Department of Psychology, Boston College.
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2017 Nov;146(11):1586-1605. doi: 10.1037/xge0000350. Epub 2017 Aug 14.
Metaethical judgments refer to judgments about the information expressed by moral claims. Moral objectivists generally believe that moral claims are akin to facts, whereas moral subjectivists generally believe that moral claims are more akin to preferences. Evidence from developmental and social psychology has generally favored an objectivist view; however, this work has typically relied on few examples, and analyses have disallowed statistical generalizations beyond these few stimuli. The present work addresses whether morals are represented as fact-like or preference-like, using behavioral and neuroimaging methods, in combination with statistical techniques that can (a) generalize beyond our sample stimuli, and (b) test whether particular item features are associated with neural activity. Behaviorally, and contrary to prior work, morals were perceived as more preference-like than fact-like. Neurally, morals and preferences elicited common magnitudes and spatial patterns of activity, particularly within the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a critical region for social cognition. This common DMPFC activity for morals and preferences was present across whole-brain conjunctions, and in individually localized functional regions of interest (targeting the theory of mind network). By contrast, morals and facts did not elicit any neural activity in common. Follow-up item analyses suggested that the activity elicited in common by morals and preferences was explained by their shared tendency to evoke representations of mental states. We conclude that morals are represented as far more subjective than prior work has suggested. This conclusion is consistent with recent theoretical research, which has argued that morality is fundamentally about regulating social relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record
元伦理学判断是指对道德主张所表达的信息的判断。道德客观主义者通常认为道德主张类似于事实，而道德主观主义者通常认为道德主张更类似于偏好。发展心理学和社会心理学的证据普遍支持客观主义观点；然而，这项工作通常依赖于少数例子，并且分析不允许对这些少数刺激之外的统计进行概括。本研究使用行为和神经影像学方法，结合能够（a）超越我们的样本刺激进行概括，以及（b）测试特定项目特征是否与神经活动相关的统计技术，来研究道德是否被表示为类似于事实或偏好。从行为上看，与之前的工作相反，道德被认为更类似于偏好而不是事实。从神经上看，道德和偏好引起了共同的活动幅度和空间模式，特别是在背内侧前额叶皮层（DMPFC）中，这是社会认知的关键区域。这种对道德和偏好的共同 DMPFC 活动存在于整个大脑的联合中，并且存在于个体局部化的功能区域兴趣点（针对心理理论网络）中。相比之下，道德和事实并没有引起任何共同的神经活动。后续的项目分析表明，道德和偏好共同引起的活动可以用它们共同唤起心理状态的代表性来解释。我们得出的结论是，道德比之前的工作所表明的更主观。这一结论与最近的理论研究一致，该研究认为道德从根本上说是关于调节社会关系的。
