The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict

and Control in Moral Judgment

Joshua D. Greene, Leigh E. NystromAndrew D. Engell,John M. Darley,

and Jonathan D. Cohen

Neuron, Vol. 44, 389–400, October 14, 2004

What is the distinction between personal and impersonal moral dilemmas?

What governs the decision in each case?

What is utilitarian decision?

Distinction between impersonal and personalE.g. trolley vs. footbridge

Evolution of morality?Animal has personal because they have emotionsWe add impersonal because we have extra reasoning capacity

Looking for evidence that personal are driven by socio-emotional decisions and that impersonal more cognitive

What is the evidence already?

Previous work:1) Brain areas associated with socio-emotional increased activity during personal 2) Brain areas associated with abstract reasoning and problem solving increased activity during impersonal

3) Reaction time longer when judging personal violations as appropriateCompared with judgments inappropriate(stroop argument)Effect not seen for impersonal judgments

Hypotheses:

Translation…

• Longer reaction more conflicted decision

• ACC associated with conflict so expect more activity for trials with greater RT

• DLPFC involved in abstract reasoning so expect more activity for longer RT

• Different patterns of activity reflect differences in decision making behavior

To test this:

Difficult vs. easy

Cognitive- emotional conflict : can save the village by killing the baby vs

should teenage mother kill her baby?No significant cognitive conflict

Figure 1. Relationships among Three AnalysesThe present results are from three increasingly focused analyses of a single data set drawn from 41 participants who responded to moral dilemmas while having their brains scanned using fMRI.

Methods

• How much do we assume that people know?

• What are the necessary details?• What kind of things can we leave out?• Can we give examples…?

41 participants (24M 17F) Right handed 3 ditched for technical reasons

Stimuli

http://www.neuron.org/cgi/content/full/44/2/389/DC1

Presentation:

12 blocks 5 trialsDilemma presented as text on 3 screens

2 for scenario and last for choiceButton press – appropriate or not

14 secs between trials

RT normalized to individual personal time

Figure 2. Difficult versus Easy Personal Moral JudgmentSelected brain regions (see Table 2) exhibiting significantly increased activity for difficult (high-RT), as compared to easy (low-RT), personal moral judgment: anterior cingulate cortex (BA 32), posterior cingulate cortex (BA 23/31), precuneus (BA 7), right and left middle frontal gyrus (BA 10/46). Statistical maps of voxelwise t scores were thresholded for significance (p 0.0005) and cluster size (8 voxels). (A) Sagittal slice plane is x 0; (B) axial slice plane is z9 (Talairach and Tournoux, 1988). Image is reversed right to left according to radiologic convention.

Figure 3. Utilitarian versus Nonutilitarian DifficultPersonal Moral JudgmentSelected brain regions (see Tables 3–4) exhibitingsignificantly increased activity for utilitarian, as compared to nonutilitarian, difficultpersonal moral judgment. (A) A spatially restricted analysis(p 0.05, cluster size 8) of activity in the anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA 10/ 46) revealed bilateral clusters of voxels exhibitingincreased activity during trials in which participants made utilitarian judgments. 1988). (B) A whole-brain analysis (p 0.005, cluster size 8) revealed a contiguous andslightly anterior region on the right side exhibitingthe same effect. (C) Timecourse of activity in this region by participant response: utilitarian/“appropriate” (green) versusnonutilitarian/“inappropriate” (red). Dataare not adjusted for hemodynamic lag.

Predicted that difficult personal moral dilemmas would exhibit increased ACC activity

What is the role of the ACC?Conflict monitoringError detectionAttention to action (regulative)Cardiovascular arousal

Predicted increase in anterior DLPFC activity

What is the role of the DLPFC?

How to describe imaging data and large tables….

• What are the key points?

• How much detail should we skip?

Conflict and control

ACC and DLPFC both increase for difficult decisions

Does ACC recruit DLPFC after noticing difficulty?

Or does activation of DLPFC allow greater competition with emotional input?

Cognition and emotion

Cognitive process (Kohlberg)

Emotion first and then rationality follows after the fact in response to social demands (Haidt)

Both emotion and cognition have roles in moral judgment(Greene and Haidt)

Can be complementary or competitive

Relationship between cognition and emotion

Posterior cingulate (emotive area) also involved in utilitarian decision- ie not purely cognitive

Suggest that ACC acts to motivate to engage in the necessary reasoning.BA23/31 (posterior cingulate) motivates to respond in accordance with judgment

Is the distinction between cognition and emotion real?

Finally a resolution to John Stuart Mill and Immanual Kant…

Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarianmoral judgements

Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc

Hauser& Antonio Damasio

Nature 446 2007 908-911

6 patients with bilateral damage to VMPC – ventromedial prefrontal cortex

A region associated with normal generation of emotions esp social emotions

12 brain damaged (not emotional areas ie VMPC, amygdala, insula..)

12 normals – no brain damage

Stimuli presented as text on 3 screensanswered yes I would or no I would not by button

Scenarios – non moral , personal (low or hi conflict) , impersonal

Figure 1 | Lesion overlap of VMPC patients. Lesions of the six VMPC patients displayed in mesial views and coronal slices. The colour bar indicates the number of overlapping lesions at each voxel.

Figure 2 | Moral judgements for each scenario type. Proportions of ‘yes’judgements are shown for each subject group. Error bars indicate 95%confidence intervals. We used three classes of stimuli: non-moral scenarios(n518), impersonal moral scenarios (n511), and personal moralscenarios (n521). On personal moral scenarios, the frequency of endorsing‘yes’ responses was significantly greater in the VMPC group than in eithercomparison group (P values,0.05, corrected).

Figure 3 | Moral judgements on individual personal moral scenarios.Proportions of ‘yes’ judgements given by each subject group for each of the21 personal moral scenarios. Individual scenarios (numbered 1–21 on the xaxis) are ordered by increasing proportion of ‘yes’ responses given by thenormal comparison group. Responses did not differ between subject groupsfor the low-conflict scenarios (left of the vertical line). The VMPC groupmade a greater proportion of ‘yes’ judgements than either comparison groupfor every one of the high-conflict scenarios (right of the vertical line).

Ventromedial Pre-frontal cortex involved in utilitarian judgments

-Suggest VMPF necessary for normal judgment, ie need to include emotion in decision

-So emotion not just a consequence of the decision

Knowledge of social and moral norms same for both ( acquired pre-damage)

No longer have access to social emotions

How to resolve discrepancies between papers….

• The two papers mostly agree but not completely…

• Do we gloss over this and keep moving?• Do we focus on it and try to explain it?• Any other strategy?