Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment, School of Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2014 Jan;38(1):179-85. doi: 10.1111/acer.12245.
Recent studies of moral reasoning in patients with alcohol use disorders have indicated a "utilitarian" bias, whereby patients are more likely to endorse emotionally aversive actions in favor of aggregate welfare (e.g., throwing a dying person into the sea to keep a lifeboat of survivors afloat). Here, we investigate the underlying psychological and neuropsychological processes.
Alcohol-dependent individuals (n = 31) and healthy comparison participants (n = 34) completed a validated moral judgment task, as well as measures of impulsivity, mood symptoms (anxiety and depression), and emotional face recognition.
Alcohol-dependent individuals were more likely to endorse utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas compared with controls and rated these choices as less difficult to make. Hierarchical regression models showed that poorer decoding of fear and disgust significantly predicted utilitarian biases in personal moral dilemmas, over and above alcohol consumption. Impulsivity and mood symptoms did not predict moral decisions.
These findings suggest that impaired fear and disgust decoding contributes to utilitarian moral decision-making in alcohol-dependent individuals.
最近对酒精使用障碍患者道德推理的研究表明存在“功利主义”偏差，即患者更倾向于支持情感上令人厌恶的行为，以换取总体福利（例如，将垂死的人扔进海里以保持幸存者的救生艇漂浮）。在这里，我们研究了潜在的心理和神经心理学过程。
酒精依赖个体（n=31）和健康对照组参与者（n=34）完成了一项经过验证的道德判断任务，以及冲动性、情绪症状（焦虑和抑郁）和情绪面孔识别的测量。
与对照组相比，酒精依赖个体更倾向于在个人道德困境中认可功利主义选择，并认为这些选择更容易做出。层次回归模型表明，恐惧和厌恶的解码能力较差，可显著预测个人道德困境中的功利主义偏见，而与饮酒量无关。冲动和情绪症状并不能预测道德决策。
这些发现表明，恐惧和厌恶解码能力受损导致酒精依赖个体做出功利主义的道德决策。
