Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Cortex. 2022 Jun;151:162-175. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.03.008. Epub 2022 Mar 28.
Moral conviction has the potential to inspire activism and change, but can also instigate divisiveness and great harm. Moreover, attitudes held with moral conviction are experienced as universal objective truths and are less likely to demonstrate social conformity. Some evidence suggests that holding strong moral views may be a consequence of a cognitive style which includes lower metacognitive sensitivity. This study combined measures of attitudes, moral convictions, psychophysics, and electroencephalography (EEG) to determine how metacognition and moralization influence different stages of information processing during social decision-making, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying these effects. First, 170 participants were asked to indicate their attitudes and moral convictions about specific social issues that are currently important to US college students. Later, a subset of 81 participants completed a perceptual confidence task to assess their metacognition. Then, they underwent EEG while evaluating photographs of protests ostensibly about the same social issues. Prior to each photo, participants were provided with statistical information about social consensus from their peers for each issue. As predicted, stronger moral convictions were associated with lower social conformity. Furthermore, this effect was more pronounced in individuals with lower metacognitive ability. Moralized content was prioritized in multiple stages of information processing, including both early automatic attention and later deliberative stages, with medial frontal negativity (MFN) and early posterior negativity (EPN) predicting reduced conformity. Changes in alpha and high beta power indicated increased attention and engagement for moralized content. Together, results from these complementary methods and levels of analysis both converge to indicate that moralization alters sensitivity to social influence by shifting neural responses to efficiently prioritize information related to moralized beliefs.
道德信念有可能激发行动主义和变革，但也可能引发分裂和巨大的伤害。此外，具有道德信念的态度被视为普遍的客观真理，不太可能表现出社会从众。一些证据表明，持有强烈的道德观点可能是一种认知风格的结果，这种认知风格包括较低的元认知敏感性。本研究结合了态度、道德信念、心理物理学和脑电图 (EEG) 的测量方法，以确定元认知和道德化如何影响社会决策过程中信息处理的不同阶段，以及这些影响的神经机制。首先，170 名参与者被要求表明他们对当前对美国大学生重要的特定社会问题的态度和道德信念。后来，81 名参与者中的一部分完成了感知信心任务，以评估他们的元认知。然后，他们在评估显然是关于相同社会问题的抗议照片时进行了 EEG 测量。在每张照片之前，参与者都收到了来自同龄人关于每个问题的社会共识的统计信息。正如预测的那样，更强的道德信念与更低的社会从众有关。此外，这种影响在元认知能力较低的个体中更为明显。道德化的内容在信息处理的多个阶段被优先处理，包括早期的自动注意和后来的深思熟虑阶段，中额负波 (MFN) 和早期后负波 (EPN) 预测降低了从众性。阿尔法和高贝塔功率的变化表明，对道德化内容的注意力和参与度增加。综上所述，这些互补方法和分析水平的结果都表明，道德化通过改变对与道德化信念相关的信息的神经反应，改变对社会影响的敏感性。
