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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on December 3, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2008 3(1):33-46; doi:10.1093/scan/nsm037
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Individual differences in moral judgment competence influence neural correlates of socio-normative judgments

Kristin Prehn1,2,3, Isabell Wartenburger1,4, Katja Mériau1,2,3, Christina Scheibe1,2,3, Oliver R. Goodenough5, Arno Villringer1, Elke van der Meer2 and Hauke R. Heekeren1,3,6

1Department of Neurology, Neuroscience Research Center, Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Charité University Medicine Berlin, 2Department of Psychology, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany, 3Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany, 4Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany, 5Vermont Law School, Vermont, USA, and 6Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

To investigate how individual differences in moral judgment competence are reflected in the human brain, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, while 23 participants made either socio-normative or grammatical judgments. Participants with lower moral judgment competence recruited the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the left posterior superior temporal sulcus more than participants with greater competence in this domain when identifying social norm violations. Moreover, moral judgment competence scores were inversely correlated with activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during socio-normative relative to grammatical judgments. Greater activity in right DLPFC in participants with lower moral judgment competence indicates increased recruitment of rule-based knowledge and its controlled application during socio-normative judgments. These data support current models of the neurocognition of morality according to which both emotional and cognitive components play an important role.

Keywords: moral judgment; individual differences; moral judgment competence; right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; fMRI

Correspondence should be addressed to Kristin Prehn, Neuroscience Research Center, Berlin NeuroImaging Center & Charité University Medicine Berlin, Campus Mitte, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany, E-mail: kristin.prehn{at}charite.de or Hauke R. Heekeren, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany, E-mail: heekeren{at}mpib-berlin.mpg.de.

Received July 24, 2007. Accepted November 5, 2007.


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