The Neural Correlates of Moral Sensitivity: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of Basic and Moral Emotions

By Jorge Moll, R. de Oliveira-Souza, P. Eslinger, Ivanei E. Bramati, J. Mourão-Miranda, P. A. Andreiuolo, Luiz Pessoa. Journal of Neuroscience, 2002

705 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of “moral emotions” in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social behavior and perception, play a central role in moral appraisals. We suggest that the automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values may be an important mechanism for implicit social behaviors in humans.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/511751fb329267c1c34aa92d9928e1872f3c0a79

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Citations in the corpus

The Actor–Observer Bias and Moral Intuitions: Adding Fuel to Sinnott-Armstrong’s Fire (2008, background): “For instance, several years ago Jorge Moll and colleagues ran a series of neuroimaging studies that explored the neural substrates of moral judgments (Moll et al. 2002a; 2002b; 2005).”
No Compromise: Political Consequences of Moralized Attitudes (2017, neutral): “For studies that find moralized attitudes to elicit distinctive neural patterns, see Berns et al. (2012); Greene et al. (2001); Greene (2007b); Moll et al. (2002); Moll and de Oliveira-Souza (2007); Moll et al. (2005).”
Deciding versus Reacting: Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate (2007, background): “…reaction approach has made it easier to study moral judgment in a variety of settings, from the suburbs of Porto Alegre (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993) to the brain scanner (Greene et al., 2001; Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Moll et al., 2001, 2002a, 2002b).”
How (and where) does moral judgment work? (2002, background): “[31J Moral pictures [ 30 ] 3. Superior Personal moral”
A Theory Explaining Biological Correlates of Criminality (2005, background): “In line with this theory are intriguing new research findings based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which suggest that the seat of empathy-based moral reasoning is primarily in the left hemisphere (Moll et al. 2002).”
Neuronal correlates of theory of mind and empathy: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in a nonverbal task (2006, background): “, 2000) as well as empathy imaging studies (Moll et al., 2002) particularly when visual stimuli were used.”
The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment (2008, neutral): “…et al., 2005; Koenigs and Tranel, 2007; Greene and Haidt, 2002; Greene et al., 2001, 2004; Haidt, 2001; Heekeren et al., 2003; Koenigs et al., 2007; Moll et al., 2002b, 2005), and provide preliminary neuroscientific support for a proposed role of emotions in legal decision-making (Arkush, 2008;…”
Just Feelings? The Role of Affect in the Formation of Organizational Fairness Judgments (2011, background): “Consistently, neuroimaging evidence reveals the activation of emotionally relevant brain structures when people make fairness and moral assessments (Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Moll et al., 2002; Moll et al., 2005).”
Brain activation associated with evaluative processes of guilt and embarrassment: an fMRI study (2004, background): “Recent neuroimaging studies have reported the neural substrate of moral judgment (Greene et al., 2001; Moll et al., 2002a,b).”
Understanding Others: Brain Mechanisms of Theory of Mind and Empathy (2008, background): “…in which all possible solutions to a given problem are associated with undesirable outcomes (Greene, 2007; Greene et al., 2001, 2004; Moll et al., 2002a,b; Shenhav and Greene, 2010; Sommer et al., 2010; for review, see Funk and Gazzaniga, 2009; Moll and de OliveiraSouza, 2007; Moll et al., 2008).”
A clean self can render harsh moral judgment (2010, background): “Physical and moral disgust share similar facial expressions and physiological activation (Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson, 2009; Rozin, Lowery, & Ebert, 1994), and employ partially overlapping brain regions of the frontal and temporal lobes (Moll et al., 2002).”
Neural correlates of social and nonsocial emotions: An fMRI study (2006, neutral): “These results are also consistent with greater insular activation found in response to nonsocial negative pictures compared to socially moral pictures (Moll et al., 2002).”