Investigation of neural and cognitive processes underlying individual variation in moral preferences is underway, with notable similarities emerging between moraland risk-based decision-making. Here we specifically assessed moral distributive justice preferences and non-moral financial gambling preferences in the same individuals, and report an association between these seemingly disparate form...

Automatic intuitions and deliberate reasoning, sourcing internal representations of our personal norms and values, contribute to our beliefs of what is right and wrong. We used fMRI to directly compare moral (M) and non-moral (NM) decision-making processes using scenarios requiring conscious deliberation, whereby the main character declared an intention to take a course of action. Furthermore, ...

A Cognitive Model of Recognition-Based Moral Decision Making Morteza Dehghani The study of decision making has been dominated by economic perspectives, which model people as rational agents who carefully weigh costs and benefits and try to maximize the utility of every choice, without consideration of issues such as cultural norms, religious beliefs and moral rules. However, psychological findi...

Current research into the neural basis of moral decision-making endorses a common theme: The mechanisms we use to make value-guided decisions concerning each other are remarkably similar to those we use to make value-guided decisions for ourselves. In other words, moral decisions are just another kind of ordinary decision. Yet, there is something unsettling about this conclusion: We often feel ...

Professional decision making in forensic clinical practice may have lifelong consequences for offenders. Although information on moral development is important for prediction of reoffending and referral to adequate treatment, conclusions regarding moral development are still largely based on unstructured clinical judgment instead of assessment instruments. For this study, the authors examined t...

Recent studies in the field of neuropsychological decision-making as well as moral psychology emphasize the role of emotions in decision-making. The current study examines whether stress affects moral decision-making. We induced stress in 20 participants with the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and also examined 20 participants in a control condition (Placebo TSST). The level of stress was asse...