Institutes of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China.
Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, 311121, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 3;7(1):1475. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01623-5.
Previous studies have shown that intuitive moral cognition occurs at an early stage. However, inconsistent findings indicate that moral information is recognized at a relatively late stage. This study uses the recognition potential (RP) as a neural index and simultaneously measures individuals' moral preferences using the Moral Foundation Questionnaire. We aim to investigate how individual differences in moral preferences modulate the processing of morality in the pre-semantic stage and provide some insights to explain the variation in rapid information processing linked to morality. The participants performed an implicit task in which recognizable words depicting geographical names or behaviors related to moral, disgusting or neutral content alternated with background stimuli at high rates of presentation. The results showed that the early recognition of moral information manifested in the RP depended on an individual's moral concerns. Participants with a higher level of endorsement of the harm/care foundation exhibited a greater net moral effect, namely, greater mean amplitudes of the moral-neutral RP difference waves. Meanwhile, only the group that was more sensitive to the harm/care foundation showed a distinctively larger RP for the moral words than for the neutral words. Overall, these findings suggest that the early processing of moral cognition may hinge on individual differences in moral concerns about other people's suffering.
先前的研究表明，直觉道德认知发生在早期阶段。然而，不一致的研究结果表明，道德信息是在相对较晚的阶段被识别的。本研究使用识别潜能（RP）作为神经指标，同时使用道德基础问卷测量个体的道德偏好。我们旨在探讨个体道德偏好的差异如何调节道德在语义前阶段的加工，并提供一些解释来说明与道德相关的快速信息处理的变化。参与者执行了一项内隐任务，其中可识别的描绘道德、恶心或中性内容的地理名称或行为的词语与背景刺激以高频率交替出现。结果表明，RP 中对道德信息的早期识别取决于个体的道德关注。对伤害/关怀基础的认可程度较高的参与者表现出更大的净道德效应，即道德-中性 RP 差异波的平均幅度更大。同时，只有对伤害/关怀基础更敏感的组对道德词的 RP 明显大于对中性词的 RP。总体而言，这些发现表明，道德认知的早期加工可能取决于个体对他人痛苦的道德关注的差异。
