When morality opposes the law: An fMRI investigation into punishment judgments for crimes with good intentions

Advanced neuroimaging and criminal interrogation in lie detection

Hidden information is the key to many security issues. If there is a reliable method to determine whether someone withholds information, many issues of this type can be resolved. However, until now, no method has proven to be reliable, but technical discoveries in the field of neuroimaging have caused a surge of new research in this area. Many neuroimaging techniques can be used, but functional magnetic resonance is the newest method, and its use in extracting and evaluating information from subjects could be the most significant, given that it records brain states in parallel with current mental activity/behavior, enabling the establishment of correlational links between them. Because the brain state displayed during fMRI imaging is the dependent variable measured during stimulus/task condition manipulation, it is necessary to use fMRI data in combination with complementary criminal interrogation techniques to gather information. This could be particularly important when standard interrogational techniques are not enough in order to preserve the common good, especially in "ticking bomb" situations. In this study, we review aspects of the possibility of utilizing advanced neuroimaging in combination with criminal interrogation in cases of serious criminal acts that threaten public safety.

The science of justice: The neuropsychology of social punishment

The social punishment (SP) of norm violations has received much attention across multiple disciplines. However, current models of SP fail to consider the role of motivational processes, and none can explain the observed behavioral and neuropsychological differences between the two recognized forms of SP: second-party punishment (2PP) and third-party punishment (3PP). After reviewing the literature giving rise to the current models of SP, we propose a unified model of SP which integrates general psychological descriptions of decision-making as a confluence of affect, cognition, and motivation, with evidence that SP is driven by two main factors: the amount of harm (assessed primarily in the salience network) and the norm violator's intention (assessed primarily in the default-mode and central-executive networks). We posit that motivational differences between 2PP and 3PP, articulated in mesocorticolimbic pathways, impact final SP by differentially impacting the assessments of harm and intention done in these domain-general large-scale networks. This new model will lead to a better understanding of SP, which might even improve forensic, procedural, and substantive legal practices.

Breakdown of intention-based outcome evaluation after transient right temporoparietal junction deactivation

People judge the nature of human behaviors based on underlying intentions and possible outcomes. Recent studies have demonstrated a causal role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in modulating both intention and intention-based outcome evaluations during social judgments. However, these studies mainly used hypothetical scenarios with socially undesirable contexts (bad/neutral intentions and bad/neutral outcomes), leaving the role of rTPJ in judging good intentions and good outcomes unclear. In the current study, participants were instructed to make goodness judgments as a third party toward the monetary allocations from one proposer to another responder. Critically, in some cases, the initial allocation by the proposer could be reversed by the computer, yielding combinations of good/bad intentions (of the proposer) with good/bad outcomes (for the responder). Anodal (n = 20), cathodal (n = 21), and sham (n = 21) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the rTPJ were randomly assigned to 62 subjects to further examine the effects of stimulation over the rTPJ in modulating intention-based outcome evaluation. Compared to the anodal and sham stimulations, cathodal tDCS over the rTPJ reduced the goodness ratings of good/bad outcomes when the intentions were good, whereas it showed no significant effect on outcome ratings under unknown and bad intentions. Our results provide the first evidence that deactivating the rTPJ modulates outcome evaluation in an intention-dependent fashion, mainly by reducing the goodness rating towards both good/bad outcomes when the intentions are good. Our findings argue for a causal role of the rTPJ in modulating intention-based social judgments and point to nuanced effects of rTPJ modulation.

An fMRI investigation of the intention-outcome interactions in second- and third-party punishment

Second-party punishment (SPP) and third-party punishment (TPP) are two basic forms of costly punishment that play an essential role in maintaining social orders. Despite scientific breakthroughs in understanding that costly punishment is driven by an integration of the wrongdoers' intention and the outcome of their actions, so far, few studies have compared the neurocognitive processes associated with the intention-outcome integration between SPP and TPP. Here, we combined economic exchange games measuring SPP and TPP with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the neuropsychological architectures underlying the intention-outcome integration during one-shot interactions with anonymous partners across four types of norm violations (no norm, accidental, attempted, and intentional violations). Our behavioral findings showed that third-parties punished only attempted norm violations less frequently than second-parties. Our neuroimaging findings revealed higher activities in the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) for attempted norm violations during TPP relative to SPP; more activities in these regions with less punishment frequency; and enhancement of functional connectivity of the right TPJ with the right dlPFC and dorsomedial PFC. Our findings demonstrated specific psychological and neural mechanisms of intention-outcome interactions between SPP and TPP -helping to unravel the complex neurocognitive processes of costly punishment.

Intrinsic functional connectivity of the frontoparietal network predicts inter-individual differences in the propensity for costly third-party punishment

Humans are motivated to give norm violators their just deserts through costly punishment even as unaffected third parties (i.e., third-party punishment, TPP). A great deal of individual variability exists in costly punishment; however, how this variability particularly in TPP is represented by the brain's intrinsic network architecture remains elusive. Here, we examined whether inter-individual differences in the propensity for TPP can be predicted based on resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) combining an economic TPP game with task-free functional neuroimaging and a multivariate prediction framework. Our behavioral results revealed that TPP punishment increased with the severity of unfairness for offers. People with higher TPP propensity punished more harshly across norm-violating scenarios. Our neuroimaging findings showed RSFC within the frontoparietal network predicted individual differences in TPP propensity. Our findings contribute to understanding the neural fingerprint for an individual's propensity to costly punish strangers, and shed some light on how social norm enforcement behaviors are represented by the brain's intrinsic network architecture.

Effects of Male Defendants' Attractiveness and Trustworthiness on Simulated Judicial Decisions in Two Different Swindles

The present study aimed to examine the effects of male defendants' facial appearance (attractiveness and trustworthiness) on judicial decisions in two different swindles. We selected the following four categories of faces by manipulating facial attractiveness and trustworthiness simultaneously: the attractive and trustworthy face; the attractive but untrustworthy face; the unattractive but trustworthy face; and the unattractive and untrustworthy face. A total of six hundred and sixty-three participants across two studies were asked to make conviction-related judgments and penalty-related decisions for the defendants after they were randomly assigned to one of the four categories of faces. In Experiment 1, we used a blind-date swindle and found a "beauty penalty" for physically attractive defendants among females. Specifically, female participants were more likely to issue a guilty verdict to better-looking male defendants. Additionally, this "beauty-penalty effect" was merely observed in the untrustworthy condition. In Experiment 2, we used a telecommunication swindle, and the results showed that facial trustworthiness significantly predicted punishment magnitude and sentence decisions. Moreover, an exploratory analysis revealed that the disgust evoked by the faces partially mediated the relationship between facial trustworthiness and the assignment of criminal penalties. Taken together, these findings indicated that facial attractiveness and trustworthiness played different roles in judicial decisions. Importantly, the effect of facial attractiveness on judicial decisions differed as the detailed criminal circumstances of the offenses changed.

Love is a physiological motivation (like hunger, thirst, sleep or sex)

The multitude of terms associated with love has given rise to a false perception of love. In this paper, only maternal and romantic love are considered. Love is usually regarded as a feeling, motivation, addiction, passion, and, above all, an emotion. This confusion has consequences in the lives of human beings, leading not only to divorces, suicides, femicides but possibly also to a number of mental illnesses and suffering. Therefore, it is crucial to first clarify what is meant by emotion, motivation and love. This work aims to finally place love within the category of physiological motivations, such as hunger, thirst, sleep, or sex, on the basis that love is also essential for human survival, especially in childhood. Love is presented from an evolutionary perspective. Some other similarities between love and other physiological motivations are pointed out, such as its importance for appropriate human development, both its ontogeny and its permanence, and the long-lasting consequences of abuse and neglect. There are summarized reasons that account for this, such as the fact that physiological motivations are essential for survival and that love is an essential motivation for the survival of human offspring. Other reasons are that minimum changes in the quantity and quality of love alters development, that there can be a variety of neurophysiological and behavioural states within a motivation, and that motivations (also love) appear and change throughout development. Also, motivations and love sometimes may lead to an addictive behaviour. Finally, it is recognized that once physiological motivations (and love) appear, they become permanent. In a third section, some potential social, cultural, clinical and scientific consequences of the proposed consideration of love as a motivation are discussed. Accordingly, love's recognition as a motivation in the clinical field would imply a better understanding of its disorders and its inclusion in classifications manuals such as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), or in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Considering love as a motivation rather than an emotion could also impact the results of scientific research (an example is included). A comprehensive understanding of these questions could potentially allow for a new therapeutic approach in the treatment of mental illness, while offering an all-inclusive evolutionary explanation of cultural phenomena such as the origin and diffusion of both language and art. Love should be understood as a physiological motivation, like hunger, sleep or sex, and not as an emotion as it is commonly considered.