Individual differences in moral judgment competence are related to activity of the prefrontal cortex when attributing blame to evil intention

Abstract

The weighing of intentions and consequences is inconsistent in adult’s moral judgments, and this is particularly prominent when assigning blame to the immoral intentions in the absence of negative outcomes. The current study extends previous research by examining how individual differences in moral judgment competence are reflected in the cortical network when making judgments about immoral intentions. Twenty-four participants were scanned, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, while making judgments about three kinds of moral scenarios: a neutral condition, an immoral intention condition, and an immoral condition. The result showed that comparing with making judgments about the other two conditions, making judgments about the immoral intentions takes longer time and was associated with significantly elevated activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Additionally, moral judgment competence scores were inversely correlated with activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when assigning blame to the immoral intentions. Greater activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in participants with lower moral judgment competence possibly reflected increased recruitment of cognitive resource applied to control impulsive response and integrate competitive information in making judgments about the immoral intention.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral judgment
• Intention
• Cognitive control
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
• Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material is available via the “Supplementary” tab on the article’s online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2015.1093960).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Project Affiliated to the Education Department of Chongqing [15SKG048] and the Doctoral Program and Fundamental Research Funds of Chongqing Normal Universities [13XWQ01], [14XWB014].