Jiang Qin, Zhuo Linglin, Wang Qi, Lin Wenxia
Research Center of Psychology and Education, School of Marxism, Guangxi University, Nanning, China.
Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 May 27;16:919499. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.919499. eCollection 2022.
Developmental and neuroscience works have demonstrated that the moral judgment is influenced by theory of mind (ToM), which refers to the ability to represent the mental states of different agents. However, the neural and cognitive time course of interactions between moral judgment and ToM remains unclear. The present event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the underlying neural substrate of the interaction between moral judgment and ToM by contrasting the ERPs elicited by moral judgments for self and for others in moral dilemmas. In classic moral dilemmas, the agents must choose between the utilitarian choice (taking the action to kill or harm an innocent person but saving more people) and the non-utilitarian choice (taking no action to kill or harm the innocent person but letting some people die). The ERPs were recorded from participants who made moral judgments for self and for others when the agent made utilitarian or non-utilitarian choices during the dilemma. The results revealed that the moral judgment for others elicited a larger frontal late positive component (LPC, 500-900 ms) than that for self when the agents made utilitarian choices, while no difference was observed on early components of N1, P2, and N2. Moreover, individual differences in mentalizing ability were negatively correlated with the LPC amplitudes. These findings suggested that ToM modulated the late controlled process but not the early automatic process during moral judgments.
发展心理学和神经科学的研究表明，道德判断受到心理理论（ToM）的影响，心理理论是指表征不同主体心理状态的能力。然而，道德判断与心理理论之间相互作用的神经和认知时间进程仍不清楚。本事件相关电位（ERP）研究通过对比道德困境中自我和他人道德判断所引发的ERP，探究了道德判断与心理理论相互作用的潜在神经基础。在经典道德困境中，主体必须在功利主义选择（采取行动杀死或伤害一个无辜的人但拯救更多人）和非功利主义选择（不采取行动杀死或伤害无辜的人但让一些人死亡）之间做出选择。当主体在困境中做出功利主义或非功利主义选择时，记录下为自我和他人做出道德判断的参与者的ERP。结果显示，当主体做出功利主义选择时，对他人的道德判断比自我的道德判断引发了更大的额叶晚期正成分（LPC，500 - 900毫秒），而在N1、P2和N2的早期成分上未观察到差异。此外，心理化能力的个体差异与LPC波幅呈负相关。这些发现表明，在道德判断过程中，心理理论调节的是后期的控制过程而非早期的自动过程。
