Leng Yue, Zhang Jili, Zhangyu Yanan, Yang Xiaoyuan
School of Biomedical Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2021 Jan 6;14:577252. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2020.577252. eCollection 2020.
Moral judgment can be highly affected by the action and intention factors on a behavior level. Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the intention factor can modulate both the affective and cognitive processing of moral judgment. The present event-related potentials (ERP) study examined how the action factor modulated the neural dynamics of moral judgment under a newly developed moral dilemma paradigm including three different conditions: harm caused by action (i.e., doing harm), harm caused by omission (i.e., allowing harm), and no harm. Behavior data showed that participants preferred utilitarian judgments and spent less time on the allowing harm condition than for the doing harm condition. ERP results revealed that, compared with the doing harm and no harm dilemmas, the allowing harm dilemmas elicited an enhanced N450 response associated with cognitive control and/or cognitive effort processes, but attenuated a late positive potentials (LPP) response associated with top-down control of attention and cognitive "rational" control processes. Such LPP amplitude differences were positively correlated with the C-score of the moral competence test which indexed the cognitive aspect of moral judgment competency. These findings suggested that people have a strong omission bias, and such an action factor modulates the conscious reasoning process during moral judgment, including the cognitive control and/or cognitive effort, and attentional allocation processes.
道德判断在行为层面上会受到行为和意图因素的高度影响。先前的神经影像学研究表明，意图因素可以调节道德判断的情感和认知加工过程。本事件相关电位（ERP）研究在一种新开发的道德困境范式下，考察了行为因素如何调节道德判断的神经动力学，该范式包括三种不同情况：行为导致的伤害（即主动伤害）、不作为导致的伤害（即放任伤害）和无伤害。行为数据表明，参与者更倾向于功利主义判断，且在放任伤害情况下花费的时间比主动伤害情况下少。ERP结果显示，与主动伤害和无伤害困境相比，放任伤害困境引发了与认知控制和/或认知努力过程相关的增强的N450反应，但减弱了与自上而下的注意力控制和认知“理性”控制过程相关的晚期正电位（LPP）反应。这种LPP振幅差异与道德能力测试的C分数呈正相关，该分数衡量道德判断能力的认知方面。这些发现表明，人们存在强烈的不作为偏见，并且这种行为因素在道德判断过程中调节有意识的推理过程，包括认知控制和/或认知努力以及注意力分配过程。
