The neural correlates of moral decision-making: A systematic review and meta-analysis of moral evaluations and response decision judgements

Garrigan, Beverley, Adlam, Anna L. R. and Langdon, Peter E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7745-1825 (2016) The neural correlates of moral decision-making: A systematic review and meta-analysis of moral evaluations and response decision judgements. Brain and Cognition, 108. pp. 88-97. ISSN 0278-2626

[thumbnail of Published manuscript]
Preview
PDF (Published manuscript) - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

Download (829kB) | Preview

Abstract

The aims of this systematic review were to determine: (a) which brain areas are consistently more active when making (i) moral response decisions, defined as choosing a response to a moral dilemma, or deciding whether to accept a proposed solution, or (ii) moral evaluations, defined as judging the appropriateness of another’s actions in a moral dilemma, rating moral statements as right or wrong, or identifying important moral issues; and (b) shared and significantly different activation patterns for these two types of moral judgements. A systematic search of the literature returned 28 experiments. Activation likelihood estimate analysis identified the brain areas commonly more active for moral response decisions and for moral evaluations. Conjunction analysis revealed shared activation for both types of moral judgement in the left middle temporal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, and medial frontal gyrus. Contrast analyses found no significant clusters of increased activation for the moral evaluations-moral response decisions contrast, but found that moral response decisions additionally activated the left and right middle temporal gyrus and the right precuneus. Making one’s own moral decisions involves different brain areas compared to judging the moral actions of others, implying that these judgements may involve different processes.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Corrigendum available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2016.10.002
Uncontrolled Keywords: moral evaluation (me),moral response decision (mrd),activation likelihood estimate analysis (ale),meta-analysis,functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri)
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Psychological Sciences (former - to 2018)
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2016 00:52
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2022 01:31
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60249
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2016.07.007

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item