The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment

By Liane L. Young, Fiery Cushman, Marc D. Hauser, Rebecca Saxe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007

606 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Is the basis of criminality an act that causes harm, or an act undertaken with the belief that one will cause harm? The present study takes a cognitive neuroscience approach to investigating how information about an agent's beliefs and an action's consequences contribute to moral judgment. We build on prior developmental evidence showing that these factors contribute differentially to the young child's moral judgments coupled with neurobiological evidence suggesting a role for the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) in belief attribution. Participants read vignettes in a 2 × 2 design: protagonists produced either a negative or neutral outcome based on the belief that they were causing the negative outcome (“negative” belief) or the neutral outcome (“neutral” belief). The RTPJ showed significant activation above baseline for all four conditions but was modulated by an interaction between belief and outcome. Specifically, the RTPJ response was highest for cases of attempted harm, where protagonists were condemned for actions that they believed would cause harm to others, even though the harm did not occur. The results not only suggest a general role for belief attribution during moral judgment, but also add detail to our understanding of the interaction between these processes at both the neural and behavioral levels.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2d49e18f41d4c0d14a610691a054c978365c056d

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Citations in the corpus

Evaluating large language models in theory of mind tasks (2023, background): “This ability—typically referred to as “theory of mind” (ToM)—is considered central to human social interactions ( 3 ), communication ( 4 ), empathy ( 5 ), self - consciousness ( 6 ), moral judgment ( 7 , 8 ), and even religious beliefs ( 9 ).”
When Mental States Matter, When They Don't, and What That Means for Morality (2013, background): “may interact and compete during moral cognition (i.e., outcome processing versus mental state processing; Cushman, 2008; Greene et al., 2001; Greene et al., 2004; Young et al., 2007).”
Bullies have enhanced moral competence to judge relative to victims, but lack moral compassion (2011, background): “Indeed, compared to the welladjusted defenders, they were equally able to judge the moral permissibility of harmful actions based on the beliefs and intentions of the actor, performing at the level of normal adults (Young et al., 2007) and better than peer victims.”
Mind Attribution is for Morality (2013, background): “…initial encoding of the agent’s mental state (Young & Saxe, 2008), the use and integration of mental states (e.g. with outcomes) for moral judgment (Young et al., 2007), spontaneous mental state inference when mental states are not explicitly provided in the scenario (Young & Saxe, 2009b), and…”
Moral psychology is relationship regulation: moral motives for unity, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality. (2011, positive): “Recent studies have indicated the right tem-poroparietal junction as important for processing intentions in moral judgments (Young, Camprodon, Hauser, Pascual-Leone, & Saxe, 2010; Young, Cushman, Hauser, & Saxe, 2007).”
fMRI item analysis in a theory of mind task (2011, methodology): “…network”: right and left temporoparietal junction (RTPJ/LTPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), precuneus (PC) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) (Kliemann et al., 2008; Mitchell, 2008; Saxe and Powell, 2006; Saxe et al., 2006; Saxe and Wexler, 2005; Scholz et al., 2009; Young et al., 2007, 2010a).”
Deconstructing intent to reconstruct morality (2015, methodology): “This basic method has played a pivotal role in studies of moral reasoning among adults [1–3] and children [4–7] and, more recently, has been used to investigate the neural substrates of moral judgment [8–10] and its disruption in clinical populations [11,12,13 ,14].”
The neural bases of social cognition and story comprehension. (2011, background): “…12 4 Spengler et al. (2009) ToM stories Physical stories fMRI 18 6 Vogeley et al. (2001) ToM story judgment Physical causation story judgment fMRI 8 7 Young et al. (2007) False belief stories False photograph stories fMRI 10 6 – False belief stories False photograph stories fMRI 17…”
An fMRI Investigation of Spontaneous Mental State Inference for Moral Judgment (2009, background): “, Perner, Aichorn, Kronbichler, Wolfgang, & Laddurner, 2006; Saxe & Powell, 2006) and in encoding and integrating explicit beliefs for moral judgment (Young & Saxe, 2008; Young et al., 2007), we predicted the most robust and selective activation patterns for the RTPJ in this experiment.”
Interoception in anxiety and depression (2010, background): “Others have found that the right TPJ differentially activated as a function of belief and outcome and was highest for cases of possible negative outcome based on the belief that action of a protagonist would cause harm to others, even though the harm did not occur (Young et al. 2007).”
Climate change and moral judgement (2012, neutral): “Moreover, neuroscientific evidence suggests that the human moral judgement system is particularly sensitive to information about the intentions of others to cause harm 24 .”
The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment (2008, neutral): “Indeed, while moral decision-making studies to date have focused on assessing brain function during decisions about the moral rightness or wrongness of actions depicted in written scenarios, they have not specifically addressed the issue of punishment (Borg et al., 2006; Greene et al., 2001, 2004; H”
Innocent intentions: a correlation between forgiveness for accidental harm and neural activity. (2009, background): “Previously, we suggested that regions for cognitive control were recruited more robustly for accidental harm than for intentional harm (Young et al., 2007), though this pattern did not replicate in the current study.”