Kim JuYoung, Kim Hackjin
Laboratory of Social and Decision Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea.
Laboratory of Social and Decision Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea
J Neurosci. 2025 Jun 4;45(23):e1114242025. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1114-24.2025.
Aligning one's decisions with the prevailing social norms and expectations of those around us constitutes a fundamental facet of moral decision-making. When faced with conflicting moral values, one adaptive approach is to rely on intuitive moral preference. Although theoretical accounts have proposed a link between moral preferences and interoceptive awareness-the capacity to sense internal bodily signals, this connection has not been empirically examined. This study examines the relationship between moral preferences and interoception, measured with self-report, heartbeat counting task, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two independent experiments demonstrate that both male and female participants' interoceptive awareness and accuracy are associated with their moral preferences aligned with group consensus. In addition, the fractional occupancies of resting-state brain states involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the precuneus mediated this relationship. These findings provide empirical evidence of the neural mechanism linking interoception to moral preferences aligned with group consensus.
使个人决策与周围人的主流社会规范和期望保持一致，是道德决策的一个基本方面。当面临相互冲突的道德价值观时，一种适应性方法是依靠直觉道德偏好。尽管理论解释提出了道德偏好与内感受性意识（即感知内部身体信号的能力）之间的联系，但这种联系尚未得到实证检验。本研究通过自我报告、心跳计数任务和静息态功能磁共振成像来测量，考察道德偏好与内感受性之间的关系。两项独立实验表明，男性和女性参与者的内感受性意识和准确性都与他们符合群体共识的道德偏好相关。此外，涉及腹内侧前额叶皮层和楔前叶的静息态脑状态的分数占有率介导了这种关系。这些发现为将内感受性与符合群体共识的道德偏好联系起来的神经机制提供了实证证据。
