Parsing the Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Third-Party Punishment

Vicarious punishment of moral violations in naturalistic drama narratives predicts cortical synchronization

Punishment of moral norm violators is instrumental for human cooperation. Yet, social and affective neuroscience research has primarily focused on second- and third-party norm enforcement, neglecting the neural architecture underlying observed (vicarious) punishment of moral wrongdoers. We used naturalistic television drama as a sampling space for observing outcomes of morally-relevant behaviors to assess how individuals cognitively process dynamically evolving moral actions and their consequences. Drawing on Affective Disposition Theory, we derived hypotheses linking character morality with viewers' neural processing of characters' rewards and punishments. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses of 28 female participants while free-viewing 15 short story summary video clips of episodes from a popular US television soap opera. Each summary included a complete narrative structure, fully crossing main character behaviors (moral/immoral) and the consequences (reward/punishment) characters faced for their actions. Narrative engagement was examined via intersubject correlation and representational similarity analysis. Highest cortical synchronization in 9 specifically selected regions previously implicated in processing moral information was observed when characters who act immorally are punished for their actions with participants' empathy as an important moderator. The results advance our understanding of the moral brain and the role of normative considerations and character outcomes in viewers' engagement with popular narratives.

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.

Disrupting the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Attenuates the Difference in Decision-Making for Altruistic Punishment Between the Gain and Loss Contexts

Altruistic punishment is a primary response to social norms violations; its neural mechanism has also attracted extensive research attention. In the present studies, we applied a low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) while participants engaged in a modified Ultimatum Game (Study 1) and third-party punishment game (Study 2) to explore how the bilateral DLPFC disruption affects people's perception of violation of fairness norms and altruistic punishment decision in the gain and loss contexts. Typically, punishers intervene more often against and show more social outrage towards Dictators/Proposers who unfairly distribute losses than those who unfairly share gains. We found that disrupting the function of the left DLPFC in the second-party punishment and the bilateral DLPFC in the third-party punishment with rTMS effectively obliterated this difference, making participants punish unfairly shared gains as often as they usually would punish unfairly shared losses. In the altruistic punishment of maintaining the social fairness norms, the inhibition of the right DLPFC function will affect the deviation of individual information integration ability; the inhibition of the left DLPFC function will affect the assessment of the degree of violation of fairness norms and weaken impulse control, leading to attenuate the moderating effect of gain and loss contexts on altruistic punishment. Our findings emphasize that DLPFC is closely related to altruistic punishment and provide causal neuroscientific evidence.

Uncovering individual variations in bystander intervention of injustice through intrinsic brain connectivity patterns

When confronted with injustice, individuals often intervene as third parties to restore justice by either punishing the perpetrator or helping the victim, even at their own expense. However, little is known about how individual differences in third-party intervention propensity are related to inter-individual variability in intrinsic brain connectivity patterns and how these associations vary between help and punishment intervention. To address these questions, we employed a novel behavioral paradigm in combination with resting-state fMRI and inter-subject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA). Participants acted as third-party bystanders and needed to decide whether to maintain the status quo or intervene by either helping the disadvantaged recipient (Help condition) or punishing the proposer (Punish condition) at a specific cost. Our analyses focused on three brain networks proposed in the third-party punishment (TPP) model: the salience (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC), central executive (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dlPFC), and default mode (e.g., dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, dmPFC; temporoparietal junction, TPJ) networks. IS-RSA showed that individual differences in resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) patterns within these networks were associated with the general third-party intervention propensity. Moreover, rs-FC patterns of the right dlPFC and right TPJ were more strongly associated with individual differences in the helping propensity rather than the punishment propensity, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the dmPFC. Post-hoc predictive modeling confirmed the predictive power of rs-FC in these regions for intervention propensity across individuals. Collectively, these findings shed light on the shared and distinct roles of key regions in TPP brain networks at rest in accounting for individual variations in justice-restoring intervention behaviors.

Social cognitive processes explain bias in juror decisions

Jury decisions are among the most consequential social decisions in which bias plays a notable role. While courts take measures to reduce the influence of non-evidentiary factors, jurors may still incorporate biases into their decisions. One common bias, crime-type bias, is the extent to which the perceived strength of a prosecutor's case depends on the severity of the crime. Moral judgment, affect and social cognition have been proposed as core processes underlying this and other biases. Behavioral evidence alone has been insufficient to distinguish these explanations. To identify the mechanism underlying crime-type bias, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns of brain activation from mock jurors reading criminal scenarios. Brain patterns from crime-type bias were most similar to those associated with social cognition (mentalizing and racial bias) but not affect or moral judgment. Our results support a central role for social cognition in juror decisions and suggest that crime-type bias and cultural bias may arise from similar mechanisms.

Decoupling between hub-connected functional connectivity of the social brain network and real-world social network in individuals with social anhedonia

Altered hub regions in brain network have been consistently reported in patients with schizophrenia. However, it is unclear whether similar altered hub regions of the brain would be exhibited in individuals with subclinical features of schizophrenia such as social anhedonia (SA). In this study, we examined the hub regions of resting-state social brain network (SBN) of 35 participants with SA and 50 healthy controls (HC). We further examined the prediction effect of hub-connected FCs with SBN on the real-life social network characteristics. Our findings showed that the right amygdala, left temporal lobe and right media superior frontal gyrus were the hub regions of SBN both in SA and HC groups. In the SA group, the left temporal lobe connected functional connectivity (FC) did not predict social network characteristics, while the other FCs strengthened the association with social network characteristics. These findings were replicated in an independent sample of 33 SA and 32 HC. These findings suggested that the left temporal lobe as one of the hub regions of SBN exhibited the abnormality of their connected FCs in the association with social network characteristics in individuals with SA.

Social Value Orientation Moderated the Effect of Acute Stress on Individuals' Prosocial Behaviors

Acute stress is believed to lead to prosocial behaviors via a "tend-and-befriend" pattern of stress response. However, the results of the effect of acute stress on prosocial behavior are inconsistent. The current study explores the moderating effect of gender and social value orientation on the relationship between acute stress and individuals' pure prosocial behaviors (i.e., pure prosociality and prosocial third-party punishment). Specifically, eighty-one participants were selected and underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (or were in the control group), followed by the third-party punishment task and the dictator game. The results showed that, in general, the main effect of condition or respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity on individual prosocial behaviors was significant and did not vary between genders. Furthermore, social value orientation (i.e., prosocial or self-orientation) might moderate the impact of RSA reactivity on the amount of punishment in the third-party punishment task. That is, individuals with self-orientation exhibited more prosocial third-party punishment as RSA reactivity decreased, while the effect did not occur for individuals with prosocial orientation. Taken together, the findings of the current study provide further evidence for the "tend-and-befriend" hypothesis and highlight the underlying physical mechanisms as well as the individual dependence of the effect of psychosocial stress on individuals' pure prosocial behaviors.

To Blame or Not? Modulating Third-Party Punishment with the Framing Effect

People as third-party observers, without direct self-interest, may punish norm violators to maintain social norms. However, third-party judgment and the follow-up punishment might be susceptible to the way we frame (i.e., verbally describe) a norm violation. We conducted a behavioral and a neuroimaging experiment to investigate the above phenomenon, which we call the "third-party framing effect". In these experiments, participants observed an anonymous perpetrator deciding whether to keep her/his economic benefit while exposing a victim to a risk of physical pain (described as "harming others" in one condition and "not helping others" in the other condition), then they had a chance to punish that perpetrator at their own cost. Our results showed that the participants were more willing to execute third-party punishment under the harm frame compared to the help frame, manifesting a framing effect. Self-reported anger toward perpetrators mediated the relationship between empathy toward victims and the framing effect. Meanwhile, activation of the insula mediated the relationship between mid-cingulate cortex activation and the framing effect; the functional connectivity between these regions significantly predicted the size of the framing effect. These findings shed light on the psychological and neural mechanisms of the third-party framing effect.

The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective

Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human cooperation, focusing on the prefrontal cortex. One key feature of human social life is the prevalence of cooperative norms that guide social behavior and prescribe punishment for noncompliance. Taking a comparative approach, we consider shared and unique aspects of cooperative behaviors in humans relative to nonhuman primates, as well as divergences in brain structure that might support uniquely human aspects of cooperation. We highlight a medial prefrontal network common to nonhuman primates and humans supporting a foundational process in cooperative decision-making: valuing outcomes for oneself and others. This medial prefrontal network interacts with lateral prefrontal areas that are thought to represent cooperative norms and modulate value representations to guide behavior appropriate to the local social context. Finally, we propose that more recently evolved anterior regions of prefrontal cortex play a role in arbitrating between cooperative norms across social contexts, and suggest how future research might fruitfully examine the neural basis of norm arbitration.

Who initiates punishment, who joins punishment? Disentangling types of third-party punishers by neural traits

The act of punishing unfair behavior by unaffected observers (i.e., third‐party punishment) is a crucial factor in the functioning of human societies. In everyday life, we see different types of individuals who punish. While some individuals initiate costly punishment against an unfair person independently of what other observers do (independent punishers), others condition their punishment engagement on the presence of another person who punishes (conditional punishers). Still others do not want to partake in any sort of punishment (nonpunishers). Although these distinct behavioral types have a divergent impact on human society, the sources of heterogeneity are poorly understood. We present novel laboratory evidence on the existence of these three types. We use anatomical brain characteristics in combination with stated motives to characterize these types. Findings revealed that independent punishers have larger gray matter volume in the right temporo‐parietal junction compared to conditional punishers and nonpunishers, an area involved in social cognition. Conditional punishers are characterized by larger gray matter volume in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area known to be involved in behavioral control and strategic reasoning, compared to independent punishers and nonpunishers. Finally, both independent punishers and nonpunishers are characterized by larger gray matter volume in an area involved in the processing of social and monetary rewards, that is, the bilateral caudate. By using a neural trait approach, we were able to differentiate these three types clearly based on their neural signatures, allowing us to shed light on the underlying psychological mechanisms.

From gratitude to injustice: Neurocomputational mechanisms of gratitude-induced injustice

Gratitude shapes individuals' behaviours and impacts the harmony of society. Many previous studies focused on its association with prosocial behaviours. A possibility that gratitude can lead to moral violation has been overlooked until recently. Nevertheless, the neurocognitive mechanisms of gratitude-induced moral violation are still unclear. On the other hand, though neural correlates of the gratitude's formation have been examined, the neural underpinnings of gratitude-induced behaviour remain unknown. For addressing these two overlapped research gaps, we developed novel tasks to investigate how participants who had received voluntary (Gratitude group) or involuntary help (Control group) punished their benefactors' unfairness with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The Gratitude group punished their benefactors less than the Control group. The self-report and computational modelling results demonstrated a crucial role of the boosted protection tendency on behalf of benefactors in the gratitude-induced injustice. The fMRI results showed that activities in the regions associated with mentalizing (temporoparietal junction) and reward processing (ventral medial prefrontal cortex) differed between the groups and were related to the gratitude-induced injustice. They suggest that grateful individuals concern for benefactors' benefits, value chances to interact with benefactors, and refrain from action that perturbs relationship-building (i.e., exert less punishment on benefactors' unfairness), which reveal a dark side of gratitude and enrich the gratitude theory (i.e., the find-bind-remind theory). Our findings provide psychological, computational, and neural accounts of the gratitude-induced behaviour and further the understanding of the nature of gratitude.

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.

Cognitive and neural bases of decision-making causing civilian casualties during intergroup conflict

Civilian casualties occur during military attacks. Such 'collateral damage' is prohibited by international laws but increases with substantial consequences when intergroup conflict escalates. Here, we investigate cognitive and neural bases of decision-making processes resulting in civilian harm, using a task that simulates punishment decision-making during intergroup conflict. We test two groups of Chinese participants in a laboratory setting, and members of two ethnic groups (Jewish and Palestinian) in Israel. The results dissociate two psychological constructs, harm preference and harm avoidance, which respectively characterize punishment decision-making related to outgroup combatants and outgroup noncombatants during intergroup conflict. In particular, individuals show decreased avoidance of harming outgroup noncombatants when conflict escalates. Brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) reveals that decreased harm avoidance is predicted by inhibition of the left middle frontal activity during selection of punishment decisions. Our findings provide insight into the cognitive and neural bases of decision-making involving civilian harm during intergroup conflict.

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.

Reasoning supports forgiving accidental harms

People experience a strong conflict while evaluating actors who unintentionally harmed someone-her innocent intention exonerating her, while the harmful outcome incriminating her. Different people solve this conflict differently, suggesting the presence of dispositional moderators of the way the conflict is processed. In the present research, we explore how reasoning ability and cognitive style relate to how people choose to resolve this conflict and judge accidental harms. We conducted three studies in which we utilized varied reasoning measures and populations. The results showed that individual differences in reasoning ability and cognitive style predicted severity of judgments in fictitious accidental harms scenarios, with better reasoners being less harsh in their judgments. Internal meta-analysis confirmed that this effect was robust only for accidental harms. We discuss the importance of individual differences in reasoning ability in the assessment of accidental harms.

Cerebral responses to self-initiated action during social interactions

Social interaction involves self-initiated actions that engage subjective awareness of one's own volition. Individuals with social communication needs or social anxiety find it particularly difficult to initiate social interactions. However, extant studies have not specifically addressed how perceived exclusion may influence self-initiated actions during social interaction. As a first step to address this question, we scanned 24 healthy adults participating in a Cyberball game with two fictive players. By contrasting events of observing, receiving, and initiating ball toss during a scenario of fair game (FG) and of exclusion (EX), we examined the neural correlates of self-initiated action during social interactions. Behaviorally, participants were faster in catching but slower in tossing the ball in EX compared with FG, suggesting a burden during self-initiated actions during social exclusion. Tossing versus receiving (or observing) engaged higher activity during EX than FG in the precuneus and angular gyrus, regions that have been widely implicated in theory of mind processing and social emotions. Across subjects these cortical activities correlated positively with the difference between EX and FG in the percentage of trials where participants tossed the ball back to the same player (r = 0.69, p < 0.001). Together, the results suggested that, in healthy adults, social exclusion encumbered and engaged higher posterior cortical activations during self-initiated actions. The findings may facilitate future research of neural markers of social behavioral disorders.

Brain responses to social punishment: a meta-analysis

Many studies suggest that social punishment is beneficial for cooperation and consequently maintaining the social norms in society. Neuroimaging and brain stimulation studies show that the brain regions which respond to violations of social norms, the understanding of the mind of others and the executive functions, are involved during social punishment. Despite the rising number of studies on social punishment, the concordant map of activations - the set of key regions responsible for the general brain response to social punishment - is still unknown. By using coordinate-based fMRI meta-analysis, the present study examined the concordant map of neural activations associated with various social punishment tasks. A total of 17 articles with 18 contrasts including 383 participants, equalling 191 foci were included in activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis. The majority of the studies (61%) employed the widely used neuroeconomic paradigms, such as fairness-related norm tasks (Ultimatum Game, third-party punishment game), while the remaining tasks reported criminal scenarios evaluation and social rejection tasks. The analysis revealed concordant activation in the bilateral claustrum, right interior frontal and left superior frontal gyri. This study provides an integrative view on brain responses to social punishment.

Different influences of facial attractiveness on judgments of moral beauty and moral goodness

Are beauty and goodness the same? The relationship between beauty and goodness has long been a controversial issue in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, ethics and psychology. Although many empirical studies have explored moral judgment and aesthetic judgment separately, only a few studies have compared the two. Whether these two judgments are two different processes or the same process with two different labels remains unclear. To answer this question, the present study directly compared the influence of facial attractiveness on judgments of moral goodness and moral beauty and revealed distinct contributions of imaging perceptions to these two judgments. The results showed that in the moral beauty judgment task, participants gave higher scores to characters with attractive faces compared with characters with unattractive faces, and larger P200 and LPP were elicited in the unattractive-face condition compared with the attractive-face condition; while in the moral goodness judgment task, there was no significant difference between the two conditions of either behaviour or ERP data. These findings offer important insights into the understanding and comparison of the processes of moral judgment and aesthetic judgment.

Altruistic decisions following penetrating traumatic brain injury

The cerebral correlates of altruistic decisions have increasingly attracted the interest of neuroscientists. To date, investigations on the neural underpinnings of altruistic decisions have primarily been conducted in healthy adults undergoing functional neuroimaging as they engaged in decisions to punish third parties. The chief purpose of the present study was to investigate altruistic decisions following focal brain damage with a novel altruistic decision task. In contrast to studies that have focused either on altruistic punishment or donation, the Altruistic Decision Task allows players to anonymously punish or donate to 30 charitable organizations involved with salient societal issues such as abortion, nuclear energy and civil rights. Ninety-four Vietnam War veterans with variable patterns of penetrating traumatic brain injury and 28 healthy veterans who also served in combat participated in the study as normal controls. Participants were asked to invest $1 to punish or reward real societal organizations, or keep the money for themselves. Associations between lesion distribution and performance on the task were analysed with multivariate support vector regression, which enables the assessment of the joint contribution of multiple regions in the determination of a given behaviour of interest. Our main findings were: (i) bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal lesions increased altruistic punishment, whereas lesions of the right perisylvian region and left temporo-insular cortex decreased punishment; (ii) altruistic donations were increased by bilateral lesions of the dorsomedial parietal cortex, whereas lesions of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyri decreased donations; (iii) altruistic punishment and donation were only weakly correlated, emphasizing their dissociable neuroanatomical associations; and (iv) altruistic decisions were not related to post-traumatic personality changes. These findings indicate that altruistic punishment and donation are determined by largely non-overlapping cerebral regions, which have previously been implicated in social cognition and moral experience such as evaluations of intentionality and intuitions of justice and morality.10.1093/brain/awy064_video1awy064media15758316955001.

Social hierarchies in third-party punishment: A behavioral and ERP study

Third-party punishment refers to the punishment imposed by a party whose benefit is not directly affected by any norm violations. The present study using a modified Dictator Game explored how social statuses of the involved parties modulate punishment decisions of a third-party. Systematic manipulation of the dictators' and recipients' status revealed that: higher recipient status correlated with more severe punishment, but no effect of the dictator's. We further focused on the neural underlying of this effect using ERPs. An interaction of recipient's status × fairness was observed on MFN such that only for a high-status recipient, larger amplitude was triggered by unfair offers comparing to fair offers. On LPC, the largest amplitude was observed when the offer was fair and the recipient had medium-status. These findings suggested: participants consider unfair offers proposed to high-status recipients as more norm-violating and they may evaluate the offers from the perspective of the recipient.

Soft on crime: Patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage allocate reduced third-party punishment to violent criminals

The human impulse to punish those who have unjustly harmed others (i.e., third-party punishment) is critical for stable, cooperative societies. Punishment selection is influenced by both harm outcome and the intent of the moral agent (i.e., the offender's knowledge of wrongdoing and desire that the prohibited consequence occur). We allocate severe punishments to those who commit violent crimes and milder punishments to those who commit non-violent crimes; and we allocate severe punishments to criminals who have malicious intent and milder punishments to criminals who lack malicious intent. Prior research has indicated that aversive, emotional responses of third-party judges may influence punishment allocation, as increased negative emotion correlates with more punitive punishments. Here, we show that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC; a region necessary for the normal generation of emotion), compared to other neurological patients and healthy adult participants, allocate more lenient third-party punishment to criminals who commit emotionally-evocative, violent crimes. By contrast, patients with vmPFC damage did not differ from comparison participants on punishment allocation for non-emotional, non-violent crimes. These results demonstrate the necessity of the vmPFC for the integration of emotion into third-party punishment decisions, and indicate that negative emotion influences third-party punishment allocation particularly for scenarios involving physical harm to another.

Modeling Morality in 3-D: Decision-Making, Judgment, and Inference

Humans face a fundamental challenge of how to balance selfish interests against moral considerations. Such trade-offs are implicit in moral decisions about what to do; judgments of whether an action is morally right or wrong; and inferences about the moral character of others. To date, these three dimensions of moral cognition-decision-making, judgment, and inference-have been studied largely independently, using very different experimental paradigms. However, important aspects of moral cognition occur at the intersection of multiple dimensions; for instance, moral hypocrisy can be conceived as a disconnect between moral decisions and moral judgments. Here we describe the advantages of investigating these three dimensions of moral cognition within a single computational framework. A core component of this framework is harm aversion, a moral sentiment defined as a distaste for harming others. The framework integrates economic utility models of harm aversion with Bayesian reinforcement learning models describing beliefs about others' harm aversion. We show how this framework can provide novel insights into the mechanisms of moral decision-making, judgment, and inference.

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

In judicial practice, morally right but legally wrong instances usually pose significant challenges for legal decision makers. To examine the cognitive and neural foundations of legal judgments in criminal cases involving apparent moral conflicts, we scanned 30 female participants during punishment judgments for crimes committed with good intentions. The behavioral results confirmed that moral acceptability was significantly correlated with the punishment ratings only in the good-intentioned crimes. The fMRI data mainly revealed that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) plays special roles in processing criminal offenders' state of mind and that the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) plays roles in resolving moral conflicts involved in legal judgments. Specifically, we found that compared to the bad-intentioned scenarios, the good-intentioned scenarios evoked greater activities during the postreading stage in the brain area of the rTPJ and that a signal increase in the rTPJ was associated with more lenient penalty judgments in the good-intentioned scenarios. Furthermore, reading crime scenarios with good intentions elicited stronger activation in the rdlPFC, which showed enhanced functional connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Overall, our study sheds some light on the neurocognitive underpinnings of legal judgments in special criminal cases and enhances our understanding of the relationship between legal and moral judgments.

Neurobiological Mechanisms of Responding to Injustice

People are particularly sensitive to injustice. Accordingly, deeper knowledge regarding the processes that underlie the perception of injustice, and the subsequent decisions to either punish transgressors or compensate victims, is of important social value. By combining a novel decision-making paradigm with functional neuroimaging, we identified specific brain networks that are involved with both the perception of, and response to, social injustice, with reward-related regions preferentially involved in punishment compared with compensation. Developing a computational model of punishment allowed for disentangling the neural mechanisms and psychological motives underlying decisions of whether to punish and, subsequently, of how severely to punish. Results show that the neural mechanisms underlying punishment differ depending on whether one is directly affected by the injustice, or whether one is a third-party observer of a violation occurring to another. Specifically, the anterior insula was involved in decisions to punish following harm, whereas, in third-party scenarios, we found amygdala activity associated with punishment severity. Additionally, we used a pharmacological intervention using oxytocin, and found that oxytocin influenced participants' fairness expectations, and in particular enhanced the frequency of low punishments. Together, these results not only provide more insight into the fundamental brain mechanisms underlying punishment and compensation, but also illustrate the importance of taking an explorative, multimethod approach when unraveling the complex components of everyday decision-making.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The perception of injustice is a fundamental precursor to many disagreements, from small struggles at the dinner table to wasteful conflict between cultures and countries. Despite its clear importance, relatively little is known about how the brain processes these violations. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we combine methods from neuroscience, psychology, and economics to explore the neurobiological mechanisms involved in both the perception of injustice as well as the punishment and compensation decisions that follow. Using a novel behavioral paradigm, we identified specific brain networks, developed a computational model of punishment, and found that administrating the neuropeptide oxytocin increases the administration of low punishments of norm violations in particular. Results provide valuable insights into the fundamental neurobiological mechanisms underlying social injustice.

Extinction of Conditioned Fear in Adolescents and Adults: A Human fMRI Study

Little is known about the neural correlates of fear learning in adolescents, a population at increased risk for anxiety disorders. Healthy adolescents (mean age 16.26) and adults (mean age 29.85) completed a fear learning paradigm across two stages during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Stage 1 involved conditioning and extinction, and stage 2 involved extinction recall, re-conditioning, followed by re-extinction. During extinction recall, we observed a higher skin conductance response to the CS+ relative to CS− in adolescents compared to adults, which was accompanied by a reduction in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity. Relative to adults, adolescents also had significantly reduced activation in the ventromedial PFC, dlPFC, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during extinction recall compared to late extinction. Age differences in PCC activation between late extinction and late conditioning were also observed. These results show for the first time that healthy adolescent humans show different behavioral responses, and dampened PFC activity during short-term extinction recall compared to healthy adults. We also identify the PCC and TPJ as novel regions that may be associated with impaired extinction in adolescents. Also, while adults showed significant correlations between differential SCR and BOLD activity in some brain regions during late extinction and recall, adolescents did not show any significant correlations. This study highlights adolescent-specific neural correlates of extinction, which may explain the peak in prevalence of anxiety disorders during adolescence.

Prefrontal-Amygdala Connectivity and State Anxiety during Fear Extinction Recall in Adolescents

While deficits in fear extinction recall have been suggested to underlie vulnerability to anxiety disorders in adolescents, the neurobiology of these deficits remain underexplored. Here we investigate the functional connectivity (FC) of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) underlying extinction recall in healthy adolescents, and assess associations between FC and state/trait anxiety. Adolescents (17) and adults (14, for comparison) completed a fear-learning paradigm involving extinction and extinction recall during a functional magnetic resonance imaging session, in which skin conductance response (SCR) was recorded. Psychophysiological interaction analyses revealed that during extinction recall there was significant negative connectivity between the vmPFC and amygdala in adults, but not adolescents. vmPFC-amygdala connectivity was positively correlated with SCR. Adolescents showed significant negative FC between the dlPFC and the left and right hippocampus, and the amygdala, which was positively correlated with state anxiety. Recall was also associated with negative connectivity between the dlPFC and thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus, and pallidum in adolescents. These results demonstrate that fear extinction recall in healthy adolescents is associated with FC between prefrontal and limbic brain regions, and suggest that alterations in connectivity may be associated with vulnerability to anxiety in adolescence.

The behavioral and neural basis of empathic blame

Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and also on the actual harm caused–even when unintended. Much prior research asks how intent information is represented neurally, but little asks how even unintended harms influence judgment. We interrogate the psychological and neural basis of this process, focusing especially on the role of empathy for the victim of a harmful act. Using fMRI, we found that the ‘empathy for pain’ network was involved in encoding harmful outcomes and integrating harmfulness information for different types of moral judgments, and individual differences in the extent to which this network was active during encoding and integration of harmfulness information determined severity of moral judgments. Additionally, activity in the network was down-regulated for acceptability, but not blame, judgments for accidental harm condition, suggesting that these two types of moral evaluations are neurobiologically dissociable. These results support a model of “empathic blame”, whereby the perceived suffering of a victim colors moral judgment of an accidental harmdoer.

Neuroanatomical correlates of forgiving unintentional harms

Mature moral judgments rely on the consideration of a perpetrator’s mental state as well as harmfulness of the outcomes produced. Prior work has focused primarily on the functional correlates of how intent information is neurally represented for moral judgments, but few studies have investigated whether individual differences in neuroanatomy can also explain variation in moral judgments. In the current study, we conducted voxel-based morphometry analyses to address this question. We found that local grey matter volume in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus, a region in the functionally defined theory of mind or mentalizing network, was associated with the degree to which participants relied on information about innocent intentions to forgive accidental harms. Our findings provide further support for the key role of mentalizing in the forgiveness of accidental harms and contribute preliminary evidence for the neuroanatomical basis of individual differences in moral judgments.