Developmental Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2019 May 17;14(4):435-445. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsz016.
Moral identity, or moral self, is the degree to which being moral is important to a person's self-concept. It is hypothesized to be the `missing link' between moral judgment and moral action. However, its cognitive and psychophysiological mechanisms are still subject to debate. In this study, we used event-related potentials to examine whether the moral self-concept is related to how people process prosocial and antisocial actions. To this end, participants' implicit and explicit moral self-concept were assessed. We examined whether individual differences in moral identity relate to differences in early, automatic processes [i.e. Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), N2] or late, cognitively controlled processes (i.e. late positive potential) while observing prosocial and antisocial situations. Results show that a higher implicit moral self was related to a lower EPN amplitude for prosocial scenarios. In addition, an enhanced explicit moral self was related to a lower N2 amplitude for prosocial scenarios. The findings demonstrate that the moral self affects the neural processing of morally relevant stimuli during third-party evaluations. They support theoretical considerations that the moral self already affects (early) processing of moral information.
道德身份或道德自我是指道德对于个人自我概念的重要程度。它被假设为道德判断和道德行为之间的“缺失环节”。然而，其认知和心理生理机制仍存在争议。在这项研究中，我们使用事件相关电位来研究道德自我概念是否与人们对亲社会和反社会行为的处理方式有关。为此，评估了参与者的内隐和外显道德自我概念。我们研究了道德认同的个体差异是否与在观察亲社会和反社会情境时的早期自动加工（即晚期正波）或晚期认知控制加工（即晚期正波）差异相关。结果表明，较高的内隐道德自我与亲社会场景中的 EPN 振幅较低有关。此外，增强的外显道德自我与亲社会场景中的 N2 振幅较低有关。研究结果表明，道德自我会影响第三方评价时与道德相关刺激的神经加工。它们支持这样的理论观点，即道德自我已经影响了（早期）道德信息的处理。
