Me or you? Neural correlates of moral reasoning in everyday conflict situations in adolescents and adults

Social Neuroscience

Volumn 9, Issue 5, 2014, Pages 452-470

  Sommer, Monika ^a   Meinhardt, Jörg ^b   Rothmayr, Christoph ^a   Döhnel, Katrin ^a   Hajak, Göran ^a   Rupprecht, Rainer ^a   Sodian, Beate ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF REGENSBURG   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH   (Germany)

Author keywords

Adolescence; Development; Moral reasoning; Morality; Theory of mind

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT; ADULT; BRAIN; BRAIN MAPPING; CONFLICT; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; MORALITY; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST; NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; PHYSIOLOGY; QUESTIONNAIRE; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; VERBAL COMMUNICATION; YOUNG ADULT;

ADOLESCENT; ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT; ADULT; BRAIN; BRAIN MAPPING; CONFLICT (PSYCHOLOGY); DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; HUMANS; MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; MALE; MORALS; NARRATION; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; QUESTIONNAIRES; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84904753301     PISSN: 17470919     EISSN: 17470927     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2014.933714     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Abu-Akel, A., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. (2011). Neuroanatomical and neurochemical bases of theory of mind. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2971-2984.
2. Anderson, S. W., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. (1999). Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 2, 1037. doi:10.1038/12194
3. Baird, J. A., & Astington, J. W. (2004). The role of mental state understanding in the development of moral cognition and moral action. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2004, 37-49. doi:10.1002/cd.96
4. Berthoz, A., Armony, J. L., Blair, R. J. R., & Dolan, R. J. (2002). An fMRI study of intentional and unintentional (embarrassing) violations of social norms. Brain, 125, 1696-1708. doi:10.1093/brain/awf190
5. Blakemore, S. J., Den Ouden, H. E. M., Choudhury, S., & Frith, C. (2007). Adolescent development of the neural circuitry for thinking about intentions. Scan, 2, 130-139.
6. Burnett, S., Bird, G., Moll, J., Frith, C., & Blakemore, S. J. (2009). Development during adolescence of the neural processing of social emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1736-1750. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21121
7. Bzdok, D., Schilbach, L., Vogeley, K., Schneider, K., Laird, A. R., Langner, R., & Eickhoff, S. B. (2012). Parsing the neural correlates of moral cognition: ALE meta-analysis on morality, theory of mind, and empathy. Brain Structure and Function, 217, 783-796. doi:10.1007/s00429-012-0380-y
8. Carrington, S. J., & Bailey, A. J. (2009). Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature. Human Brain Mapping, 30, 2313-2335. doi:10.1002/hbm.20671
9. Casebeer, W. D. (2003). Opinion: Moral cognition and its neural constituents. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4, 840-847. doi:10.1038/nrn1223
10. Cavanna, A. E., & Trimble, M. R. (2006). The precuneus: A review of its functional anatomy and behavioural correlates. Brain, 129, 564-583. doi:10.1093/brain/awl004
11. Colby, A., & Kohlberg, K. (Eds.). (1987). The measurement of moral judgment (2 Vols.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
12. Crone, E. A., & Dahl, R. E. (2012). Understanding adolescence as a period of social-affective engagement and goal flexibility. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13, 636-650. doi:10.1038/nrn3313
13. Decety, J., Michalska, K. J., & Akitsuki, Y. (2008). Who caused the pain? An fMRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2607-2614. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.05.026
14. Decety, J., Michalska, K. J., & Kinzler, K. D. (2012). The contribution of emotion and cognition to moral sensitivity: A neurodevelopmental study. Cerebral Cortex, 22, 209-220. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr111
15. Decety, J., & Porges, E. C. (2011). Imagining being the agent of actions that carry different moral consequences: An fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2994-3001. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.06.024
16. Döhnel, K., Schuwerk, T., Meinhardt, J., Sodian, B., Hajak, G., & Sommer, M. (2012). Functional activity of the right temporo-parietal junction and of the medial prefrontal cortex associated with true and false belief reasoning. Neuroimage, 60, 1652-1661. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.073
17. Dumontheil, I., Apperly, I. A., & Blakemore, S. J. (2010). Online usage of theory of mind continues to develop in late adolescence. Developmental Science, 13, 331-338. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00888.x
18. Dunn, J., Cutting, A., & Demetriou, H. (2000). Moral sensibility, understanding others, and children's friendship interactions in the preschool period. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 18, 159-177. doi:10.1348/026151000165625
19. Eichenbaum, H., Lipton, P. A., Hasselmo, M. E., Moser, E. I., & Moser, M. (2008). Towards a functional organization of the medial temporal lobe memory system: Role of the parahippocampal and medial entorhinal cortical areas. Hippocampus, 18, 1314-1324. doi:10.1002/hipo.20500
20. Eichenbaum, H., Yonelinas, A. P., & Ranganath, C. (2007). The medial temporal lobe and recognition memory. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 30, 123-152. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.30.051606.094328
21. Eisenberg, N. (2000). Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 665-697. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.665
22. Eisenberg, N., Sheffield Morris, A., Mcdaniel, B., & Spinrad, T. L. (2009). Moral cognitions and prosocial responding in adolescence. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (pp. 229-265). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
23. Eslinger, P. J., Flaherty-Craig, C. V., & Benton, A. L. (2004). Developmental outcomes after early prefrontal cortex damage. Brain and Cognition, 55, 84-103. doi:10.1016/S0278-2626(03)00281-1
24. Eslinger, P. J., Grattan, L. M., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. (1992). Developmental consequences of childhood frontal lobe damage. Archives of Neurology, 49, 764-769. doi:10.1001/archneur.1992.00530310112021
25. Eslinger, P. J., Robinson-Long, M., Realmuto, J., Moll, J., Deoliveira-Souza, R., Tovar-Moll, F.,. Yang, Q. X. (2009). Developmental frontal lobe imaging in moral judgment: Arthur Benton's enduring influence 60 years later. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 31, 158-169. doi:10.1080/13803390802298064
26. Finger, E. C., Marsh, A. A., Kamel, N., Mitchell, D. G. V., & Blair, J. R. (2006). Caught in the act: The impact of audience on the neural response to morally and socially inappropriate behavior. Neuroimage, 33, 414-421.
27. Fink, G. R., Markowitsch, H. J., Reinkemeier, M., Bruckbauer, T., Kessler, J., & Heiss, W. D. (1996). Cerebral representation of one's own past: Neural networks involved in autobiographical memory. The Journal of Neuroscience, 16, 4275-4282.
28. Fumagalli, M., & Priori, A. (2012). Functional and clinical neuroanatomy of morality. Brain, Advance online publication. doi:10.1093/brain/awr334
29. Gogtay, N., Giedd, J. N., Lusk, L., Hayashi, K. M., Greenstein, D., Vaituzis, A. C.,. Thompson, P. M. (2004). Dynamic mapping of the human cortical development during childhood through early adultshood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 8174-8179. doi:10.1073/pnas.0402680101
30. Greene, J., & Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 517-523. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)02011-9
31. Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, 2105-2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872
32. Harenski, C. L., Harenski, K. A., Shane, M. S., & Kiehl, K. A. (2012). Neural development of mentalizing in moral judgment from adolescence to adulthood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 162-173. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2011.09.002
33. Heekeren, H. R., Wartenburger, I., Schmidt, H., Schwintowski, H. P., & Villringer, A. (2003). An fMRI study of simple ethical decision-making. Neuroreport, 14, 1215-1219. doi:10.1097/00001756-200307010-00005
34. Killen, M., Mulvey, K. L., Richardson, C., Jampol, N., & Woodward, A. (2011). The accidental transgressor: Morally-relevant theory of mind. Cognition, 119, 197-215. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.01.006
35. Knobe, J. (2005). Theory of mind and moral cognition: Exploring the connections. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 357-359. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.06.011
36. Kobayashi, C., Glover, G. H., & Temple, E. (2007). Children's and adults' neural bases of verbal and nonverbal 'theory of mind'. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1522-1532. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.11.017
37. Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Damasio, A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements. Nature, 446, 908-911. doi:10.1038/nature05631
38. Koster-Hale, J., Saxe, R., Dungan, J., & Young, L. L. (2013). Decoding moral judgments from neural representations of intentions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 5648-5653. doi:10.1073/pnas.1207992110
39. Krettenauer, T. (2004). Metaehtical cognition and epistemic reasoning development in adolescents. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28, 461-470. doi:10.1080/01650250444000180
40. Lagnado, D. A., & Channon, S. (2008). Judgments of cause and blame: The effects of intentionality and foreseeability. Cognition, 108, 754-770. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.06.009
41. Lehrl, S. (2005). Mehrfachwahl-Wortschatz-Intelligenztest MWT-B. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
42. Liu, D., Sabbagh, M. A., Gehring, W. J., & Wellman, H. M. (2009). Neural correlates of children's theory of mind development. Child Development, 80, 318-326. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01262.x
43. Mar, R. A. (2011). The neural bases of social cognition and story comprehension. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 103-134. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709-145406
44. Meinhardt, J., Sodian, B., Thoermer, C., Döhnel, K., & Sommer, M. (2011). True- and false belief reasoning in children and adults: An event-related potential study of theory of mind. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 1, 67-76. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2010.08.001
45. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Bramati, I. E., & Grafman, J. (2002). Functional networks in emotional moral and nonmoral social judgments. Neuroimage, 16, 696-703. doi:10.1006/nimg.2002.1118
46. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Eslinger, P. J., Bramati, I. E., Mourao-Miranda, J., Andreiuolo, P. A., & Pessoa, L. (2002). The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 2730-2736.
47. Moll, J., Zahn, R., De Oliveira-Souza, R., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2005). Opinion: The neural basis of human moral cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 799-809. doi:10.1038/nrn1768
48. Moshman, D. (2011). Adolescent rationality and development: Cognition, morality, and identity (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
49. Paus, T. (2010). Growth of white matter in the adolescent brain: Myelin or axon? Brain and Cognition, 72, 26-35. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2009.06.002
50. Pujol, J., Reixach, J., Harrison, B. J., Timoneda-Gallert, C., Vilanova, J. C., & Pérez-Alvarez, F. (2008). Posterior cingulate activation during moral dilemma in adolescents. Human Brain Mapping, 29, 910-921. doi:10.1002/hbm.20436
51. Rothmayr, C., Sodian, B., Hajak, G., Döhnel, K., Meinhardt, J., & Sommer, M. (2011). Common and distinct neural networks for false-belief reasoning and inhibitory control. Neuroimage, 56, 1705-1713. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.12.052
52. Saxe, R., Xiao, D.-K., Kovacs, G., Perrett, D. I., & Kanwisher, N. (2004). A region of right posterior superior temporal sulcus responds to observed intentional actions. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1435-1446. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.04.015
53. Schmithorst, V. J., & Yuan, W. (2010). White matter development during adolescence as shown by diffusion MRI. Brain and Cognition, 72, 16-25. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2009.06.005
54. Schuwerk, T., Döhnel, K., Sodian, B., Keck, I. R., Rupprecht, R., & Sommer, M. (2013, in press). Functional activity and effective connectivity of the posterior medial prefrontal cortex during processing of incongruent mental states. Human Brain Mapping, Advance online publication. doi:10.1002/hbm.22377
55. Shaw, P., Kabani, N. J., Lerch, J. P., Eckstrand, K., Lenroot, R., Gogtay, N.,. Wise, S. P. (2008). Neurodevelopmental trajectories of the human cerebral cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 3586-3594. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5309-07.2008
56. Smetana, J. G., & Turiel, E. (2003). Moral developing during adolescence. In G. R. Adams & M. D. Berzonsky (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of adolescence (pp. 247-264). Malden: Blackwell.
57. Sommer, M., Döhnel, K., Sodian, B., Meinhardt, J., Thoermer, C., & Hajak, G. (2007). Neural correlates of true and false belief reasoning. Neuroimage, 35, 1378-1384. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.01.042
58. Sommer, M., Meinhardt, J., Eichenmüller, K., Sodian, B., Döhnel, K., & Hajak, G. (2010). Modulation of the cortical false belief network during development. Brain Research, 1354, 123-131. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.07.057
59. Sommer, M., Rothmayr, C., Döhnel, K., Meinhardt, J., Schwerdtner, J., Sodian, B., & Hajak, G. (2010). How should I decide? The neural correlates of everyday moral reasoning. Neuropsychologia, 48, 2018-2026. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.03.023
60. Sowell, E. R., Thompson, P. M., Leonard, C. M., Welcome, S. E., Kan, E., & Toga, A. W. (2004). Longitudinal mapping of cortical thickness and brain growth in normal children. The Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 8223-8231.
61. Steinberg, L. (2005). Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 69-74.
62. Steinberg, L., & Morris, A. S. (2001). Adolescent development. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 83-110. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.83
63. Thomas, B. C., Croft, K. E., & Tranel, D. (2011). Harming kin to save strangers: Further evidence for abnormally utilitarian moral judgments after ventromedial prefrontal damage. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 2186-2196. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21591
64. Toga, A. W., Thompson, P. M., & Sowell, E. R. (2006). Mapping brain maturation. Trends in Neurosciences, 29, 148-159.
65. Torta, D. M., & Cauda, F. (2011). Different functions in the cingulate cortex, a meta-analytic connectivity modeling study. Neuroimage, 56, 2157-2172. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.03.066
66. Van Overwalle, F. (2009). Social cognition and the brain: A meta-analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 30, 829-858.
67. Van Overwalle, F., Van Den Eede, S., Baetens, K., & Vandekerckhove, M. (2009). Trait inferences in goal-directed behavior: ERP timing and localization under spontaneous and intentional processing. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4, 177-190. doi:10.1093/scan/nsp003
68. Young, L., Camprodon, J. A., Hauser, M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Saxe, R. (2010). Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 6753-6758. doi:10.1073/pnas.0914826107
69. Young, L., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., & Saxe, R. (2007). The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 8235-8240. doi:10.1073/pnas.0701408104
70. Young, L., & Saxe, R. (2008). The neural basis of belief encoding and integration in moral judgment. Neuroimage, 40, 1912-1920. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.01.057
71. Young, L., & Saxe, R. (2009). An fMRI investigation of spontaneous mental state inference for moral judgment. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1396-1405. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21137