Tricoche Leslie, Rovai Antonin, Lo Bue Salvatore, Caspar Emilie A
Moral & Social Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Translational Neuroanatomy and Neuroimaging Lab, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 22;20(7):e0328407. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328407. eCollection 2025.
The literature highlighted that compliance with or resistance to authority orders to inflict pain involves cognitive processes like empathy, guilt, mentalization, cognitive conflict, and sense of agency. However, previous studies have focused on civilians, for whom such decisions are less significant than for military personnel, where obedience or resistance is integral to duty. This functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study examined 53 military personnel, compared to 56 civilians, tasked with deciding whether or not to deliver shocks to a victim following orders received by an experimenter. Results revealed that military participants disobeyed orders less frequently, adopting higher homogeneous profiles: fewer ultra-prosocial and no antisocial behavior. High disobedience in military participants was driven by rational (moral, educational) and emotional factors (guilt, sadness, heightened victim sensitivity). Shared neuro-cognitive processes were observed between the two populations, but the level of engagement of these processes differed. While civilians predominantly recruited left temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) during decision-making, military agents relied more heavily on regions such as the right TPJ and anterior insula to achieve disobedience. Military participants also exhibited a reduced sense of agency in prosocial disobedience compared to civilians. In post-decision when witnessing the victim's pain, military participants preferentially activated right-hemisphere regions, while civilians engaged more left and medial regions. These differences suggest distinct mentalization forms, with civilians favoring cognitive empathy and military personnel relying more on affective empathy. These findings could have implications for ethics training in military and institutional contexts, and offer insights into how obedience and resistance are cognitively and emotionally constructed across different social roles and institutional environments.
文献强调，服从或抵制施加痛苦的权威命令涉及共情、内疚、心理化、认知冲突和能动感等认知过程。然而，以往的研究主要集中在平民身上，对他们来说，这类决定的重要性低于军事人员，因为服从或抵抗是军事人员职责的一部分。这项功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）研究对53名军事人员和56名平民进行了检查，他们的任务是根据实验者下达的命令决定是否对受害者实施电击。结果显示，军事参与者违抗命令的频率较低，呈现出更高的一致性特征：超亲社会行为较少，且没有反社会行为。军事参与者的高违抗率是由理性（道德、教育）和情感因素（内疚、悲伤、对受害者更高的敏感度）驱动的。在这两个人群中观察到了共同的神经认知过程，但这些过程的参与程度有所不同。平民在决策过程中主要激活左颞顶联合区（TPJ）和背内侧前额叶皮层（dmPFC），而军事人员更多地依赖右TPJ和前脑岛等区域来实现违抗。与平民相比，军事参与者在亲社会违抗中也表现出较低的能动感。在决策后目睹受害者的痛苦时，军事参与者优先激活右半球区域，而平民则更多地激活左半球和内侧区域。这些差异表明了不同的心理化形式，平民更倾向于认知共情，而军事人员更多地依赖情感共情。这些发现可能对军事和机构环境中的伦理培训有启示意义，并为不同社会角色和机构环境中服从和抵抗如何在认知和情感上构建提供见解。
