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Huang Y, Hu P, Deng H. Empathic concern induction modulates behavioral ratings and neural responses to harm-related moral judgment: An event-related potentials study. Behav Brain Res 2023; 446:114397. [PMID: 36966938 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2023.114397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2022] [Revised: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/14/2023] [Indexed: 03/29/2023]
Abstract
Although empathic concern is critical in harm-related moral judgment, the temporal dynamics underlying the impact of empathic concern on moral judgment remain unclear. This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how empathic concern induction shaped the way individuals perceive harmful/helpful behaviors. Behavioral results showed that participants assigned more blame to harmful behaviors in the empathic concern priming condition compared to those in the control condition. ERP results showed that helpful behaviors elicited larger N1 than did harmful behaviors. Additionally, harmful behaviors in the empathic concern priming condition elicited more negative N2 than did harmful behaviors in the control condition. Moreover, harmful behaviors elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) than did helpful behaviors in the control condition. These findings suggest that (1) empathic concern induction might increase moral sensitivity about harm-related norms; (2) participants independent of the empathic concern manipulation can distinguish between harmful behaviors and helpful behaviors similarly, as indicated by the early ERP component (N1); (3) empathic concern especially influences the intermediate (N2) and later (LPP) ERP components.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yunyun Huang
- School of Education Science, Ludong University, Yantai, China.
| | - Ping Hu
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Huan Deng
- School of Education, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, China
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Liu W, Wang H, Zhu H, Zhu X, He X, Zhang W. Morality is Supreme: The Roles of Morality, Fairness and Group Identity in the Ultimatum Paradigm. Psychol Res Behav Manag 2022; 15:2049-2065. [PMID: 35971385 PMCID: PMC9375565 DOI: 10.2147/prbm.s370155] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2022] [Accepted: 07/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose A large number of decision-making need to be carried out in the context of social interactions. Previous studies have demonstrated the impact of fairness perception, moral judgment, and group identity on decision-making. However, there is no clear conclusion as to how the effect of these factors existing simultaneously on decision-making and the extent to which these factors play a role. Methods We manipulated the moral quality of proposers to explore the issue of whether morality has an impact on fairness perception and manipulated the moral quality of proposer and responder simultaneously forming group identity to explore whether group identity has an impact on the effect of morality on fairness in decision-making. Results Participants displayed a higher acceptance rates for positive moral proposers than the negative moral proposers regardless of the fairness of the allocation of money (Experiment 1) and group identity (Experiment 2). However, the effect of group identity was working, though it partially supported the In-group Preference (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 combined analysis). We hold that the group identity was influenced by morality. Conclusion When making an economic decision, morality has the supreme influence on individuals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenxuan Liu
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Hua Wang
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Huanjie Zhu
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Xiaoyan Zhu
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Xianyou He
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Wei Zhang
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
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Tao D, Leng Y, Huo J, Peng S, Xu J, Deng H. Effects of Core Disgust and Moral Disgust on Moral Judgment: An Event-Related Potential Study. Front Psychol 2022; 13:806784. [PMID: 35783761 PMCID: PMC9242396 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.806784] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2021] [Accepted: 03/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dan Tao
- School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yue Leng
- School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jiamin Huo
- School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Suhao Peng
- School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jing Xu
- Department of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
| | - Huihua Deng
- School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
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Wu Y, Luo N, Zhang Y. Neural Mechanisms of Subliminal Mentor-Student Relationship Stimuli Processing: An ERP Study. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2022; 19:ijerph19052760. [PMID: 35270452 PMCID: PMC8910068 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19052760] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2022] [Revised: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 02/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
In educational contexts, mentorship roles often complicate the mentor-student relationship because mentors act not only as the closest academic ally of graduate students but also their program supervisors who can affect their timely graduation. This study examines how graduate students react to their mentors’ names when subliminally presented. A total of 63 graduate students (31 male; Mean Age = 23.450) were asked to perform an irrelevant color judgment task of valenced words (positive vs. negative relationship words) after a subliminal presentation of three different types of names (i.e., mentors, authorities, and friends). Results show that mentor and friend names elicit a greater P2 peak than authority names, whereas mentor names evoke a reduced N2 and P3 amplitude than friend and authority names. In addition, participants with a history of abusive supervision tend to have an overall decline in P2 amplitude. These event-related potential (ERP) findings suggest that mentors are perceived by students as familiar while attention-inducing figures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Wu
- School of Marxism, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;
- Research Center for Social Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Na Luo
- School of Educational Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;
| | - Yan Zhang
- School of Educational Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +86-151-0710-4427
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Predicting participants' attitudes from patterns of event-related potentials during the reading of morally relevant statements - An MVPA investigation. Neuropsychologia 2021; 153:107768. [PMID: 33516731 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107768] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2020] [Revised: 01/13/2021] [Accepted: 01/25/2021] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
Morality and language are hardly separable, given that morality-related aspects such as knowledge, emotions, or experiences are connected with language on different levels. One question that arises is: How rapidly do neural processes set in when processing statements that reflect moral value containing information? In the current study, participants read sentences about morally relevant statements (e.g., 'Wars are acceptable') and expressed their (dis)agreement with the statements while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Multivariate pattern classification (MVPA) was used during language processing to predict the individual's response. Our results show that (1) the response ('yes' vs. 'no') could be predicted from 180 ms following the decision-relevant word (here acceptable), and (2) the attitude (pro vs. contra the topic) could be predicted from 170 ms following the topic word (here wars). We suggest that the successful MVPA classification is due to different brain activity patterns evoked by differences in activated mental representations (e.g. valence, arousal, etc.) depending on whether the attitude towards the topic is positive or negative and whether it is in accordance with the presented decisive word or not.
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Peng X, Lu J, Li L, Cao Q, Cui F. Three stages of perceiving consecutively moral behaviors: Neurophysiological effect of agent and valence on the moral judgments. Soc Neurosci 2020; 15:458-469. [PMID: 32320332 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2020.1759682] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
The present study investigates how agents and the moral valence of the acts affect moral judgments when two consecutively behaviors are perceived, with each describing morally salient behaviors done by the same or different agent(s). Participants had to rate the likableness/pleasantness of the agents/behaviors. Behavioral results indicated that rating the likableness of the agent was mainly depended on the morally diagnostic character of the agent while rating the pleasantness of the behaviors was mainly depended on the moral valence of the behaviors per se. ERP results showed: 1) larger N1 was found in response to the agent consistently acting immorally, indicating an early detection of social threatening information. 2) Compared with agents who consistently act morally which provided no norm- or expectation-violation information, other conditions induced larger N400, indicating greater cognitive effort was recruited when the present moral information violated the participants' prior knowledge to the agent. 3) Increased LPP was found in response to the agent consistently acting morally (vs. moral behaviors acted by different agents), representing that people may allocate more attention to positive information during this stage. We suggest that this three-stage scheme is a common model when people encounter consecutive moral events.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaozhe Peng
- College of Psychology, Shenzhen University , Shenzhen, China
| | - Juanzhi Lu
- College of Psychology, Shenzhen University , Shenzhen, China
| | - Lening Li
- Shenzhen SmartView MedTech Limited , Shenzhen, China
| | - Qiongwen Cao
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, USA
| | - Fang Cui
- College of Psychology, Shenzhen University , Shenzhen, China.,Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience, Shenzhen University , Shenzhen, China
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