“Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgements”, 2007 ():
The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement.
Here we show that 6 patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions, produce:
an abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviors (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives). In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas.
These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements.
[Warning: one co-author is Marc Hauser.]