined the brain structures associated with the two distinct dimensions of harm aversion (harm action/outcome aversion) and the potential mediating role of the four aspects of empathy: fantasy, perspective-taking, empathic concern, and personal distress. A sample of 214 healthy young adults underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. Voxel-based morphometry was used to assess regional gray matter volume (rGMV) and regional gray matter density (rGMD). Whole-brain multiple regression analysis revealed significant correlations between harm action aversion and rGMV/rGMD in various brain regions, including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and precuneus for both rGMV and rGMD, the cerebellum for rGMV, and the superior frontal gyrus for rGMD. The rGMV/rGMD in the IFG and the rGMD in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) were correlated with harm outcome aversion. Utilizing 10-fold balanced cross-validation analysis, we confirmed the robustness of these significant associations between rGMV/rGMD in these brain regions and harm action/outcome aversion. Importantly, mediation analysis revealed that empathic concern mediated the relationship between rGMV/rGMD in the precuneus and harm action aversion. Additionally, empathic concern, personal distress, and total empathy mediated the relationship between rGMD in the S1 and harm outcome aversion. These findings enhance our understanding of the neural mechanism of harm aversion by integrating insights from the brain structure, harm aversion, and the personality hierarchy models while also extending the frontal asymmetry model of Emotion.

Interoceptive Brain Processing Influences Moral Decision Making

Not harming others is widely regarded as a fundamental tenet of human morality. Harm aversion based on the consequences of an action is called utilitarianism while focusing on the action itself is associated with deontology. This study investigated how interoceptive processing affects the neural processing of utilitarian and deontological moral decision-making. The study utilized the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP), an averaged electrophysiological component from electroencephalogram (EEG) to gauge cardiac interoceptive processing. Twenty-seven participants were asked to make utilitarian and deontological decisions for personal and impersonal moral dilemmas (18 for each) with direct and indirect harm actions, respectively, while their EEG and electrocardiogram were being recorded. We found no difference in HEPs between personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. In contrast, differential HEPs were observed between utilitarian and deontological moral decision-making, regardless of type of dilemmas. Significant differences were observed over centro-posterior electrodes between 110 and 172 milliseconds after R-peaks during the Scenario Phase, and over right fronto-temporal electrodes between 314 and 404 milliseconds after R-peaks in the Decision Phase. We confirmed that these differences in HEP amplitude between deontological and utilitarian decisions did not stem from cardiac artifacts. These findings reveal that the brain utilizes interoceptive information to make subsequent moral decisions.

Robots are both anthropomorphized and dehumanized when harmed intentionally

The harm-made mind phenomenon implies that witnessing intentional harm towards agents with ambiguous minds, such as robots, leads to augmented mind perception in these agents. We conducted two replications of previous work on this effect and extended it by testing if robots that detect and simulate emotions elicit a stronger harm-made mind effect than robots that do not. Additionally, we explored if someone is perceived as less prosocial when harming a robot compared to treating it kindly. The harm made mind-effect was replicated: participants attributed a higher capacity to experience pain to the robot when it was harmed, compared to when it was not harmed. We did not find evidence that this effect was influenced by the robot's ability to detect and simulate emotions. There were significant but conflicting direct and indirect effects of harm on the perception of mind in the robot: while harm had a positive indirect effect on mind perception in the robot through the perceived capacity for pain, the direct effect of harm on mind perception was negative. This suggests that robots are both anthropomorphized and dehumanized when harmed intentionally. Additionally, the results showed that someone is perceived as less prosocial when harming a robot compared to treating it kindly.

The "Dark Side" of Community Ties: Collective Action and Lynching in Mexico

Lynching remains a common form of collective punishment for alleged wrongdoers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia today. Unlike other kinds of collective violence, lynching is usually not carried out by standing organizations. How do lynch mobs overcome the high barriers to violent collective action? I argue that they draw on local community ties to compensate for a lack of centralized organization. Lynch mobs benefit from solidarity and peer pressure, which facilitate collective action. The study focuses on Mexico, where lynching is prevalent and often amounts to the collective beating of thieves. Based on original survey data from Mexico City and a novel lynching event dataset covering the whole of Mexico, I find that individuals with more ties in their communities participate more often in lynching, and municipalities with more highly integrated communities have higher lynching rates. As community ties and lynching may be endogenously related, I also examine the posited mechanisms and the causal direction. Findings reveal that municipalities exposed to a recent major earthquake-an event that tends to increase community ties-subsequently experienced increased levels of lynching. Importantly, I find that interpersonal trust is unrelated to lynching, thus showing that different aspects of social capital have diverging consequences for collective violence, with community ties revealing a "dark side."

EEG Correlates of Moral Decision-Making: Effect of Choices and Offers Types

BACKGROUND

Moral decision-making consists of a complex process requiring individuals to evaluate potential consequences of personal and social decisions, including applied organizational contexts.

METHODS

This research aims to investigate the behavioral (offer responses and reaction times, RTs) and electrophysiological (EEG) correlates underlying moral decision-making during three different choice conditions (professional fit, company fit, and social fit) and offers (fair, unfair, and neutral).

RESULTS

An increase of delta and theta frontal activity (related to emotional behavior and processes) and beta frontal and central activity (linked to cognitive and attentional processes) was found. A left beta, delta, and theta frontal activity was observed for fair offers in professional fit conditions, while increased right frontal delta and theta activity was found in response to unfair offers in company fit conditions. Also, an increase of left delta and theta parietal activity for unfair offers in social fit condition was detected. Finally, higher accepted responses were found for fair and neutral offers in professional and social fit conditions, with increased RTs for unfair offers suggesting decisions' cognitive load and complexity.

CONCLUSIONS

By revealing a greater involvement of left and right frontal areas in decision-making processes based on choices and offers, personal interest evaluations and emotional values, and of parietal areas in more prosocial and altruistic moral behavior, current findings provide information about the neural and behavioral correlates underlying company moral behavior.

The Utilitarian Virtual Self - Using Embodied Personalized Avatars to Investigate Moral Decision-Making in Semi-Autonomous Vehicle Dilemmas

Embodied personalized avatars are a promising new tool to investigate moral decision-making by transposing the user into the "middle of the action" in moral dilemmas. Here, we tested whether avatar personalization and motor control could impact moral decision-making, physiological reactions and reaction times, as well as embodiment, presence and avatar perception. Seventeen participants, who had their personalized avatars created in a previous study, took part in a range of incongruent (i.e., harmful action led to better overall outcomes) and congruent (i.e., harmful action led to trivial outcomes) moral dilemmas as the drivers of a semi-autonomous car. They embodied four different avatars (counterbalanced - personalized motor control, personalized no motor control, generic motor control, generic no motor control). Overall, participants took a utilitarian approach by performing harmful actions only to maximize outcomes. We found increased physiological arousal (SCRs and heart rate) for personalized avatars compared to generic avatars, and increased SCRs in motor control conditions compared to no motor control. Participants had slower reaction times when they had motor control over their avatars, possibly hinting at more elaborate decision-making processes. Presence was also higher in motor control compared to no motor control conditions. Embodiment ratings were higher for personalized avatars, and generally, personalization and motor control were perceptually positive features. These findings highlight the utility of personalized avatars and open up a range of future research possibilities that could benefit from the affordances of this technology and simulate, more closely than ever, real-life action.

You're heartless, I'm less: self-image and social norms in moral judgment

Are moral judgments to sacrificial dilemmas shaped by a latent social norm? The present research addresses this issue. We report a set of six studies (plus a supplementary one) which question the existence of a social norm in the longstanding deontism/utilitarian debate by relying on two original tools, namely substitution technique and self-presentation paradigm. Study 1 showed that American participants asked to answer like most Americans would do gave more utilitarian responses than control participants who answered in their own name (Study 1). Study 2 showed that participants instructed to answer in a disapproval fashion were more utilitarian than both participants instructed to answer in an approval fashion and control participants. Importantly, no difference was observed between the approval and control conditions, suggesting that participants naturally align their moral judgments with a latent norm they think is the most socially desirable. Studies 3-5 explored in addition the effect of the activation of a deontism-skewed norm using the substitution instruction on subsequent impression formation. For the latter task, participants were instructed to evaluate a random participant selected from a previous study who gave utilitarian-like responses (Studies 3a-3b), or to evaluate a fictitious politician who endorsed either a deontic or utilitarian orientation (Studies 4-5). Although we consistently replicated the effect of substitution instruction, we failed to show that attempts to activate a norm in a given individual shaped their evaluation of other people who do not align with this norm. Finally, we report a mini meta-analysis targeting the pooled effect and homogeneity among our studies.

Common Mechanisms Underlying the Effect of Angry Rumination on Reactive and Proactive Aggression: A Moderated Mediation Model

The different influencing factors and mechanisms of the two basic kinds of aggression (i.e., reactive and proactive aggression) are salient. However, they also have common influencing factors and mechanisms, which are ignored to some extent. In addition, discovering the common mechanisms is conducive to further revealing the nature and law of aggression. To address these issues, this study tested a relational model incorporating angry rumination, moral disengagement, harm aversion, reactive aggression, and proactive aggression from the perspective of aggressive motivation. A total of 1,186 undergraduate students from eight universities were recruited. The results showed that angry rumination was significantly associated with reactive and proactive aggression. Importantly, moral disengagement acted as a common mediator, and harm aversion acted as a common moderator in the effect of angry rumination on reactive and proactive aggression. Specifically, the enhancement effects of low levels of harm aversion on these relationships are due to that it could promote the effects of angry rumination on the common mediator of moral disengagement. An aggressive motivation perspective was developed to comprehensively explain the common mediating and moderating effects. The present study contributes to a greater understanding of the mechanisms of reactive and proactive aggression and how aggressive motivations shape the model of aggressive behavior. These findings support and extend current aggression theories, especially aggression motivation theories. This study could provide insights for targeted aggression prevention interventions.

What We Do When We Define Morality (And Why We Need to Do It)

All psychological research on morality relies on definitions of morality. Yet the various definitions often go unstated. When unstated definitions diverge, theoretical disagreements become intractable, as theories that purport to explain "morality" actually talk about very different things. This article argues for the importance of defining morality and considers four common ways of doing so: The linguistic, the functionalist, the evaluating, and the normative. Each has encountered difficulties. To surmount those difficulties, I propose a technical, psychological, empirical, and distinctive definition of morality: obligatory concerns with others' welfare, rights, fairness, and justice, as well as the reasoning, judgment, emotions, and actions that spring from those concerns. By articulating workable definitions of morality, psychologists can communicate more clearly across paradigms, separate definitional from empirical disagreements, and jointly advance the field of moral psychology.

Development of beliefs about censorship

Across four studies (total N = 431), we examined 5- to 10-year-old children's choices to censor depictions of harm. In all studies, children learned about (fictional) movies that depicted harmful behaviors and decided whether specific audiences should be allowed to watch those movies. In Study 1, children often censored depictions of harms and did so similarly when considering both themselves and another hypothetical child as the viewer. At the same time, children did not censor indiscriminately: Children censored depictions of intentional harms more than accidental harms and, in Study 2, children (and adults; N = 101) censored harms (especially intentional ones) more from younger versus older audiences. In Studies 3 and 4, we more directly tested children's motivations for censoring harms, examining dual potential motivations of 1) preventing viewers from feeling sad; and 2) preventing viewers from being inspired to engage in harmful behaviors. We found that children who were motivated to avoid inspiring harmful behaviors were especially likely to censor depictions of harmful intentions. Together, our results indicate that children make sophisticated decisions regarding censorship and underscore an early emerging motivation to disrupt cascades of harmful behavior. These findings hold implications for children's thinking about the psychological and behavioral consequences of harm and for children's thinking about the potential effects of media on themselves and others.

The Implications of Moral Neuroscience for Brain Disease: Review and Update

The last 2 decades have seen an explosion of neuroscience research on morality, with significant implications for brain disease. Many studies have proposed a neuromorality based on intuitive sentiments or emotions aimed at maintaining collaborative social groups. These moral emotions are normative, deontological, and action based, with a rapid evaluation of intentionality. The neuromoral circuitry interacts with the basic mechanisms of socioemotional cognition, including social perception, behavioral control, theory of mind, and social emotions such as empathy. Moral transgressions may result from primary disorders of moral intuitions, or they may be secondary moral impairments from disturbances in these other socioemotional cognitive mechanisms. The proposed neuromoral system for moral intuitions has its major hub in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and engages other frontal regions as well as the anterior insulae, anterior temporal lobe structures, and right temporoparietal junction and adjacent posterior superior temporal sulcus. Brain diseases that affect these regions, such as behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, may result in primary disturbances of moral behavior, including criminal behavior. Individuals with focal brain tumors and other lesions in the right temporal and medial frontal regions have committed moral violations. These transgressions can have social and legal consequences for the individuals and require increased awareness of neuromoral disturbances among such individuals with brain diseases.

Ordinary citizens are more severe towards verbal than nonverbal hate-motivated incidents with identical consequences

Do we judge hate incidents similarly when they are performed using words or bodily actions? Hate speech incidents are rarely reported by bystanders, and whether or how much they should be punished remains a matter of legal, theoretical and social disagreement. In a pre-registered study (N = 1309), participants read about verbal and nonverbal attacks stemming from identical hateful intent, which created the same consequences for the victims. We asked them how much punishment the perpetrator should receive, how likely they would be to denounce such an incident and how much harm they judged the victim suffered. The results contradicted our pre-registered hypotheses and the predictions of dual moral theories, which hold that intention and harmful consequences are the sole psychological determinants of punishment. Instead, participants consistently rated verbal hate attacks as more deserving of punishment, denunciation and being more harmful to the victim than nonverbal attacks. This difference is explained by the concept of action aversion, suggesting that lay observers have different intrinsic associations with interactions involving words compared to bodily actions, regardless of consequences. This explanation has implications for social psychology, moral theories, and legislative efforts to sanction hate speech, which are considered. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 29/06/2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Z86TV .

Moral decision-making in pettism: The influence of animal type, pet ownership status, and social distance

Speciesism prioritizes humans over animals and pets. Nevertheless, pet owners have a strong attachment bond with their pets, which makes their hierarchical view of pets less clear. Aiming to examine this issue, we present a dilemma involving animals and humans that allowed us to investigate whether animal type, social distance, and pet ownership status can affect moral decision-making related to pets. Save-willingness results showed that in the moral dilemmas of pets versus livestock versus wild animals (Studies 1a and 2a) and their own pets versus strangers (Studies 1b and 2b), pet owners prioritize pets whereas non-owners prioritize pets (Studies 1a and 2a) and strangers (Studies 1b and 2b). Pet owners prefer to save pets more than do non-owners (Study 1a), and this effect was only observed in females (Study 2a). Save-decision results showed that in the moral dilemmas of pets versus livestock versus wild animals (Study 2a), pet owners prioritize pets whereas in the dilemmas of pets versus strangers (Study 2b), pet owners prioritize strangers. The same result was found in non-owners. Pet owners prefer more than do non-owners to save pets (Study 2). Overall, the separation of save-willingness and save-decision results revealed that pet owners show special speciesism (i.e., pettism).

The needs of the many: Exploring associations of personality with third-party judgments of public health-related utilitarian rule violations

Safeguarding the rights of minorities is crucial for just societies. However, there are conceivable situations where minority rights might seriously impede the rights of the majority. Favoring the minority in such cases constitutes a violation of utilitarian principles. To explore the emotional, cognitive, and punitive responses of observers of such utilitarian rule transgressions, we conducted an online study with 1004 participants. Two moral scenarios (vaccine policy and epidemic) were rephrased in the third-party perspective. In both public health-related scenarios, the protagonist opted against the utilitarian option, which resulted in more fatalities in total, but avoided harm to a minority. Importantly, in vaccine policy, members of the minority cannot be identified beforehand and thus harm to them would have been rather accidental. Contrariwise, in epidemic, minority members are identifiable and would have needed to be deliberately selected. While the majority of participants chose not to punish the scenarios' protagonists at all, 30.1% judged that protecting the minority over the interests of the majority when only accidental harm would have occurred (vaccine policy) was worthy of punishment. In comparison, only 11.2% opted to punish a protagonist whose decision avoided deliberately selecting (and thus harming) a minority at the cost of the majority (epidemic). Emotional responses and appropriateness ratings paralleled these results. Furthermore, complex personality × situation interactions revealed the influence of personality features, i.e., trait psychopathy, empathy, altruism, authoritarianism, need for cognition and faith in intuition, on participants' responses. The results further underscore the need to consider the interaction of situational features and inter-individual differences in moral decisions and sense of justice.

Anticipatory Stress Increases Deontological Inclinations: The Mediating Role of Emotional Valence

Previous studies have explored the differences in moral judgments under normal situations and acute stress using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). The present study examined whether anticipatory stress (i.e., induced by an anticipated speech) could elicit similar effects and further explored the mediation of emotional responses between acute stress and moral judgments with a process-dissociation approach. Fifty-three undergraduate students (20 males and 33 females) were randomly assigned to the stress and control groups. In the first stage, they were instructed to prepare a public speech (the stress group) or just recall events during the previous vacation (the control group). In the second stage, they reported emotional valence and arousal for each moral dilemma in a set of 12 moral dilemmas, followed by judgments on moral acceptability of the agent's action. The manipulation check confirmed that anticipatory stress was reliably induced, as indicated in both self-reported and physiological data. The traditional dilemma analysis revealed that participants in the stress group would make fewer utilitarian judgments than those in the control group. The process dissociation (PD) analyses further revealed that the stress group exhibited higher deontological inclinations than the control group, but no significant differences in utilitarian inclinations. Emotional valence played a mediating role in the association between stress and deontological inclinations. To sum up, our study extended the investigation of the relationship between acute stress and moral judgment to anticipatory stress, clarified its distinct impact on deontological and utilitarian inclinations, and revealed the mediating effect of emotional valence.

How Imagination and Memory Shape the Moral Mind

Interdisciplinary research has proposed a multifaceted view of human cognition and morality, establishing that inputs from multiple cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions. However, extant work on moral cognition has largely overlooked the contributions of episodic representation. The ability to remember or imagine a specific moment in time plays a broadly influential role in cognition and behavior. Yet, existing research has only begun exploring the influence of episodic representation on moral cognition. Here, we evaluate the theoretical connections between episodic representation and moral cognition, review emerging empirical work revealing how episodic representation affects moral decision-making, and conclude by highlighting gaps in the literature and open questions. We argue that a comprehensive model of moral cognition will require including the episodic memory system, further delineating its direct influence on moral thought, and better understanding its interactions with other mental processes to fundamentally shape our sense of right and wrong.

The role of episodic simulation in motivating commonplace harms

Every day, people face choices which could produce negative outcomes for others, and understanding these decisions is a major aim of social psychology. Here, we show that episodic simulation - a key psychological process implicated in other types of social and moral decision-making - can play a surprising role. Across six experiments, we find that imagining performing actions which adversely affect others makes people report a higher likelihood of performing those actions in the future. This effect happens, in part, because when people construe the actions as morally justified (as they often do spontaneously), imagining doing it makes them feel good. These findings stand in contrast to traditional accounts of harm aversion in moral psychology, and instead contribute to a growing body of evidence that people often cast harming others in a positive light.

How power affects moral judgments: The role of intuitive thinking

Power affects how people think about moral issues, and has been found to elicit deontological moral judgments. We hypothesized that powerholders' propensity to rely on intuitive thinking would trigger deontological moral choices. In two studies, power was induced by role simulation tasks and participants then made a judgment on a moral dilemma that did not involve bodily harm. In Study 1 memory cognitive load was manipulated to induce an intuitive processing style, and in Study 2 deliberation was induced by asking participants to deliver strong arguments. Results of Study 1 show that high power led to deontological judgments regardless of cognitive load, and cognitive load enhanced deontological preferences among powerless individuals. In Study 2 we found that deliberation shifted the judgments of powerholders toward utilitarianism. These results extend prior findings and reinforce the links between power and deontology. The findings suggest that powerholders' preference for deontological moral judgments is driven by their reliance on intuitive thinking.

The heart as judge: Association of heart rate variability with moral judgment-A replication study

There is growing research into contributing processes and biological correlates of moral inclinations. Recently, a negative association between utilitarianism and resting heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of cardiac vagal tone / parasympathetic activity was reported. We aimed to replicate and extend these findings by additionally investigating the sympathetic parameter electro-dermal activity (EDA), but found no associations in the total sample (N = 157). However, when taking sex and the use of combined oral contraceptives (COC) into account, we found a positive association between HRV and estimated deontology in women using COC and men, while in free cycling women there was a negative association. While no direct replication, our results also point to associations between higher HRV and decreased endorsement of harmful actions that serve a greater good. Unlike HRV, EDA showed no associations with moral judgements. In addition, there were correlations between personality traits and moral judgement.

Moral judgment, decision times and emotional salience of a new developed set of sacrificial manual driving dilemmas

The growing interest in the subject of moral judgment in driver and autonomous vehicle behavior highlights the importance of investigating the suitability of sacrificial dilemmas as experimental tools in the context of traffic psychology. To this aim a set of validated sacrificial trolley problems and a new set of trolley-like driving dilemmas were compared through an online survey experiment, providing normative values for rates of participants' choices; decision times; evaluation of emotional valence and arousal experienced during the decision process; and ratings of the moral acceptability. Results showed that while both sets of dilemmas led to a more frequent selection of utilitarian outcomes, the driving-type dilemmas seemed to enhance faster decisions mainly based on the utilitarian moral code. No further differences were observed between the two sets, confirming the reliability of the moral dilemma tool in the investigation of moral driving behaviors. We suggest that as moral judgments and behaviors become more lifelike, the individual's moral inclination emerge more automatically and effectively. This new driving-type dilemma set may help researchers who work in traffic psychology and moral decision-making to approach the complex task of developing realistic moral scenarios more easily in the context of autonomous and nonautonomous transportation.

Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)

Observed variability and complexity of judgments of "right" and "wrong" cannot be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In response to this challenge, we present a novel perspective on categorization in moral judgment. Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC) incorporates principles of category formation research while addressing key challenges of existing approaches to moral judgment. People develop skills in making context-relevant categorizations. They learn that various objects (events, behaviors, people, etc.) can be categorized as morally right or wrong. Repetition and rehearsal result in reliable, habitualized categorizations. According to this skill-formation account of moral categorization, the learning and the habitualization of the forming of moral categories occur within goal-directed activity that is sensitive to various contextual influences. By allowing for the complexity of moral judgments, MJAC offers greater explanatory power than existing approaches while also providing opportunities for a diverse range of new research questions.

Many heads are more utilitarian than one

Moral judgments have a very prominent social nature, and in everyday life, they are continually shaped by discussions with others. Psychological investigations of these judgments, however, have rarely addressed the impact of social interactions. To examine the role of social interaction on moral judgments within small groups, we had groups of 4 to 5 participants judge moral dilemmas first individually and privately, then collectively and interactively, and finally individually a second time. We employed both real-life and sacrificial moral dilemmas in which the character's action or inaction violated a moral principle to benefit the greatest number of people. Participants decided if these utilitarian decisions were morally acceptable or not. In Experiment 1, we found that collective judgments in face-to-face interactions were more utilitarian than the statistical aggregate of their members compared to both first and second individual judgments. This observation supported the hypothesis that deliberation and consensus within a group transiently reduce the emotional burden of norm violation. In Experiment 2, we tested this hypothesis more directly: measuring participants' state anxiety in addition to their moral judgments before, during, and after online interactions, we found again that collectives were more utilitarian than those of individuals and that state anxiety level was reduced during and after social interaction. The utilitarian boost in collective moral judgments is probably due to the reduction of stress in the social setting.

Reduced utilitarian willingness to violate personal rights during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic poses many real-world moral dilemmas, which can pit the needs and rights of the many against the needs and rights of the few. We investigated moral judgments in the context of the contemporary global crisis among older adults, who are at greatest personal risk from the pandemic. We hypothesized that during this pandemic, individuals would give fewer utilitarian responses to hypothetical dilemmas, accompanied by higher levels of confidence and emotion elicitation. Our pre-registered analysis (https://osf.io/g2wtp) involved two waves of data collection, before (2014) and during (2020) the COVID-19 pandemic, regarding three categories of moral dilemmas (personal rights, agent-centered permissions, and special obligations). While utilitarian responses considered across all categories of dilemma did not differ, participants during the 2020 wave gave fewer utilitarian responses to dilemmas involving personal rights; that is, they were less willing to violate the personal rights of others to produce the best overall outcomes.

Morality of the Heart: Heart Rate Variability and Moral Rule Adherence in Men

Moral rules are a cornerstone of many societies. Most moral rules are concerned with the welfare of other individuals, reflecting individuals’ innate aversion against harming other individuals. Harming others is associated with aversive experiences, implying that individuals who are sensitive to the aversiveness of these experiences are more likely to follow moral rules than individuals who are insensitive to the aversiveness of these experiences. Individuals’ sensitivity for aversive experiences depends on individuals’ ability to integrate the underlying neural and physiological processes: Individuals who are more efficient in integrating these processes are more sensitive to the aversiveness that is associated with moral rule violations than individuals who are less efficient in integrating these processes. Individuals who differ in their ability to integrate these processes may, thus, also differ in their inclination to follow moral rules. We tested this assumption in a sample of healthy individuals (67 males) who completed measures of moral rule adherence and integration abilities. Moral rule adherence was assessed with self-report measure and integration abilities were assessed with a resting state measure of heart rate variability (HRV), which reflects prefrontal–(para-)limbic engagement during the integration of physical and neural processes. We found a positive association between individuals’ HRV and individuals’ moral rule adherence, implying that individuals with efficient integration abilities were more inclined to follow moral rules than individuals with inefficient integration abilities. Our findings support the assumption that individuals with different integration abilities also differ in moral rule adherence, presumably because of differences in aversiveness sensitivity.

The neuroscience of intergroup threat and violence

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a global increase in hate crimes and xenophobia. In these uncertain times, real or imaginary threats can easily lead to intergroup conflict. Here, we integrate social neuroscience findings with classic social psychology theories into a framework to better understand how intergroup threat can lead to violence. The role of moral disengagement, dehumanization, and intergroup schadenfreude in this process are discussed, together with their underlying neural mechanisms. We outline how this framework can inform social scientists and policy makers to help reduce the escalation of intergroup conflict and promote intergroup cooperation. The critical role of the media and public figures in these unprecedented times is highlighted as an important factor to achieve these goals.

Sensitivity to Moral Principles Predicts Both Deontological and Utilitarian Response Tendencies in Sacrificial Dilemmas

When facing sacrificial dilemmas in which harm maximizes outcomes, people appear sensitive to three moral principles: They are more averse to actively causing harm than passively allowing it ( action principle), causing harm directly than indirectly ( contact principle), and causing harm as a means than as a by-product of helping others ( intention principle). Across five studies and a meta-analysis ( N = 1,218), we examined whether individual differences in people’s sensitivity to these principles were related to participants’ moral preferences on sacrificial dilemmas. Interestingly, sensitivity to each of these principles was related to both elevated harm-rejection (i.e., deontological) as well as elevated outcome-maximization (i.e., utilitarian) response tendencies. Rather than increasing responses consistent with only one philosophical position, people sensitive to moral principles balanced moral concerns about causing harm and maximizing outcomes similar to people high in other measures of moral concern.

Anger and Sadness as Moral Signals

Three studies examined the relationship between emotions and moral judgment from an interpersonal perspective. In Studies 1 and 2, participants justified their decisions in sacrificial dilemmas to an imagined interlocutor. Linguistic analyses revealed that Don’t Sacrifice justifications contained more anger-related language than sadness-related language, whereas Sacrifice justifications contained roughly equal proportions of anger and sadness language. In Study 3, participants made character inferences about an actor who chose to/refused to sacrifice one person to save multiple people. We manipulated the actor’s ratio of anger to sadness. Participants rated the Don’t Sacrifice actor more negatively when they displayed high anger relative to sadness but rated the Sacrifice actor negatively whenever they exhibited high anger (independent of sadness). These data highlight novel ways in which actors and observers use emotions to complement the substance of a moral argument.

Complexity of heart rate variability during moral judgement of actions and omissions

Recent research strongly supports the idea that cardiac activity is involved in the organisation of behaviour, including social behaviour and social cognition. The aim of this work was to explore the complexity of heart rate variability, as measured by permutation entropy, while individuals were making moral judgements about harmful actions and omissions. Participants (N = 58, 50% women, age 21-52 years old) were presented with a set of moral dilemmas describing situations when sacrificing one person resulted in saving five other people. In line with previous studies, our participants consistently judged harmful actions as less permissible than equivalently harmful omissions (phenomenon known as the "omission bias"). Importantly, the response times were significantly longer and permutation entropy of the heart rate was higher when participants were evaluating harmful omissions, as compared to harmful actions. These results may be viewed as a psychophysiological manifestation of differences in causal attribution between actions and omissions. We discuss the obtained results from the positions of the system-evolutionary theory and propose that heart rate variability reflects complexity of the dynamics of neurovisceral activity within the organism-environment interactions, including their social aspects. This complexity can be described in terms of entropy and our work demonstrates the potential of permutation entropy as a tool of analyzing heart rate variability in relation to current behaviour and observed cognitive processes.

Model-free decision making is prioritized when learning to avoid harming others

“Do no harm” is a universal principle of human social life. But how do we learn which of our actions help or harm others? Learning theory suggests there are two different systems that govern how we link actions and outcomes: a model-free system that is efficient and a model-based system that is deliberative. Here we show that people rely more on model-free decision making when learning to avoid harming others compared to themselves. Model-free neural signals that distinguish self and other are observed in the thalamus/caudate, and reliance on model-free moral learning for others varies with individual differences in moral judgment. These findings suggest that moral decision making for others is more model-free and has a specific neural signature.

Moral behavior requires learning how our actions help or harm others. Theoretical accounts of learning propose a key division between “model-free” algorithms that cache outcome values in actions and “model-based” algorithms that map actions to outcomes. Here, we tested the engagement of these mechanisms and their neural basis as participants learned to avoid painful electric shocks for themselves and a stranger. We found that model-free decision making was prioritized when learning to avoid harming others compared to oneself. Model-free prediction errors for others relative to self were tracked in the thalamus/caudate. At the time of choice, neural activity consistent with model-free moral learning was observed in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), and switching after harming others was associated with stronger connectivity between sgACC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Finally, model-free moral learning varied with individual differences in moral judgment. Our findings suggest moral learning favors efficiency over flexibility and is underpinned by specific neural mechanisms.

Personality and moral judgment: Curious consequentialists and polite deontologists

OBJECTIVE

How does our personality relate to the ways in which we judge right from wrong? Drawing on influential theories of moral judgment, we identify candidate traits that may be linked with inclinations toward (a) consequentialist judgments (i.e., those based on the outcomes of an action) and (b) deontological judgments (i.e., those based on the alignment of an action with particular moral rules).

METHOD

Across two studies (total N = 843) we examined domains and aspects of the Big Five in relation to inclinations toward consequentialist and deontological judgments.

RESULTS

In both studies, we found a unique association between intellect (curiosity, cognitive engagement) and consequentialist inclinations, in line with the view that deliberative cognitive processes drive such inclinations. We also found a consistent unique association between politeness (respectfulness, etiquette) and deontological inclinations, in line with the view that norm-adherence drives such inclinations. Neither study yielded a significant unique relation between deontological inclinations and compassion (sympathy, empathic concern)-or any other emotion-infused trait (e.g., Neuroticism)-as would be expected based on emotion-centered views of deontological moral judgment.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings have implications for theories of moral judgment, and reveal how our personality may guide our approach to questions of ethics and morality.

Hunger Bias or Gut Instinct? Responses to Judgments of Harm Depending on Visceral State Versus Intuitive Decision-Making

Empirical investigation into the emotional and physiological processes that shape moral decision-making is vast and growing. Yet, relatively less attention has been paid to measures of interoception in morality research despite its centrality in both emotional and physiological processes. Hunger and thirst represent two everyday interoceptive states, and hunger, in particular, has been shown to be influential for moral decision-making in numerous studies. It is possible that a tendency to focus on internal sensations interoceptive sensibility (IS), as well as the emotional and physiological states associated with visceral states, could be important in the relationships between hunger, thirst, and moral judgments. This cross-sectional online research (n = 154) explored whether IS, hunger, thirst, and emotional state influenced appropriateness and acceptability judgments of harm. The moral dilemma stimuli used allowed the independent calculation of (1) people's tendency to avoid harmful action at all costs and (2) people's tendency to maximize outcomes that benefit the greater good. The Cognitive Reflection Task (CRT) was implemented to determine whether an ability to override intuitive responses to counterintuitive problems predicted harm-based moral judgments, as found previously. Hunger bias, independent of IS and emotional state, was influential for non-profitable acceptability judgments of harmful actions. Contrary to dual-process perspectives, a novel finding was that more intuitive responses on the CRT predicted a reduced aversion to harmful actions that was indirectly associated with IS. We suggest that IS may indicate people's vulnerability to cognitive miserliness on the CRT task and reduced deliberation of moral dilemma stimuli. The framing of moral dilemmatic questions to encourage allocentric (acceptability questions) versus egocentric perspectives (appropriateness questions) could explain the divergence between hunger bias and intuitive decision-making for predicting these judgments, respectively. The findings are discussed in relation to dual-process accounts of harm-based moral judgments and evidence linking visceral experiences to harm aversion and moral decision-making.

Moral Judgments

Research on morality has increased rapidly over the past 10 years. At the center of this research are moral judgments-evaluative judgments that a perceiver makes in response to a moral norm violation. But there is substantial diversity in what has been called moral judgment. This article offers a framework that distinguishes, theoretically and empirically, four classes of moral judgment: evaluations, norm judgments, moral wrongness judgments, and blame judgments. These judgments differ in their typical objects, the information they process, their speed, and their social functions. The framework presented here organizes the extensive literature and provides fresh perspectives on measurement, the nature of moral intuitions, the status of moral dumbfounding, and the prospects of dual-process models of moral judgment. It also identifies omitted questions and sets the stage for a broader theory of moral judgment, which the coming decades may bring forth.

Neural Pattern Similarity Unveils the Integration of Social Information and Aversive Learning

Attributing intentions to others' actions is important for learning to avoid their potentially harmful consequences. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging multivariate pattern analysis to investigate how the brain integrates information about others' intentions with the aversive outcome of their actions. In an interactive aversive learning task, participants (n = 33) were scanned while watching two alleged coparticipants (confederates)-one making choices intentionally and the other unintentionally-leading to aversive (a mild shock) or safe (no shock) outcomes to the participant. We assessed the trial-by-trial changes in participants' neural activation patterns related to observing the coparticipants and experiencing the outcome of their choices. Participants reported a higher number of shocks, more discomfort, and more anger to shocks given by the intentional player. Intentionality enhanced responses to aversive actions in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior superior temporal sulcus. Our findings indicate that neural pattern similarities index the integration of social and threat information across the cortex.

Emotion emphasis effects in moral judgment are moderated by mindsets

In two studies, emotion emphasis effects on moral judgment are demonstrated. The studies indicate that emphasizing negative consequences in trolley-type dilemmas with emotional language produces more utilitarian responses if such emphasis is on the consequences of the deontological option, and more deontological responses if it is on the consequences of the utilitarian option. This effect was moderated by action-phase related mindsets. Individuals in an implemental mindset were less susceptible to the emotion emphasis effect than individuals in a deliberative mindset (Studies 1, 2). By also using an eye-tracking task in Study 2, we demonstrated that our implemental mindset participants’ visual attention was more focused—in particular on goal-directed means—than that of the deliberative mindset participants.

When the killing has been done: Exploring associations of personality with third-party judgment and punishment of homicides in moral dilemma scenarios

Killing people is universally considered reprehensible and evokes in observers a need to punish perpetrators. Here, we explored how observers' personality is associated with their cognitive, emotional, and punishing reactions towards perpetrators using data from 1,004 participants who responded to a set of fifteen third-party perspective moral dilemmas. Among those, four scenarios (architect, life boat, footbridge, smother for dollars) describing deliberate killings were compared to investigate the role of the content features "motive for killing" (selfish vs. utilitarian) and "evitability of victims' death". Participants' moral appropriateness ratings, emotions towards perpetrators, and assigned punishments revealed complex scenario-personality interactions. Trait psychopathy was associated with harsher punishments in all scenarios but also with less concern about killing in general, an increased moral appreciation of utilitarian motives for killing, and a reduced concern about the killing of avoidable victims. Need for cognition was associated with considering a utilitarian motive for killing as a mitigating factor, while intuitive/authority-obedient thinking was linked to a strong focus on avoidability of harm as an aggravating factor when assigning punishments. Other-oriented empathy, trait anxiety, and justice sensitivity did not account for differences in third-party punishments. Our explorative findings highlight the importance of inter-individual differences for moral decision making and sense of justice.

Somatic Marker Production Deficits do not Explain the Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Utilitarian Moral Decision Making

In moral dilemma tasks, high levels of psychopathic traits often predict increased utilitarian responding-specifically, endorsing sacrificing one person to save many. Research suggests that increased arousal (i.e., somatic marker production) underlies lower rates of utilitarian responding during moral dilemmas. Though deficient somatic marker production is characteristic of psychopathy, how this deficit affects the psychopathy-utilitarian connection remains unknown. We assessed psychopathic traits in undergraduates, as well as behavioral performance and skin conductance level reactivity (SCL-R; a measure of somatic marker production) during a moral dilemma task. High psychopathic traits and low SCL-R were associated with increased utilitarian decisions in dilemmas involving direct personal harm. Psychopathic traits were unrelated to SCL-R, nor did SCL-R mediate the relationship between psychopathy and utilitarianism. The present study did not find evidence that somatic marker production explains the connection between utilitarianism and psychopathy in a college population. Further research is necessary to identify the neural mechanisms relating psychopathy and moral decision-making in nonclinical samples.