Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, KNAW, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, KNAW, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Neuroimage. 2020 Nov 15;222:117251. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117251. Epub 2020 Aug 13.
Past historical events and experimental research have shown complying with the orders from an authority has a strong impact on people's behaviour. However, the mechanisms underlying how obeying orders influences moral behaviours remain largely unknown. Here, we test the hypothesis that when male and female humans inflict a painful stimulation to another individual, their empathic response is reduced when this action complied with the order of an experimenter (coerced condition) in comparison with being free to decide to inflict that pain (free condition). We observed that even if participants knew that the shock intensity delivered to the 'victim' was exactly the same during coerced and free conditions, they rated the shocks as less painful in the coerced condition. MRI results further indicated that obeying orders reduced activity associated with witnessing the shocks to the victim in the ACC, insula/IFG, TPJ, MTG and dorsal striatum (including the caudate and the putamen) as well as neural signatures of vicarious pain in comparison with being free to decide. We also observed that participants felt less responsible and showed reduced activity in a multivariate neural guilt signature in the coerced than in the free condition, suggesting that this reduction of neural response associated with empathy could be linked to a reduction of felt responsibility and guilt. These results highlight that obeying orders has a measurable influence on how people perceive and process others' pain. This may help explain how people's willingness to perform moral transgressions is altered in coerced situations.
过去的历史事件和实验研究表明，服从权威的命令对人们的行为有很大的影响。然而，人们对于服从命令如何影响道德行为的机制还知之甚少。在这里，我们测试了这样一个假设，即当男性和女性对另一个人施加痛苦刺激时，如果他们服从实验者的命令（强制条件），而不是自由决定施加这种痛苦（自由条件），他们的同理心反应会减少。我们发现，即使参与者知道在强制和自由条件下，施加给“受害者”的电击强度完全相同，他们在强制条件下会认为电击的痛苦程度较低。MRI 结果进一步表明，与自由决定相比，服从命令会减少与目睹电击受害者相关的活动，这些区域包括前扣带皮层、岛叶/额下回、TPJ、颞中回和背侧纹状体（包括尾状核和壳核），以及替代性疼痛的神经特征。我们还观察到，与自由条件相比，参与者在强制条件下感到的责任感较低，多变量神经内疚特征的活动减少，这表明与同理心相关的神经反应减少可能与责任感和内疚感的减少有关。这些结果强调了服从命令对人们感知和处理他人痛苦的方式有可衡量的影响。这可能有助于解释为什么在强制情境下，人们执行道德越轨行为的意愿会发生改变。
