Goodyear Kimberly, Lee Mary R, O'Hara Martin, Chernyak Sergey, Walter Henrik, Parasuraman Raja, Krueger Frank
a Department of Molecular Neuroscience , George Mason University , Fairfax , VA , USA.
b Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies , National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , Bethesda , MD , USA.
Soc Neurosci. 2016;11(1):88-96. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2015.1037463. Epub 2015 Apr 28.
Philosophers have proposed that laypeople can have deterministic or indeterministic intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. However, the psychophysiological mechanisms that generate these extreme intuitions are still underexplored. Exogenous oxytocin offers a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of these underlying mechanisms, since this neuropeptide influences a wide range of outcomes related to social cognition and prosociality. This study investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin on intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility by applying a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design. Healthy male participants rated the moral responsibility of a hypothetical offender, who committed crimes in either a primed deterministic or an indeterministic universe. Under placebo, participants held the offender more morally responsible when acting in an indeterministic compared to a deterministic universe, which could be accredited to recognition of the offender's freely chosen action to commit the crimes. Under oxytocin, participants rated the offender's actions with greater leniency and similarly assigned lower moral responsibility in both universes. These findings strengthen the assumption that a person can have different intuitions about the relationship between free will and moral responsibility, which can be presumably dependent on motivational states associated with affiliation.
哲学家们提出，外行人对于自由意志和道德责任之间的关系可能有决定论或非决定论的直觉。然而，产生这些极端直觉的心理生理机制仍未得到充分探索。外源性催产素提供了一个独特的机会，能让我们更深入地了解这些潜在机制，因为这种神经肽会影响与社会认知和亲社会行为相关的广泛结果。本研究采用随机、双盲、安慰剂对照、组间设计，调查了鼻内催产素对自由意志和道德责任之间关系的直觉的影响。健康男性参与者对一名假设的罪犯的道德责任进行评分，该罪犯在一个被启动为决定论或非决定论的世界中犯罪。在安慰剂条件下，与在决定论世界中相比，参与者认为罪犯在非决定论世界中犯罪时更应承担道德责任，这可能归因于对罪犯自由选择犯罪行为的认知。在催产素条件下，参与者对罪犯行为的评价更为宽容，并且在两个世界中都同样地赋予较低的道德责任。这些发现强化了这样一种假设，即一个人对于自由意志和道德责任之间的关系可以有不同的直觉，这可能取决于与归属感相关的动机状态。
