Cold or calculating? Reduced activity in the subgenual cingulate cortex reflects decreased emotional aversion to harming in counterintuitive utilitarian judgment

• Published in: Cognition 2013-03, Vol.126 (3), p.364-372
• Main Authors: Wiech, Katja, Kahane, Guy, Shackel, Nicholas, Farias, Miguel, Savulescu, Julian, Tracey, Irene
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Anatomical correlates of behavior; Anxiety; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain; Brain Mapping; Cingulate cortex; Decision Making; Decision Making - physiology; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Empathy; Engagement; Ethical Theory; Female; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Functional Neuroimaging; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Guilt; Gyrus Cinguli - physiology; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Injuries; Intuition; Judgement; Judgment - physiology; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Moral decision-making; Moral Development; Moral Issues; Moral Values; Morals; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social attribution, perception and cognition; Social Cognition; Social psychology; Utilitarian judgment; Utilitarianism
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.11.002

► We investigated the role of two personality traits in moral judgment using fMRI. ► Psychoticism and need for cognition correlated with number of utilitarian decisions. ► Only psychoticism was associated with reduced activation in the subgenual ACC. ► Our data suggest that utilitarian judgments can reflect a reduced aversion to harm. ► They offer little support to a tie between utilitarian judgment and greater deliberation. Recent research on moral decision-making has suggested that many common moral judgments are based on immediate intuitions. However, some individuals arrive at highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions about when it is permissible to harm other individuals. Such utilitarian judgments have been attributed to effortful reasoning that has overcome our natural emotional aversion to harming others. Recent studies, however, suggest that such utilitarian judgments might also result from a decreased aversion to harming others, due to a deficit in empathic concern and social emotion. The present study investigated the neural basis of such indifference to harming using functional neuroimaging during engagement in moral dilemmas. A tendency to counterintuitive utilitarian judgment was associated both with ‘psychoticism’, a trait associated with a lack of empathic concern and antisocial tendencies, and with ‘need for cognition’, a trait reflecting preference for effortful cognition. Importantly, only psychoticism was also negatively correlated with activation in the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC), a brain area implicated in empathic concern and social emotions such as guilt, during counterintuitive utilitarian judgments. Our findings suggest that when individuals reach highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions, this need not reflect greater engagement in explicit moral deliberation. It may rather reflect a lack of empathic concern, and diminished aversion to harming others.