The Neuroscience of Moral Choice: An EEG Study of Affective and Cognitive Processes During Moral Decision Making

Abstract

<p>Moral decision making is a complex emotional-cognitive process that is essential for human social interaction. Brain imaging studies of moral judgement have moved from studying specific brain areas and frequency bands involved in those processes to the investigation of brain large-scale networks. In this study, we used EEG to examine the neural correlates of moral decision making in a sample of 22 healthy adults. Participants were presented with a series of personal (PMS) and impersonal (IMS) moral dilemmas, and non-moral scenarios and were then asked to make a decision on whether they might take the action described in the scenarios. The analysis had two parts: analyzing behavioural data to compare response time (RT) for different conditions, and examining the functional connectivity of the largescale brain networks by focusing on the lower beta band during the deliberation phase. Our results showed that RTs were slower in personal moral dilemmas compared to impersonal moral dilemmas, while there was no significant difference in mean RTs between the same IMS conditions with prior personal moral or non-moral decision scenarios. Also, the result showed no increase in DMN, DAN and SN network connectivity in PMS or IMS conditions compared to Eyes open (EO) baseline. However, significant decreases from baseline were found in functional connectivity between nodes of the DMN and nodes of the DAN and such were highly significantly more likely during personal moral than impersonal moral scenario deliberations.</p>