{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,27]],"date-time":"2026-10-27T04:18:56Z","timestamp":1793074736645,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)","issue":"5537","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2001,9,14]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The long-standing rationalist tradition in moral psychology emphasizes the role of reason in moral judgment. A more recent trend places increased emphasis on emotion. Although both reason and emotion are likely to play important roles in moral judgment, relatively little is known about their neural correlates, the nature of their interaction, and the factors that modulate their respective behavioral influences in the context of moral judgment. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using moral dilemmas as probes, we apply the methods of cognitive neuroscience to the study of moral judgment. We argue that moral dilemmas vary systematically in the extent to which they engage emotional processing and that these variations in emotional engagement influence moral judgment. These results may shed light on some puzzling patterns in moral judgment observed by contemporary philosophers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1062872","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2002,7,27]],"date-time":"2002-07-27T05:52:08Z","timestamp":1027749128000},"page":"2105-2108","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3215,"title":["An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment"],"prefix":"10.1126","volume":"293","author":[{"given":"Joshua D.","family":"Greene","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior,"},{"name":"Department of Philosophy, 1879 Hall,"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"R. Brian","family":"Sommerville","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior,"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Leigh E.","family":"Nystrom","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior,"},{"name":"Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"John M.","family":"Darley","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jonathan D.","family":"Cohen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior,"},{"name":"Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA."},{"name":"Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"221","reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_1_2_2","unstructured":"J. J. Thomson Rights Restitution and Risk (Harvard Univ. Press Cambridge 1986) pp. 94\u2013116."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_3_2","unstructured":"A loose but potentially illuminating analogy can be made between this and the Chomskyan question: How is that most people can speak grammatically without being able to exhaustively cite the rules of grammar?"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_4_2","unstructured":"A. R. Damasio Descartes' Error (Putnam New York 1994)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"11","DOI":"10.1016\/S1364-6613(98)01265-0","volume":"3","author":"Davidson R. J.","year":"1999","unstructured":"Davidson R. J., Irwin W., Trends. Cogn Sci. 3, 11 (1999).","journal-title":"Trends. Cogn Sci."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_6_2","unstructured":"E. M. Reiman J. Clin. Psychiatry 58 (suppl 16) 4 (1997)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_7_2","first-page":"219","volume":"72","author":"Stroop J. R.","year":"1935","unstructured":"Stroop J. R., J. Exp. Psychol. 72, 219 (1935).","journal-title":"J. Exp. Psychol."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_8_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"163","DOI":"10.1037\/0033-2909.109.2.163","volume":"109","author":"MacLeod C. M.","year":"1991","unstructured":"MacLeod C. M., Psychol. Bull. 109, 163 (1991).","journal-title":"Psychol. Bull."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_9_2","unstructured":"Testing materials (dilemmas) are available from Science Online at www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/full\/293\/5537\/2105\/DC1."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_10_2","unstructured":"The three criteria are as follows: First coders indicated for each dilemma whether the action in question could \u201creasonably be expected to lead to serious bodily harm.\u201d Second they were asked to indicate whether this harm would be \u201cthe result of deflecting an existing threat onto a different party.\u201d Our use of this criterion which parallels a distinction made by Thomson (1) is a an attempt to operationalize an intuitive notion of \u201cagency.\u201d Intuitively when a harm is produced by means of deflecting an existing threat the agent has merely \u201cedited\u201d and not \u201cauthored\u201d the resulting harm and thus its contemplation is less emotionally engaging. Lastly coders were asked to indicate whether the resulting harm would \u201cbefall a particular person or a member or members of a particular group of people.\u201d Here the question in intuitive terms is whether the victim is \u201con stage\u201d in the dilemma. The moral dilemmas of which the coders said that the action in question (a) could reasonably be expected to lead to serious bodily harm (b) to a particular person or a member or members of a particular group of people (c) where this harm is not the result of deflecting an existing threat onto a different party were assigned to the \u201cmoral-personal\u201d condition; the others were assigned to the \u201cmoral-impersonal\u201d condition."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_11_2","unstructured":"Participants were five male and four female undergraduates in Experiment 1 four male and five female in Experiment 2. All participants provided written informed consent."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_12_2","unstructured":"Dilemmas were presented in random order in a series of six blocks of ten trials each in Experiment 1 twelve blocks of five trials each in Experiment 2. Participants' responses to versions of the trolley and footbridge dilemmas were consistent with the intuitions described above (8)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_13_2","unstructured":"Stimuli (dilemmas) were presented on a visual display projected into the scanner. Each dilemma was presented as text through a series of three screens the first two describing a scenario and the last posing a question about the appropriateness of an action one might perform in that scenario (e.g. turning the trolley). Participants were allowed to read at their own pace pressing a button to advance from the first to the second screen and from the second to the third screen. After reading the third screen participants responded by pressing one of two buttons (\u201cappropriate\u201d or \u201cinappropriate\u201d). Participants were given a maximum of 46 s to read all three screens and respond. The intertrial interval (ITI) lasted for a minimum of 14 s (seven images) in each trial allowing the hemodynamic response to return to baseline after each trial. Baseline activity was defined as the mean signal across the last four images of the ITI. Task-related activity was measured using a \u201cfloating window\u201d of eight images surrounding (four before one during and three after) the point of response. (This window includes three post-response images in order to allow for the 4- to 6-s delay in hemodynamic response to neural activation.) This \u201cfloating window\u201d technique combined the benefits of an event-related design with the flexibility required to image a complex and temporally extended psychological process that inevitably proceeds at its own pace. In Experiment 1 functional images were acquired in 20 axial slices parallel to the AC-PC (anterior commisure\u2013posterior commisure) line [spiral pulse sequence; repetition time (TR) 2000 ms; echo time (TE) 45 ms; flip angle 80\u00b0; field of view (FOV) 240 mm; 3.75-mm isotropic voxels] using a 1.5-T GE Signa whole-body scanner. In Experiment 2 functional images were acquired in 22 axial slices parallel to the AC-PC line (echoplanar pulse sequence; TR 2000 ms; TE 25 ms; flip angle 90\u00b0; FOV 192 mm; 3.0-mm isotropic voxels; 1-mm interslice spacing) using a 3.0-T Siemens Allegra head-dedicated scanner."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_14_2","unstructured":"Before statistical analysis images for all participants were coregistered using a 12-parameter automatic algorithm. Images were smoothed with an 8-mm full-width at half maximum (FWHM) 3D Gaussian filter. In Experiment 1 the images contained in each response window were analyzed with the use of a voxelwise mixed-effects ANOVA with participant as a random effect and dilemma-type block and response-relative image as fixed effects. Statistical maps of voxelwise F-ratios were thresholded for significance ( P < 0.0005) and cluster size (\u22658 voxels). In Experiments 1 and 2 planned comparisons for significant differences between conditions ( P < 0.05 cluster size \u22658 voxels) were made for each area identified by the thresholded ANOVA in Experiment 1."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_15_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"310","DOI":"10.1016\/S0166-2236(98)01374-5","volume":"22","author":"Maddock R. J.","year":"1999","unstructured":"Maddock R. J., Trends Neurosci. 22, 310 (1999).","journal-title":"Trends Neurosci."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1569","DOI":"10.1097\/00001756-199607080-00007","volume":"7","author":"Kosslyn S. M.","year":"1996","unstructured":"Kosslyn S. M., et al., Neuroreport 7, 1569 (1996).","journal-title":"Neuroreport"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_17_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"918","DOI":"10.1176\/ajp.154.7.918","volume":"154","author":"Reiman E. M.","year":"1997","unstructured":"Reiman E. M., et al., Am. J. Psychiatry 154, 918 (1997).","journal-title":"Am. J. Psychiatry"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"353","DOI":"10.1080\/026999398379646","volume":"12","author":"Drevets W. C.","year":"1998","unstructured":"Drevets W. C., Raichle M. E., Cognition Emotion 12, 353 (1998).","journal-title":"Cognition Emotion"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_19_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1006\/cogp.1997.0658"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_20_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/386604a0"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_21_2","unstructured":"In BA 7\/40 (right) a small minority of voxels (10 of 91) showed a significant difference between the moral-impersonal and non-moral conditions."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_22_2","unstructured":"Due to magnetic susceptibility artifact we were unable to image the orbitofrontal cortex an area thought by some to play an important role in moral judgment (3)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_23_2","unstructured":"Experiments 1 and 2 were not identical (8). Experiment 2 employed some modified versions of dilemmas from Experiment 1 as well as some new dilemmas in order to avoid a confound present in the design of the behavioral aspect of Experiment 1 (24)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_24_2","unstructured":"The replicated results for BAs 9\/10 31 and bilateral 7\/40 were achieved at a higher significance threshold in Experiment 2 ( P < 0.01) than in Experiment 1."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_25_2","unstructured":"A potential confound in the design of the behavioral aspect of the present study deserves attention. One might suppose that participants respond more slowly when giving an \u201cunconventional\u201d response i.e. a response that differs from that of the majority. One might suppose further that the moral-personal condition makes greater use of dilemmas for which the emotionally incongruent response is also the unconventional response (as in judging that one may push the man off the footbridge in the footbridge dilemma) thus confounding emotional incongruity with unconventionality in participants' responses. Therefore an effect that we attribute to emotional engagement may simply be an effect of the conventionality of participants' responses. To deconfound these factors in Experiment 2 we included additional moral-personal dilemmas for which the conventional response was emotionally incongruent rather than congruent. For example one dilemma asked whether it is appropriate to smother one's crying baby to death in order to prevent its crying from summoning enemy soldiers who will kill oneself the baby and a number of others if summoned. Most participants judged this action to be appropriate in spite of their putative emotional tendencies to the contrary. As predicted by our hypothesis reaction times in such cases were significantly longer [ t (8) = 4.332 P < 0.0001] than the reaction times for conventional and emotionally congruent responses as were typically made in response to the footbridge dilemma. Thus after controlling for conventionality reaction times in the moral-personal condition are longer for trials which according to our theory reflect a judgment that is emotionally incongruent rather than congruent."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_26_2","unstructured":"Although our conclusion concerning the behavioral influence of the observed emotional responses does not require that the emotion-related areas identified in Experiments 1 and 2 be different from areas that show increased activity in response to more basic kinds of emotional stimuli one might wonder to what extent they do differ from such areas. We made a preliminary attempt to answer this question in the form of an addendum study to Experiment 1. Five participants responded to moral-personal and moral-impersonal dilemmas as in Experiments 1 and 2. Participants also performed a task in which they named the colors of visually presented emotional and neutral words a task similar to the one used by Isenberg et al. (27). The emotional word stimuli were extracted from the text of the moral dilemmas by three independent coders. Neutral words and additional emotional words were drawn from materials used by Isenberg et al. (27). A comparison of the emotional and neutral word conditions (t test P < 0.05 cluster size \u22658 voxels) revealed no significant activation in the emotion-related areas identified in Experiment 1 and only a marginal activation (9 out of 123 voxels) in one of the working memory areas (left BA 7\/40). This comparison did however reveal activations in numerous other areas. A comparison of the moral-personal and moral-impersonal conditions from the same five sessions replicated the activations observed in Experiments 1 and 2 in BA 9\/10 (55 of 64 voxels at P < 0.05) and left BA 7\/40 (40 of 123 voxels at P < 0.05). These results demonstrate at the very least that the effects observed in Experiments 1 and 2 in the medial frontal gyrus (BA 9\/10) cannot be attributed to the mere reading of emotional words. This area more than any of the others we have identified is likely to play a role in the integration of emotion and cognition in complex decision-making (3 5)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_27_2","unstructured":"J. D. Haidt Psych. Rev. in press."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_28_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10456","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.96.18.10456","volume":"96","author":"Isenberg N.","year":"1999","unstructured":"Isenberg N., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 96, 10456 (1999).","journal-title":"Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_29_2","unstructured":"J. Talairach P. Tournoux A Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain (Thieme New York 1988)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_30_2","unstructured":"We gratefully acknowledge M. Gilzenrat N. Isenberg P. Jablonka J. Kroger and T.-Q. Li for their contributions to this project. Supported in part by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts (no. 97001533-000) and the National Science Foundation (no. 2556566)."}],"container-title":["Science"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1126\/science.1062872","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,9]],"date-time":"2024-01-09T17:15:48Z","timestamp":1704820548000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1062872"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2001,9,14]]},"references-count":29,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5537","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2001,9,14]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1126\/science.1062872"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1062872","relation":{},"ISSN":["0036-8075","1095-9203"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0036-8075","type":"print"},{"value":"1095-9203","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2001,9,14]]}}}