Neural evidence for moral intuition and the temporal dynamics of interactions between emotional processes and moral cognition

Abstract

Behavioral and neurological studies have revealed that emotions influence moral cognition. Although moral stimuli are emotionally charged, the time course of interactions between emotions and moral judgments remains unknown. In the present study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of the interaction between emotional processes and moral cognition. The results revealed that when making moral judgments, the time course of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform was significantly different between high emotional arousal and low emotional arousal contexts. Different stages of processing were distinguished, showing distinctive interactions between emotional processes and moral reasoning. The precise time course of moral intuition and moral reasoning sheds new light on theoretical models of moral psychology. Specifically, the N1 component (interpreted as representing moral intuition) did not appear to be influenced by emotional arousal. However, the N2 component and late positive potential were strongly affected by emotional arousal; the slow wave was influenced by both emotional arousal and morality, suggesting distinct moral processing at different emotional arousal levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral judgment
• Right temporoparietal junction
• ERP/EEG

The authors thank Tianli Chen, Hao Zhang, and Boqi Du for help with data acquisition; Tingting Wu for data analysis, Zheng Li for helpful comments, and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China [2011CB711000], [2013CB837300]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [31170971], [61210010]; the Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation [12&ZD228].