Tom Stafford - The Perspectival Shift: How Experiments on Unconscious Processing Don't Justify the Claims Made for Them

The notion of unconscious processing, perhaps explained best by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2012), has been used in the field of neuroscience to argue against free will -- see Sam Harris's frustratingly narrow arguments in Free Will (2012).

In this opinion article from Frontiers in Cognitive Science, Tom Stafford argues that:

(1) a widely employed definition of unconscious processing, promoted by John Bargh is incoherent (2) many experiments involve a perspectival sleight of hand taking factors identified from comparison of average group performance and inappropriately ascribing them to the reasoning of individual participants.

In essence, he argues that these studies rely on priming ("an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences a response to another stimulus"), but that unconscious processing is wholly distinct from priming. 

Stafford notes:

John Bargh has influentially defined unconscious processes as those that “do not influence subjective experience in a way that [he or she] can directly detect, understand, or report the occurrence or nature of these events” (Bargh, 1992; Bargh and Morsella, 2008; Huang and Bargh, 2014, p. 14).

But this definition contains a serious reframing of the tradition definition of unconscious from “without awareness of the stimuli” to this newer, broader definition, “without awareness of the influence of the stimuli”. It is this second definition that authors like Sam Harris rely on for their arguments.

This is what Stafford sets out to argue against.

Full Citation:
Stafford T. (2014, Sep 19). The perspectival shift: how experiments on unconscious processing don't justify the claims made for them. Frontiers in Psychology: Cognitive Science; 5:1067. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01067

The perspectival shift: how experiments on unconscious processing don't justify the claims made for them

By Tom Stafford

• Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Strong Claims About Unconscious Processing are Unjustified

Recently, there has been widespread focus on studies of unconscious processing that have come out of the field of “social priming” (Doyen et al., 2012; Yong, 2012; Shanks et al., 2013). This focus has primarily been on their replicability (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012) and attendant claims of statistical and methodological impropriety (Simmons et al., 2011; Newell and Shanks, 2014). The logic of the claims made has received less attention. In this commentary I draw attention to certain limitations on the inferences which can be drawn about participant's awareness from the experimental methods which are routine in social priming research. Specifically, I ague that (1) a widely employed definition of unconscious processing, promoted by John Bargh is incoherent (2) many experiments involve a perspectival sleight of hand taking factors identified from comparison of average group performance and inappropriately ascribing them to the reasoning of individual participants.

The claims made for the role of unconscious processes are strong. For example, one review states “priming studies have consistently demonstrated that the mere exposure to environmental events is sufficient to directly trigger higher mental processes, in the absence of any conscious intentions or awareness that they operate” (Huang and Bargh, 2014, p. 9). The power of unconscious influences is explicitly placed in opposition to conscious processing “… by logical necessity [priming effects have] reduced the presumed causal role of intentional, conscious processes in higher mental processes” (Bargh and Huang, 2009, p. 128). This leads one review to state “some volitional behavior does not require any conscious awareness at all” (Dijksterhuis and Aarts, 2010, p. 469). Note that the claim is not that unconscious processes are involved in judgment, nor that priming can influence higher mental processes. Rather it is far stronger. Unconscious processes produce judgment, priming triggers higher mental processes, no conscious awareness is required.

I do not wish to question the reality of these priming effects, in that I believe that most of these studies could be replicated. Nor do I deny the challenge they pose to our folk psychology of what influences human behavior (which is often dominated by a simplistic “all acts have deliberate reasons” model). My purpose is merely to draw attention to a disjuncture between the methods used to assess unconscious processes, and the claims made for them in terms of their role in producing action.

Problems with Defining Unconscious by Failure to Report

John Bargh has influentially defined unconscious processes as those that “do not influence subjective experience in a way that [he or she] can directly detect, understand, or report the occurrence or nature of these events” (Bargh, 1992; Bargh and Morsella, 2008; Huang and Bargh, 2014, p. 14). This definition contains a crucial ambiguity. How general must the inability to detect, understand or report be for a process to count as unconscious? Some processes, which we might most appropriately call nonconscious are forever off limits to our introspection (they are “cognitively encapsulated,” Fodor, 1983). Others may not be detected, understood or reported on just one particular occasion. Does this make them unconscious? It seems it does according to the definition promoted by Bargh.

This new definition has been used to support a shift from defining unconscious as “without awareness of the stimuli” to “without awareness of the influence of the stimuli.” This creates two problems. The first problem is it defines the “unconscious” as much by the self-model of the participants as by that of the experimenter. For example, Custers and Aarts (2005) is cited (e.g., by Huang and Bargh, 2014) as an example of subliminal priming which attests to the operation of unconscious goals. The check which was used to ensure that the stimuli really were subliminal was to ask participants at the end of the experiment if they were influenced by the stimuli (Custers and Aarts, 2005, experiment 1). In other words, unconscious operation is defined by participants denying they were influenced. Wilson (2002) has written engagingly about the divergence of our model of our thoughts and feelings from our actual thoughts and feelings. You don't need to be social psychologist to see that there could be many influences which would lead to a participant denying the influence of a stimulus on their choice, and that these might be factors which—while interesting—weaken the claim that this definition of unconscious allows us to focus on processes which are both a natural kind and truly unknown to the subjects (they may, for example, be responding to perceived social pressure to deny the influence of the factors in question).

A highly cited study (Bargh et al., 1996) reported that participants were unconsciously influenced by primes in a scrambled words task to walk more slowly down a corridor upon leaving the experiment. The authors reported, consistent with the definition of unconsciousness that I wish to question, that “no participant believes that the word has an impact on his or her behavior” (Bargh et al., 1996, experiment 1, p. 237). Remarkably, no further test of the awareness of the primes was done on the participants. Instead, a separate 19 participants were tested and funnel debriefed (with half in the experimental condition, so we can expect 9 or 10 to have experienced the elderly primes). The basis for claiming that priming was unconscious is that these participants could not predict what the influence of the primes would be, nor connect them to the elderly stereotype. Aside from issues of statistical power in this check, it seems that no participant was ever directly asked if the primes would affect the specific behavior which was measured. Even if we did ask them, we would have no strong reason to believe that the answers we got were because participants were, in some strong sense, ignorant of the influence of the primes on their behavior. Instead, they may just give answers which fit with common lay beliefs regarding which factors should and shouldn't influence behavior.

This issue of how awareness should be assessed, and of possible biases on subjective reports, is a long-standing one¹. Reviews have highlighted the difficulty of demonstrating with certainty that a participant is unaware (Eriksen, 1960; Holender, 1986; Simons et al., 2007; Newell and Shanks, 2014). The way you operationally define consciousness is crucial to whether you can demonstrate perception without it (Reingold and Merikle, 1990; Merikle et al., 2001). In contrast to Bargh et al. (1996) other studies have used stricter methods, such as forced choice questions which remove biases to not report (since they are forced choice) and allow any feelings of awareness (however weak) to inform the choice (see Hannula et al., 2005 for a fuller discussion). It is against this background that Bargh's strategy of defining unconsciousness by failure to report should be judged (Bargh, 1992; Bargh and Morsella, 2008).

The Unjustified Perspectival Shift which Makes Claims about Individual Rationality Based on Group Differences

The second problem introduced by this definition of unconscious concerns how claims of the importance of factors in individual cognition are made from experiments which compare differences in group averages. The logic of many of our behavioral experiments encourages a perspectival shift in which factors which have the major influence on each individual's choices are rendered invisible, while an experimental factor which has a minor influence on each individual's choice is highlighted. This is obviously the intent—the logic of a between subjects design is to pull out the influence of the experimental factor against a background of individual variability. Using this method we identify factors which we can show have a causal influence at the level of group average. It can be a mistake, however, to talk with confidence about the nature of an individual's choice, rather than the average effect over individuals' choices. Consider the statement “Unconscious processes have been shown to produce evaluation and social judgment” (Huang and Bargh, 2014, p. 9). This is simply wrong if we take “produce” to mean “be solely responsible for.” Unconscious processes do not produce, e.g., social judgments. The empirical foundation for this claim is experiments in which social judgment is produced by individuals, who are quite conscious of what they are doing at a macrolevel- i.e., willingly participating in an experiment. Unconscious processes are shown to influence cognitions and behaviors, but they do this as part of the conscious production of these cognitions and behaviors.

If the unconscious nature of these processes is validated at the individual level by asking participants to report what influenced their choices, but then the unconscious process itself is attested to by a difference in group means, it is possible that the experiment identifies a factor which is a minor influence on the choice as a whole. In other words the manipulation can show a strong statistical effect (and we'd hope that as professional experimenters the researchers would design a situation where this was exactly the case), but for a factor which plays a marginal role in each individual's choice. Say the experimental task is to evaluate a word as good or bad. The word is rated as good or bad and each individual, for each judgment, may decide in a way that is consonant with a deliberate and conscious decision making process (i.e., one which is completely at odds with the one being foregrounded by proponents of automatic processing). The dependent variable is reaction time, and the effect of the prime is seen in average differences in reaction time. The influence of the “unconscious” factor may be to speed or slow them in their judgment, while this judgment itself may take a value informed by reasons which the participant is fully aware of. Because “unconscious” effects are manifest this way, it is misleading to talk of the unconscious as “producing” behavior when the only thing tested are differences in characteristics of behavior. This is both because the major element of the behavior may not be affected by the experimental manipulation (e.g., in this case the judgment of the word as good or bad, rather than the speed of the judgment), and because it isn't automatic that an “unconscious” group difference implies an “unconscious” individual judgment.

This perspectival sleight of hand obscures the truly multicausal nature of behavior behind the single controlled cause that is privileged by the experimenter's perspective. Participants in these experiments are, as described, making deliberate and reasoned choices. Their failure to report the influence of the experimental factor may result from an impoverished or incorrect self-model, or it may result merely from the relative unimportance, at an individual level, of the experimental factor in guiding their choices. It is not possible, after all, to report all influences on a behavior, even for a fully informed and rational agent (the “Frame problem,” Dennett, 1978). For these reasons, it is not valid for the conclusion to be drawn that unconscious processes produce behavior, to the extent that this excludes the role of conscious processes in co-producing them. Nor is it valid to infer that unconscious processes significantly determine overall behavior of any individual at any time, as is often implied.

Evidence of differences due to unconscious processes at the group level do nothing to confirm the importance of the unconscious processes in affecting the overall response of each individual. This concern is particularly relevant for studies of unconscious processing when the criteria used to define what is unconscious are based on asking individuals to make judgments about the overall importance of factors. To explore this, consider the tension between experimental effect sizes and wider generalizability.

Larger Effect Sizes Can be in Tension with Generalisability

It is not the case that simple inspection of effect sizes will necessarily reveal the significance of an experimental factor in reasoning. Since effect sizes are based on the amount of variability in a measure, the experimenter typically selects a measure or situation in which variability in minimized. Effect sizes are maximized by situations of tight experimental control—these reduce the influence of non-experimental factors, allowing a purer measure of the experimental manipulation. Note that this means that effect sizes can be uninformative about the importance of the experimental factor in less tightly controlled situations. Indeed, there is a sense in which larger effect size (indicative of tighter experimental control) may actually anti-correlate with generalizability (which requires effects which are robust across situations). One response to failures to replications social priming studies has been that they require some expertise to set up (e.g., Bargh, 2014)—this would seem to be tacit admission of the fragile generalizability of such effects.

Conclusion: Which Influences on Behavior is it Reasonable to Expect a Perfectly Conscious Agent to Report?

The Bargh definition assumes that a rational agent with strong access to the causal mechanisms supporting their decision process could report all factors affecting their decisions. I wish to question this. It would be bizarre if individual agents had access to all the causal factors influencing each of their choices. It would be equally bizarre if they—unaware of the experimenters' interest in a particularly minor factor—were guaranteed to report it at the exact time they were asked. By shifting the defining criteria of unconscious factors to be those which are not reported we open ourselves to the risk that processes which are fully conscious, or potentially conscious, are being used to make claims about the unconscious. This may not be a problem if the revisionist definition of unconscious is born in mind at all times when the implications of these experiments are discussed. Discussion of whether or not this has been the case, both within the scientific literature and in popular discourse, is beyond the scope of this commentary.

The impoverished view of consciousness that results from the Bargh definition is supported by methods which are designed specifically to render conscious deliberation invisible. It remains to be shown that human reasoning is not dominated by self-aware deliberation and based on principles of rationality, which although limited and fallible, can be considered and improved.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgment

Thanks are due to Robin Scaife, Jules Holroyd and all members of the University of Nottingham, Department of Philosophy reading group on automaticity. Tom Stafford is part-funded by a Leverhulme Trust grant to the University of Nottingham on “Bias and Blame: Do Moral Interactions Modulate the Expression of Implicit Bias?”

Footnotes

1. ^I thank a reviewer for encouraging an exposition on this point.

References at the Frontiers site

2014 – The Year in Books (so far)

Halfway through the year, almost, and there have already been some seriously good books published that will appear on a lot of top-ten lists in December. Some of those books are below, but there also a lot of books below no one will have heard of about side of their respective fields, books from academic publishers or other sources not likely to be found at your local bookstores.

Below is a list of the books I have picked up this year (which is not likely to be very mainstream), and I am including the publisher's ad copy for their books. I would love to review each of these, but I seriously do not have that kind of time. Perhaps, if time allows, I will offer some individual reviews of a few of these books.

2014 – The Year in Books (so far)

Jeremy Rifkin – The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

 

In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism.

Rifkin uncovers a paradox at the heart of capitalism that has propelled it to greatness but is now taking it to its death—the inherent entrepreneurial dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.

Now, a formidable new technology infrastructure—the Internet of things (IoT)—is emerging with the potential of pushing large segments of economic life to near zero marginal cost in the years ahead. Rifkin describes how the Communication Internet is converging with a nascent Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform that connects everything and everyone. Billions of sensors are being attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks, recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores, vehicles, and even human beings, feeding Big Data into an IoT global neural network. Prosumers can connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just like they now do with information goods.

The plummeting of marginal costs is spawning a hybrid economy—part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons—with far reaching implications for society, according to Rifkin. Hundreds of millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives to the global Collaborative Commons. Prosumers are plugging into the fledgling IoT and making and sharing their own information, entertainment, green energy, and 3D-printed products at near zero marginal cost. They are also sharing cars, homes, clothes and other items via social media sites, rentals, redistribution clubs, and cooperatives at low or near zero marginal cost. Students are enrolling in free massive open online courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost. Social entrepreneurs are even bypassing the banking establishment and using crowdfunding to finance startup businesses as well as creating alternative currencies in the fledgling sharing economy. In this new world, social capital is as important as financial capital, access trumps ownership, sustainability supersedes consumerism, cooperation ousts competition, and “exchange value” in the capitalist marketplace is increasingly replaced by “sharable value” on the Collaborative Commons.

Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, albeit in an increasingly streamlined role, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the coming era. We are, however, says Rifkin, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent global Collaborative Commons.

Michio Kaku – The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

 

The New York Times best-selling author of PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE, PHYSICS OF THE FUTURE and HYPERSPACE tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain. 

For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.
 
THE FUTURE OF THE MIND gives us an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics.  One day we might have a "smart pill" that can enhance our cognition; be able to upload our brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; send thoughts and emotions around the world on a "brain-net"; control computers and robots with our mind; push the very limits of immortality; and perhaps even send our consciousness across the universe.
   
Dr. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives. He even presents a radically new way to think about "consciousness" and applies it to provide fresh insight into mental illness, artificial intelligence and alien consciousness.

With Dr. Kaku's deep understanding of modern science and keen eye for future developments, THE FUTURE OF THE MIND is a scientific tour de force--an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience.

Peter Zachar – A Metaphysics of Psychopathology (Philosophical Psychopathology)

 

In psychiatry, few question the legitimacy of asking whether a given psychiatric disorder is real; similarly, in psychology, scholars debate the reality of such theoretical entities as general intelligence, superegos, and personality traits. And yet in both disciplines, little thought is given to what is meant by the rather abstract philosophical concept of "real." Indeed, certain psychiatric disorders have passed from real to imaginary (as in the case of multiple personality disorder) and from imaginary to real (as in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder). In this book, Peter Zachar considers such terms as "real" and "reality" -- invoked in psychiatry but often obscure and remote from their instances -- as abstract philosophical concepts. He then examines the implications of his approach for psychiatric classification and psychopathology. Proposing what he calls a scientifically inspired pragmatism, Zachar considers such topics as the essentialist bias, diagnostic literalism, and the concepts of natural kind and social construct. Turning explicitly to psychiatric topics, he proposes a new model for the domain of psychiatric disorders, the "imperfect community" model, which avoids both relativism and essentialism. He uses this model to understand such recent controversies as the attempt to eliminate narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM-5. Returning to such concepts as real, true, and objective, Zachar argues that not only should we use these metaphysical concepts to think philosophically about other concepts, we should think philosophically about them.

Stephen Finlay – Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language (Oxford Moral Theory)

Can normative words like "good," "ought," and "reason" be defined in entirely non-normative terms? Confusion of Tongues argues that they can, advancing a new End-Relational theory of the meaning of this language as providing the best explanation of the many different ways it is ordinarily used. Philosophers widely maintain that analyzing normative language as describing facts about relations cannot account for special features of particularly moral and deliberative uses of normative language, but Stephen Finlay argues that the End-Relational theory systematically explains these on the basis of a single fundamental principle of conversational pragmatics. These challenges comprise the central problems of metaethics, including the connection between normative judgment and motivation, the categorical character of morality, the nature of intrinsic value, and the possibility of normative disagreement. Finlay's linguistic analysis has deep implications for the metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology of morality, as well as for the nature and possibility of normative ethical theory. Most significantly it supplies a nuanced answer to the ancient Euthyphro Question of whether we desire things because we judge them good, or vice versa. Normative speech and thought may ultimately be just a manifestation of our nature as intelligent animals motivated by contingent desires for various conflicting ends.

Howard Rachlin – The Escape of the Mind

The Escape of the Mind is part of a current movement in psychology and philosophy of mind that calls into question what is perhaps our most basic, most cherished, and universally accepted belief--that our minds are inside of our bodies. Howard Rachlin adopts the counterintuitive position that our minds, conscious and unconscious, lie not where our firmest (yet unsupported) introspections tell us they are, but in how we actually behave over the long run. Perhaps paradoxically, the book argues that our introspections, no matter how positive we are about them, tell us absolutely nothing about our minds. The name of the present version of this approach to the mind is "teleological behaviorism."

The approaches of teleological behaviorism will be useful in the science of individual behavior for developing methods of self-control and in the science of social behavior for developing social cooperation. Without in any way denigrating the many contributions of neuroscience to human welfare, The Escape of the Mind argues that neuroscience, like introspection, is not a royal road to the understanding of the mind. Where then should we look to explain a present act that is clearly caused by the mind? Teleological behaviorism says to look not in the spatial recesses of the nervous system (not to the mechanism underlying the act) but in the temporal recesses of past and future overt behavior (to the pattern of which the act is a part). 

But scientific usefulness is not the only reason for adopting teleological behaviorism. The final two chapters on IBM's computer, Watson (how it deviates from humanity and how it would have to be altered to make it human), and on shaping a coherent self, provide a framework for a secular morality based on teleological behaviorism.

Robert J. Wicks – Perspective: The Calm Within the Storm

For generations, classic wisdom literature has taught that a healthy perspective can replenish our thirst for a meaningful and rewarding life. From its inception clinical psychology has followed suit, revealing that how we see ourselves and the world is more important than what we see or have-in essence, that a healthy perspective is tantamount to possessing the psychological "pearl of great price."

Robert J. Wicks, world-renowned psychologist and author of Bounce: Living the Resilient Life, has written a powerful guide for discovering and regaining a balanced and healthy perspective. Combining classic wisdom with cutting-edge research in cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology, his new book, Perspective, offers concrete steps for overcoming doubt and resistance to openness, so that beneficial life changes become possible. Drawing on the psychology of mindfulness, gratitude, and happiness, Dr. Wicks also reveals how a healthy perspective makes us more aware of the beneficial things already present in our lives.

Perspective teaches us to see ourselves more completely and will inspire us to become the calm within the storm, better able to enjoy our experiences, maintain balance in our professional and personal lives, and reach out to others without being pulled down in the process.

Barbara Ehrenreich – Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything

From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world.

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In LIVING WITH A WILD GOD, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find "the Truth" about the universe and everything else: What's really going on? Why are we here? In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a "mystical experience"-and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering.

In LIVING WITH A WILD GOD, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievement-a work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze.

Nicholas Epley – Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It’s a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams.

How good are you at knowing the minds of others? How well can you guess what others think of you, know who really likes you, or tell when someone is lying? How well do you really understand the minds of those closest to you, from your spouse to your kids to your best friends? Do you really know what your coworkers, employees, competitors, or clients want?

In this illuminating exploration of one of the great mysteries of the human mind, University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley introduces us to what scientists have learned about our ability to understand the most complicated puzzle on the planet—other people—and the surprising mistakes we so routinely make. Why are we sometimes blind to the minds of others, treating them like objects or animals? Why do we sometimes talk to our cars, or the stars, as if there is a mind that can hear us? Why do we so routinely believe that others think, feel, and want what we do when, in fact, they do not? And why do we believe we understand our spouses, family, and friends so much better than we actually do? Mindwise will not turn other people into open books, but it will give you the wisdom to revolutionize how you think about them—and yourself.

The following books are much less mainstream than any of those listed above. All of these books are edited and include a variety of authors presenting their own views on the topics. Most, if not all, are from Springer, and consequently are stupid expensive (which is when it's nice to get review copies).

Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience – C.U.M. Smith • Harry Whitaker, Editors

This volume of essays examines the problem of mind, looking at how the problem has appeared to neuroscientists (in the widest sense) from classical antiquity through to contemporary times. Beginning with a look at ventricular neuropsychology in antiquity, this book goes on to look at Spinozan ideas on the links between mind and body, Thomas Willis and the foundation of Neurology, Hooke’s mechanical model of the mind and Joseph Priestley’s approach to the mind-body problem.

The volume offers a chapter on the 19th century Ottoman perspective on western thinking. Further chapters trace the work of nineteenth century scholars including George Henry Lewes, Herbert Spencer and Emil du Bois-Reymond. The book covers significant work from the twentieth century, including an examination of Alfred North Whitehead and the history of consciousness, and particular attention is given to the development of quantum consciousness. Chapters on slavery and the self and the development of an understanding of Dualism bring this examination up to date on the latest 21st century work in the field.

At the heart of this book is the matter of how we define the problem of consciousness itself: has there been any progress in our understanding of the working of mind and brain? This work at the interface between science and the humanities will appeal to experts from across many fields who wish to develop their understanding of the problem of consciousness, including scholars of Neuroscience, Behavioural Science and the History of Science.

Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment: The Experience of Nature – Douglas A. Vakoch, Fernando Castrillón, Editors

This book seeks to confront an apparent contradiction: that while we are constantly attending to environmental issues, we seem to be woefully out of touch with nature. The goal of Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is to foster an enhanced awareness of nature that can lead us to new ways of relating to the environment, ultimately yielding more sustainable patterns of living. This volume is different from other books in the rapidly growing field of ecopsychology in its emphasis on phenomenological approaches, building on the work of phenomenological psychologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This focus on phenomenological methodologies for articulating our direct experience of nature serves as a critical complement to the usual methodologies of environmental and conservation psychologists, who have emphasized quantitative research. Moreover, Ecopsychology, Phenomenology and the Environment is distinctive insofar as chapters by phenomenologically-sophisticated ecopsychologists are complemented by chapters written by phenomenological researchers of environmental issues with backgrounds in philosophy and geology, providing a breadth and depth of perspective not found in other works written exclusively by psychologists.

The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Psychoneuroimmunology – Alexander W. Kusnecov and Hymie Anisman, Editors

The term psychoneuroimmunology was originally coined to acknowledge the existence of functional interactions between the brain, the immune system and the endocrine system. As our understanding deepens of the interplay between the brain and the way bodies function, the field continues to grow in importance. This comprehensive handbook is an authoritative source of information on the history, methodology and development of research into psychoneuroimmunology. 

The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions reflects the fact that the subject is a multifaceted field of research integrating the traditionally separate subjects of biological and behavioral science. Psychoneuroimmunology attains a realistic appreciation of the interplay between different biological systems as they collectively maintain health and combat environmental challenges to health. Background material is balanced by a detailed assessment of emerging topics in psychoneuroimmunological research that focuses on the clinical and practical implications of findings from empirical studies on both humans and animals. While specialist readers will appreciate the coverage of progress made in psychoneuroimmunology, newcomers will gain much from its informed and accessible introduction to the field, as well as its exploration of a variety of methodological approaches.

New Frontiers in Social Neuroscience (Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences) – Jean Decety and Yves Christen, Editors

Traditionally, neuroscience has considered the nervous system as an isolated entity and largely ignored influences of the social environments in which humans and many animal species live. In fact, we now recognize the considerable impact of social structures on the operations of the brain and body. These social factors operate on the individual through a continuous interplay of neural, neuroendocrine, metabolic and immune factors on brain and body, in which the brain is the central regulatory organ, and also a malleable target of these factors. Social neuroscience investigates the biological mechanisms that underlie social processes and behavior, widely considered one of the major problem areas for the neurosciences in the 21st century, and applies concepts and methods of biology to develop theories of social processes and behavior in the social and behavioral sciences. Social neuroscience capitalizes on biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social behavior, and it uses social and behavioral constructs and data to advance theories of neural organization and function. This volume brings together scholars who work with animal and human models of social behavior to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this interdisciplinary academic field.

Handbook of Executive Functioning – Sam Goldstein and Jack A. Naglieri, Editors

Planning. Attention. Memory. Self-regulation. These and other core cognitive and behavioral operations of daily life comprise what we know as executive functioning (EF). But despite all we know, the concept has engendered multiple, often conflicting definitions and its components are sometimes loosely defined and poorly understood.

The Handbook of Executive Functioning cuts through the confusion, analyzing both the whole and its parts in comprehensive, practical detail for scholar and clinician alike. Background chapters examine influential models of EF, tour the brain geography of the executive system and pose salient developmental questions. A section on practical implications relates early deficits in executive functioning to ADD and other disorders in children and considers autism and later-life dementias from an EF standpoint. Further chapters weigh the merits of widely used instruments for assessing executive functioning and review interventions for its enhancement, with special emphasis on children and adolescents.

Featured in the Handbook:

• The development of hot and cool executive function in childhood and adolescence.
• A review of the use of executive function tasks in externalizing and internalizing disorders.
• Executive functioning as a mediator of age-related cognitive decline in adults.
• Treatment integrity in interventions that target executive function.
• Supporting and strengthening working memory in the classroom to enhance executive functioning.

The Handbook of Executive Functioning is an essential resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners and graduate students in clinical child, school and educational psychology; child and adolescent psychiatry; neurobiology; developmental psychology; rehabilitation medicine/therapy and social work.

Brain Theory: Essays in Critical Neurophilosophy – Charles T. Wolfe, Editor

From its beginnings until the present day, neuroscience has always had a special relationship to philosophy. And philosophy has long puzzled over the relation between mind and brain (and by extension, the relation of cerebral processes to freedom, morals, and justice, but also to perception and art). This volume presents some of the state-of-the-art reflections on philosophical efforts to 'make sense' of neuroscience, as regards issues including neuroaesthetics, neuroethics and neurolaw, but also more critical, evaluative perspectives on topics such as the social neuroscience of race, neurofeminism, embodiment and collaboration, memory and pain, and more directly empirical topics such as neuroconstructivism and embodied robotics. Brain theory as presented here is neither mere commentary on the state of the sciences, nor armchair philosophical reflection on traditional topics. It is more pluralistic than current philosophy of neuroscience (or neurophenomenology), yet more directly engaged with empirical, indeed experimental matters than socio-cultural discussions of 'brainhood' or representations of the brain.

Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenic Society (Social Morphogenesis) – Margaret S. Archer, Editor

 

This volume examines the reasons for intensified social change after 1980; a peaceful process of a magnitude that is historically unprecedented. It examines the kinds of novelty that have come about through morphogenesis and the elements of stability that remain because of morphostasis. It is argued that this pattern cannot be explained simply by ‘acceleration’. Instead, we must specify the generative mechanism(s) involved that underlie and unify ordinary people’s experiences of different disjunctions in their lives. The book discusses the umbrella concept of ‘social morphogenesis’ and the possibility of transition to a ‘Morphogenic Society’. It examines possible ‘generative mechanisms’ accounting for the effects of ‘social morphogenesis’ in transforming previous and much more stable practices. Finally, it seeks to answer the question of what is required in order to justify the claim that Morphogenic society can supersede modernity.

This interesting article from BMC Neuroscience looks for the neural correlates or moral judgments in first- and third-person perspectives. The authors suggest that their findings demonstrate that first or third person perspectives in moral cognition involve distinct neural processes, that are important to different aspects of moral judgments.

Full Citation: 
Avram, M, Hennig-Fast, K, Bao, Y, Pöppel, E, Reiser, M, Blautzik, J, Giordano, J, and Gutyrchik, E. (2014, Apr 1). Neural correlates of moral judgments in first- and third-person perspectives: implications for neuroethics and beyond. BMC Neuroscience, 15:39 doi:10.1186/1471-2202-15-39

Neural correlates of moral judgments in first- and third-person perspectives: implications for neuroethics and beyond

Mihai Avram, Kristina Hennig-Fast, Yan Bao, Ernst Pöppel, Maximilian Reiser, Janusch Blautzik, James Giordano, and Evgeny Gutyrchik

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Abstract

Background

There appears to be an inconsistency in experimental paradigms used in fMRI research on moral judgments. As stimuli, moral dilemmas or moral statements/ pictures that induce emotional reactions are usually employed; a main difference between these stimuli is the perspective of the participants reflecting first-person (moral dilemmas) or third-person perspective (moral reactions). The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to investigate the neural correlates of moral judgments in either first- or third-person perspective.

Results

Our results indicate that different neural mechanisms appear to be involved in these perspectives. Although conjunction analysis revealed common activation in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, third person-perspective elicited unique activations in hippocampus and visual cortex. The common activation can be explained by the role the anterior medial prefrontal cortex may play in integrating different information types and also by its involvement in theory of mind. Our results also indicate that the so-called "actor-observer bias" affects moral evaluation in the third-person perspective, possibly due to the involvement of the hippocampus. We suggest two possible ways in which the hippocampus may support the process of moral judgment: by the engagement of episodic memory and its role in understanding the behaviors and emotions of others.

Conclusion

We posit that these findings demonstrate that first or third person perspectives in moral cognition involve distinct neural processes, that are important to different aspects of moral judgments. These results are important to a deepened understanding of neural correlates of moral cognition—the so-called “first tradition” of neuroethics, with the caveat that any results must be interpreted and employed with prudence, so as to heed neuroethics “second tradition” that sustains the pragmatic evaluation of outcomes, capabilities and limitations of neuroscientific techniques and technologies.

Background

Studies of moral decision-making have been the focus of philosophy, psychology, and more recently, the brain sciences. Examination of the ways that humans (and perhaps other organisms) engage intent, memory, emotion, and reasoning processes relevant to their execution and constraint of conduct toward others, acquisition and use of various resources, survival, and flourishing have become the emphases of sub-disciplines of the cognitive neurosciences, such as neuroeconomics and more specifically, neuroethics. Developing from the older fields of moral philosophy and moral psychology, neuroethics obtains two primary orientations (or so-called “traditions”). The first can be somewhat colloquially described as “..the neuroscience of ethics” [1]. Rather, we offer that a more apt definition of this branch of neuroethics would be: studies of the putative neural substrates and mechanisms involved in proto-moral and moral cognition and behaviors [2-5]. The second “tradition” addresses the ethico-legal and social issues fostered by the use of neuroscience and neurotechnologies in research, medical practice, or public life.

In this latter regard, particular interest has centered upon the use of neuroimaging techniques and technologies to depict, and define neural bases of moral decision-making, if not “morality”, writ-large–as constituent to ongoing criticism of neuroimaging, in general [6]. Still, by recognizing and compensating inherent technical and conceptual limitations [7] iterative progress in neuroimaging technology and method have yielded improvement in outcomes, which sustain this approach as both valid and valuable to elucidating the relative activity of various neural networks in certain types of cognitive tasks and behaviors, including those involved in moral judgments and behaviors - with certain caveats noted and acknowledged [8,9].

Such studies have revealed the complexity of these types of decisions. In the main, focus has shifted from defining moral judgments as purely cognitive processes (i.e. - reason) to revealing more emotion-based processes, and recent results suggest the involvement of both processes in those decisions that are (both subjectively and objectively evaluated as being) morally sensitive and/or responsive [10-15]. What has also become clear is that moral decisions are not uniformly processed by a particular locus, region or network [16,17], but rather are more widely distributed in and across neural fields that are involved in memory, reward, reinforcement, and punishment, rationalization, interoception (e.g.- provocation of and response to various emotions, self-referentiality, etc.), and behavior. For example, Young and Dungan [18] suggest that such brain areas include the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) – involved in emotional processing; posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and precuneus – both involved in self-referential processing, the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and/or somewhat larger fields of Brodmann’s area 39 – that are involved in aspects of social processing and/ or theory of mind (ToM).

As well, it is likely that different patterns of neural network activation may be involved in particular types of moral decisions, based upon the nature of the evocative stimuli, situations, and relative involvement of the subject. In this light, a methodological question has recently been raised regarding the viability of the rational and emotional/ intuitionist theories of moral cognition and judgments [19]. These research approaches to moral judgment use different experimental stimuli: “rationalist” protocols use moral dilemmas to study moral judgments, while “emotionalist” protocols employ emotionally-laden statements or pictures to assess what appear to be moral reactions. Is it possible that these approaches elicit distinct processes of moral cognition and lead to different results? Monin and colleagues [19] argue that the focus of reasoning in moral dilemmas is on the decision-making process - a conflict between two moral constructs and/or principles, whereas moral reactions reflect subjects’ emotional responses to particular stimuli and situations that have moral relevance. Of note is that moral dilemma protocols are typically presented in a first person perspective (1PP), while moral reaction protocols are characteristically presented in a third-person perspective (3PP). Thus, we question whether the perspective of the subject(s) toward the moral stimuli is sufficient to evoke differing effects, and elicit distinct patterns of neural network activity.

We opine that using stimuli presented in either 1- or 3PP may elucidate a number of potentially interactive variables that may shed new light on studies of neural mechanisms and processes of moral cognition. To wit, it has been shown that different patterns of neural activity were observed for stimuli presented in either 1- or 3-PP in non-moral visuospatial tasks[20]. During the 1-PP situation, neural activity was increased in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) bilaterally, whereas in the 3-PP situation, neural activity was increased in the medial superior parietal and right premotor cortex.

Furthermore, differences have also been found in social non-moral tasks (which appear to reflect theory of mind, ToM), although these results are somewhat less clear. In a study on the influence of the person's perspective on ToM, 1- and 3-PP-type sentences elicited different patterns of neural activation: 1PP-based stimuli yielded greater activation in the caudate nucleus, while 3PP-based stimuli evoked increased neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The authors related activity in the caudate nucleus to self-focal cognition, and DLPFC-activity to ToM. Other studies report stronger 3PP activation in the TPJ and dorsal MPFC [21-24] which are regarded as parts of the ToM network.

On the other hand, many of these studies have reported greater activation for the 1PP compared to 3PP in the MPFC and PCC/ precuneus. Ochsner and colleagues compared neural processes involved in inferences about one's own and others emotional states. Concomitant activation was demonstrated in the MPFC, left inferior PFC, PCC/ precuneus and STS/ TPJ [25]. This appeared to reflect recruitment of specific sub-regions in the MPFC, and additional activation in the medial temporal cortex for processing self-emotionality, while the lateral PFC and medial occipital activation appeared to be involved in processing emotional inferences of/about others. We posit that these results suggest that "self-judgments" seem to activate more medial networks, while judgments about others appear to engage more lateral networks. As well, components of both networks have some degree of overlap.

Social psychological studies have repeatedly shown that negative situations elicit a tendency to attribute one's own actions (1PP) to external causes, while attributing other people's (3PP) behaviors to internal causes, a phenomenon referred to as the "actor- observer bias" [26,27]. This may affect results in studies of moral decision-making, given that many such studies have employed negative situations as stimuli [28]. Nadelhoffer and Feltz [27] conducted a behavioral study of the actor-observer bias using a version of Philippa Foot’s [29] iconic "trolley problem" as the moral dilemma stimulus, viz.- a trolley is running out of control toward five people who are on the track and unaware of the looming danger. You have the opportunity to save these five people by throwing a switch and sending the trolley down a different track. However, if you do this, you will then kill one individual who is on the second track (for overview, see also Thomson [30] and for discussion of relevance to neural bases of moral decision-making, see Green [31]). The dilemma was presented either in a 1PP (i.e. - the subject was the actor, actively engaged in throwing the switch to divert the trolley), or in a 3PP (i.e. - the subject was a passive observer who could tell an actor to throw the switch). In the actor condition, 65% of the participants found the action (throwing the switch) to be permissible, whereas 90% of the participants in the observer condition found the action to be morally acceptable. These results imply different psychological processes involved in the two perspectives.

Thus, differential activation of distinct neural networks in response to 1PP- or 3PP-based stimuli is expected. Based on previous studies activation in the medial parts of the default mode network can be anticipated for the 1PP, and more lateral activation (e.g. DLPFC, TPJ) can be expected for the 3PP. However, since common activation for both perspectives has been found in several studies, and the default mode and ToM networks overlap in several regions, shared activation may also be expected. MPFC and PCC/ precuneus seem to be common denominators for the perspectives. Theoretically, the observer condition (3PP) of the "actor- observer bias" would tend to involve attribution of behaviors to internal causes, thus there is an attempt to understand the mind (i.e. - mental processes, in this case, the perceived “morality”) of the "actor". Indeed, ToM has been linked to moral judgments, and may be seen as important to moral evaluations of the actions of others [18].

As well, given that (a) most decisions, inclusive of potentially moral judgments involve some degree of Bayesian processing [32,33]; (b) such processing involves recollection of circumstance, effect and potential consequences in orientation to self, others and situations [2,5,34], and (c) learning and memory have been shown to play significant roles in these processes [35,36], it is likely that neural substrates of memory (e.g.- septo-hippocampal networks) would be involved [37,38]. Studies have fortified this speculation by demonstrating hippocampal activation in tasks involving perception of the emotions and actions of others [39,40]. Accordingly, we posit that hippocampal activation (for the 3PP-, as well as perhaps 1PP-situations) is to be expected. In sum, we hypothesize that the perspective of the subject (i.e.- as either actor (1PP), or observer (3PP)) will evoke differential activity in distinct neural networks that are putatively involved in the particular cognitive aspects of these orientations to moral judgment(s). To test this hypothesis we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare moral judgments posed in 1- and 3PP-based scenarios.

Method

Participants

Sixteen (16) right-handed subjects (9 female, 7 male; mean age 28.25 years) with normal or corrected to normal vision participated in this study. Participants had no reported history of psychiatric or neurological disorder, and were not using psychoactive drugs at the time of the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethics Committee and Internal Review Board of the Human Science Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians University. Active, written informed consent for participation in the study was obtained from all participants, and subjects received financial compensation for their time.

Stimulus material

Sixty-nine (69) subjects evaluated 72 moral statements for valence and arousal in a pre-study. Half of the statements were presented in the 1PP ("I am a cruel person because I have aggressive thoughts towards my child"), and half were presented in the 3PP "A person who has aggressive thoughts toward his/ her child is cruel"). To assure valid comparisons, a five point Likert scale was used to rate the stimuli for valence, with scores ranging between −2 (unpleasant) and 2 (pleasant), and arousal, with scores ranging between −2 (agitating) and 2 (calming). Extreme values were excluded on an [−1, 1] interval in order to obviate the strongly emotion- laden stimuli, and to compare similar emotional reactions. Only 8 stimuli remained in each category after the pre-study. In order to ensure valid statistical comparisons of valence and arousal, two paired t-tests were used; there were no statistically significant differences between stimuli presented in 1PP narrative (M = −0.82, SD = 0.35) and 3PP narrative (M = −0.82, SD = 0.19), t (7) = 0.05, p > .05 with respect to valence. There were also no statistically significant differences between stimuli presented in 1PP narrative (M = −0.76, SD = 0.30) and 3PP narrative (M = −0.77, SD = 0.22), t (7) = 0.04, p > .05 with respect to arousal. Another paired t-test was used to control for stimulus sentence length. There were no statistically significant differences between stimuli presented in 1PP narrative (M = 8.38, SD = 3.20) and 3PP narrative (M = 10.25, SD = 2.71), t (7) = 1.34, p > .05.

Subjects had to rate the sentences as "right" or "wrong" by relying upon intuition (i.e.- described to them as “a gut-feeling”), and not necessarily their real life experience(s) (e.g. some participants may not have had children), so as to base their answers upon an "as-if” situation (e.g. If I were to have aggressive thoughts towards my child - and, indeed, if I had children - would I be a cruel person?).

Although the stimuli were controlled for length, there may have been differences in sentence construction. For example, in the 1PP narrative, "I am a cruel person because I have aggressive thoughts towards my child", it might seem that the 3PP narrative that would have been the best match would be: "John is a cruel person because he has aggressive thoughts towards his child". However, the actor-observer bias appears to be more prominent in cases where the actor is not known - e.g. a stranger [26]. Therefore, we choose a more abstract expression, namely "a person”. Another condition was also used, in which participants were asked to evaluate a non-moral statement based upon their perception of what they believed to be right or wrong (e.g. "There are people who are friendly"). An additional, "scrambled" condition was also used, in which participants had to push a response button when viewing a sentence composed of random letters. This condition was employed to test whether moral judgments activate a similar pattern when compared to scrambled words as in our previous study [14] and is not directly related to this study.

All stimuli were presented twice during the fMRI experiment.

Procedure

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in order to study the 1PP and 3PP types of judgments. A block design was used with 4 conditions (1PP, 3PP, non-moral, and scrambled) and 8 blocks per condition, each block comprising 2 stimuli, presented in white, on a black background. The order of stimuli and blocks was pseudo-randomized. Subjects viewed the stimuli via a mirror attached to the head-coil on a LCD screen behind the scanner. Stimuli were presented for 6000 ms (Presentation, Neurobehavioral Systems, USA), followed by 300 ms displaying a black screen, which in turn was followed by a 1000 ms black screen with a white question mark, in which subjects had to decide whether the statements could be considered right or wrong by pressing a button (Cedrus Lumina response box, Cambridge Research Systems Ltd.). After the two stimuli a black screen was presented for 6000 ms as a break between blocks. This method was used to ensure consistent parameters of cognitive processing in each subject for each presented stimuli. Given these protocols, reaction time analyses were not required.

The study was conducted with a 3T system (Philips ACHIEVA, Germany) at the University Hospital LMU Munich. For anatomical reference, a T1-weighted MPRAGE sequence was performed (TR = 7.4 ms, TE = 3.4 ms, FA = 8°, 301 sagittal slices, FOV = 240 × 256 mm, matrix = 227 × 227, inter-slice gap = 0.6 mm). For BOLD imaging, a T2*-weighted EPI sequence was used (TR = 3000 ms, TE = 35 ms, FA = 90°, 36 axial slices, slice thickness = 3.5 mm, inter-slice gap = 0 mm, ascending acquisition, FOV = 230 × 230 mm, matrix = 76 × 77, in-plane resolution = 3 × 3 mm). In total 229 functional volumes were acquired, 5 being discarded.

Data processing and analysis

The preprocessing and statistical analyses were performed using SPM8 (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, London, UK). Motion correction, realignment and spatial normalization were performed in the preprocessing analysis. Smoothing was executed using a Gaussian kernel of 8 mm FWHM. The four experimental conditions were modeled by a boxcar function convolved with a hemodynamic response function. In the first level, several single-tailed t-contrasts have been calculated for each subject, condition versus baseline. The individual contrast images were used for a random effect analysis in a second level. A conjunction analysis was performed to identify positive changes in BOLD signal intensity commonly seen in 1PP and 3PP presentations by using contrast images of each condition compared with the non-moral condition. Only activations are reported. Group activation contrasts (uncorrected < .005) were cluster-level corrected by family wise error (FWE) < .05 with a cluster-size threshold of 50 voxels.

Region of interest (ROI) analysis

Parameter estimates of signal intensity were extracted from regions of interest (ROIs) for each subject using MARSeille Boîte À Région d’Intérêt software (MarsBaR v0.42; [43] in the aMPFC, precuneus, TPJ, and hippocampus, with ROIs defined as spheres with 10mm radius centered at the peaks of the parametric activation. Anatomical description was accomplished by referring to the Automatic Anatomic Labeling (AAL) [41] atlas from the Wake Forest University (WFU) Pickatlas (Advanced NeuroScience Imaging Research Laboratory, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA). Repeated measures analyses of variance with mean beta values for each subject were done to determine whether neural activity within these regions differed between 1- and 3PP moral judgments and the non-moral condition. Gaussian distribution, homogeneity of variance and covariance and sphericity could be assumed (p > .05). Corrections for multiple comparisons were done by the Bonferroni procedure. Statistical analyses calculated with SPSS Statistics 16.0 (IBM, USA).

Results

Behavioral results

Subjects evaluated the moral statements to be either morally right, or morally wrong.

A chi-square-test revealed a statistically significant difference in yes/ no responses for the two moral conditions, χ2 (1) = 28.96, p < 0.01. The participants found 19% of the 1PP and 51% of the 3PP stimuli to be morally right.

fMRI results

1PP- and 3PP-based judgments were each compared to the non-moral condition (NM). 1PP-based judgments yielded greater activation than NM in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC - BA 10), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC - BA 23) extending in the precuneus (BA 7), and temporoparietal junction (TPJ - BA 39) (Table 1, Figure 1). 3PP-based judgments elicited greater activation in the aMPFC (BA 10), but also in the lingual gyrus (BA 17), middle occipital gyrus (BA 18) and hippocampus (Table 1, Figure 1).

Table 1. Relative activation table: 1- and non 3PP moral judgments versus non-moral judgments

Figure 1. Neurofunctional correlates of 1- and 3PP moral judgments. (A) 1PP moral judgments versus NM condition, (B) 3PP moral judgments versus NM condition. Anterior Medial Prefrontal Cortex (aMPFC), Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ).

In order to assess overlapping neural activity evoked by the two judgment modalities, a conjunction analysis was used. Common activation for the two judgment modalities (compared to control) was found only in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex x = 3, y = 59, z = 28 (BA 10; cluster size = 3078 mm3, t = 4.93.).Relative activations were generated only by the 3PP > 1PP contrast in: hippocampus bilaterally, and visual cortex - fusiform gyrus (BA 37), middle occipital gyrus (BA 19), and cuneus (BA 18) (Table 2, Figure 2). No activations above threshold were observed in the inversed contrast, 1PP > 3PP.

Table 2. Relative activation table: 3PP versus 1PP moral judgments

Figure 2. Neurofunctional correlates of 3- vs 1PP moral judgments.

In order to ensure that the effects were related to the 1PP or 3PP moral conditions, and not due to the subtraction of the NM condition, the aMPFC, precuneus, TPJ, and hippocampus were selected for ROI analyses. Overall main effects were observed for all ROIs. For aMPFC (F(2, 30) = 13.17, p < .001, partial η2 = .468), differences were found between 1PP and NM condition (p < .002), and between 3PP and NM conditions (p < .006), but no difference was found between the two moral conditions (p = 1). For precuneus (F(2, 30) = 5.22, p < .011, partial η2 = .258) differences were found between 1PP and NM condition (p < .038), but none between 3PP and the NM condition (p = .057) or between the two moral conditions (p = .544). For TPJ (F(2, 30) = 7.29, p < .003, partial η2 = .327) differences were found between 1PP and NM condition (p < .003), and between 3PP and NM conditions (p < .032). No difference was found between the moral conditions (p = .262). For hippocampus (F(2, 30) = 12.46, p < .0001, partial η2 = .453) differences were observed between 1PP- and 3PP conditions (p < .0001), and between 3PP and NM condition (p < .005). However, no difference was found between NM and 1PP conditions (p = .316) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Region of interest analysis: anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC), precuneus, hippocampus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Error bars denote standard error of the mean.

Discussion

The findings bring to light both common and distinct activations for moral judgments in 1PP and 3PP. A conjunction analysis revealed common activation in the aMPFC for both perspectives. When compared to the non-moral condition, 1PP moral judgments elicited activation in the aMPFC, PCC extending in the precuneus, and TPJ, whereas 3PP moral judgments elicited activation in the aMPFC, hippocampus and visual cortex.

The behavioral results, which revealed that 19% of the stimuli in 1PP- and 51% of the 3PP- stimuli were evaluated as right, seem to concur with Nadelhoffer and Feltz's study [27] showing involvement of the “actor-observer bias”. However, the paucity of imaging research on the “actor-observer bias“ makes it challenging to describe the way in which the neurofunctional correlates of the bias may be contributory to, or form moral judgments.

Even though first and third person perspectives (1PP, 3PP) elicited additional activity (except for aMPFC) in comparison with the non-moral condition (NM), these differences did not withstand the threshold-correction (except for hippocampus and visual cortex) in the direct (3PP- vs.1PP; 1PP vs. 3PP-based comparisons). The findings reveal both common and distinct activations for moral judgments in 1PP and 3PP. A conjunction analysis revealed common activation in the aMPFC for both perspectives. When compared to the non-moral condition, 1PP moral judgments elicited activation in the aMPFC, PCC extending in the precuneus, and TPJ, whereas 3PP moral judgments elicited activation in the aMPFC, hippocampus and visual cortex.

No significant statistical differences in signal activation strength were revealed by the ROI analyses between 1- and 3PP-based presentations in the MPFC, precuneus, and TPJ. The aMPFC has been shown to be involved in the explicit representation of both one’s own mental state, and also the mental states of others [43]. Furthermore, its activity has been consistently demonstrated in social cognition and ToM tasks [42]. Moreover, the aMPFC seems to function in coordination of external and internal stimuli [44].

Theoretically, 1PP presentation should elicit activation in those areas involved in assessing behavior in a given situation. When compared to the non-moral condition, signal activation was elicited in aMPFC, precuneus and right TPJ. Given that in 81% of the cases the subjects evaluated the moral stimuli as wrong; it seems that subjects may have tried to distance themselves from strong emotional stimuli. Koenigsberg et al. [45] found signal activation in the PCC/ precuneus, TPJ, and middle and superior temporal gyrus during emotional-distancing tasks. Since the aMPFC contributes to the integration of emotion in decision-making and planning [46], activation in this area suggests that the stimuli may have elicited emotional processing. An attempt to relate the stimuli to the self also seems probable, due to activation of the precuneus, which has been shown to be involved in types of self-processing (e.g. mental imagery strategies; [47]). However, these strategies also engage precuneus perspective-based cognition. Perspective-based cognition has also been shown to involve the TPJ [48]. That both the precuneus and TPJ are involved in may suggest that subjects attempted to change their perspective when responding to the moral stimuli.

In the 3PP-based condition, subjects appear to evaluate the behavior of others through the inner characteristics of the actor, in accordance with the “actor-observer bias”. Behavioral data suggest that the evaluating standards were less strict, with 51% of the stimuli being rated as morally right. When compared to the non-moral condition neural activation during presentation of moral conditions was found in aMPFC, hippocampus (bilaterally), and visual cortex. That there was almost equal activation in the aMPFC for both 1PP- and 3PP presentations of moral conditions (as based upon ROI analysis) suggests the involvement of similar processes in these decision events. Activation in the visual cortex may be explained by the visual salience of the emotional stimuli presented. [28,49,50]. Due to dense interconnections between the visual cortex and the amygdala, a modulating effect from the amygdala as noted by previous studies seems possible [51].

Recent neuroimaging studies have related hippocampal activity to ToM in understanding the emotions and behaviors of others [39], specifically as related to the facilitative role of the hippocampus, and its implication in inducing and sustaining emotional reactions. Hippocampal activation may also suggest both a possible role of memories and projection of self-knowledge while making emotional judgments regarding others [40] and the viability of declarative memory to integrate relevant information between different inputs about a given event [52]. However, it has been suggested that ToM may be independent of episodic memory [53]. In the present study, the stimuli were not related to typical daily experiences, but rather, represented extreme violence, blasphemy, and questionable sexual behavior.

Therefore, we argue that activation in the 3PP condition may be dependent upon semantic memory, in that factual or general information about the world may contribute to making sense of perceived deviant behavior. Hippocampal activity has also been shown during tasks of semantic memory [54], in retrieval of relevant memories [55] that allow past events to influence present decisions [56]. Taking this into consideration, the presentation of moral situations may trigger the recollection of memories of related situational and/or contextual information that relates to, and could influence present decision-making through a Bayesian mechanism of ecological observation, orientation and action [2,5,34]. While it might be possible that the observed hippocampal activation could, perhaps partially, be explained by different conditions relying more or less on short-term memory, we find it difficult to explain why the 3PP would rely more on short-term memory than the 1PP, since there were no statistical significant differences in assessments of sentence length, valence, or arousal.

Furthermore, an interaction between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus has been suggested to mediate cognitive evaluations of the moral character of others [57]. Emotional salience is attributed to moral information by the involvement of the vmPFC, while hippocampal networks involved in memory retrieval enable necessary contextual information in order to make an appropriate character judgment. However, given that the vmPFC includes at least the ventral part of Brodmann’s area 10 (BA 10; [58]), and appears to serve a binding function between aMPFC and the amygdala [59], we suggest that BA 10 may have a functional role in integrating emotional information (via enhanced activation of the visual cortex), and recollective aspects of the decision-process; (possibly through hippocampal connections) that are involved in, and/or subserve moral cognition and judgments.

Thus, we posit that the vmPFC plays a role in emotional salience, while the aMPFC contributes to synthesizing the “moral” information, by integrating emotional and recollective information, thereby enabling appropriate strategies in moral decision-making. To summarize, we claim that the involvement of the hippocampus for the 3PP moral judgment can be explained through the results of recent studies that elucidated its role in understanding emotions and behaviors of others, while somewhat more “classical” hippocampal activity (i.e.- memory) plays a role in the recollection of stored related retrograde situational or contextual information. We consider the role of the hippocampus in 3PP moral judgments of crucial importance due to the psychological implications of these functional roles.

There is also a temporal aspect that may be involved, which would support the “actor-observer bias”. If 1PP presentations engage evaluative cognition, then such processing is temporally related to the present [60,61]. The 3PP situation, however, relies on more abstract evaluations, which tend to be more time independent, in which inner characteristics of others may come into play. Moreover, if subjects distance themselves from the stimuli used in 1PP presentations, the time needed to evaluate these stimuli would be shorter than that needed to evaluate the stimuli in the 3PP condition, where memory processing would represent an important function in stimuli assessment.

An important aspect of the present study is the use of novel stimuli. Since moral dilemmas have already been used to study the "actor-observer bias" [27] a different approach, i.e. using moral reactions, may be helpful in extrapolating the findings. For this reason, control of emotional valence and duration of stimuli has been ensured. Such parameters, however, decrease the number of stimuli that were used. This may be problematic; however, due to the novelty of the approach used, a possible limitation in generalization seems suitable in order to gain greater experimental control over the stimuli.

Despite these limitations, the present findings suggest that different neural networks may be involved in, and subserve the perspective one has towards moral situations. A similar case was found for agency in moral judgments, for which different associated emotions were found to rely upon both distinct and overlapping neural substrates [62]. A psychological component, which could explain the neural differences found for moral perspective taking, is the actor-observer bias. Thus, care must be taken when interpreting neuroimaging studies of the neural bases of morality, since the perspective of the participants towards the moral stimuli may indeed elicit distinct neural activation.

In summary, moral stimuli presented in either 1- or 3PP elicit both distinct (e.g. hippocampus, and visual cortex for 3PP) and common patterns of neural activation (e.g. in the self- or ToM networks). These results suggest that differences may be related to the “actor-observer bias”. In the 1PP presentation the stimuli were evaluated with regard to the situation. Since the participants could not control the situation (although it elicited a strong emotional response), we posit that subjects may have attempted to distance themselves from the stimuli by engaging in perspective shifting. The 3PP moral judgments seem to have been evaluated by considering the inner characteristics of the “actors”, through recollection(s) of relevant information and also by engaging in ToM processes.

The overlap in the self- and ToM networks suggests that self-processing may be a basis through which to experience complex emotions about others' mental state [39]. These findings do not imply identical psychological processes for these different perspectives, and do not contradict the suggested involvement of the “actor-observer bias”. We believe that the most important implication of this study is related to distinct mechanisms and processes of moral cognition. To date, research has posed that networks of the so-called “moral brain” are homogenously activated, independent of the eliciting stimuli. This also implies that similar psychological processes subserve moral cognition and/or reasoning, irrespective of perception of, or orientation to the situation [15]. The present results, however, contrast this view, and suggest that different types of stimuli may indeed engage distinct types of neural activity and psychological processing, and that both reflect orientation to the situation, which may be influenced by a host of factors affecting cognitive biasing, inclusive of cultural differences and a variety of social effects.

While it has been offered that moral and ethical judgments and actions are “other-based” (see, for example, MacMurray [63]), it is important to note that any and all decisions - inclusive of moral judgments (affecting others) - emanate from, and in many ways are reciprocal to, and reflective of the self [2,3,5,64-66]. In this light, potentially moral situations are perceived differently depending upon one’s orientation to, and relative involvement in the situation and circumstance, and its effect upon prior experience, past and present reinforcing and rewarding influences, and predicted outcomes and their impact upon self and others [67-69].

The results presented here suggest that while there appears to be something of a core neural network that is involved in the types of moral decisions rendered in this study, the spatial and temporal engagement of elements of this network are peculiar to distinct types and aspects of situation and circumstances. There are several limitations of this study. First, the number of stimuli remaining after the pilot study was rather small. Therefore, we suggest that future studies employ a larger number of stimuli. This would also enable non-repetition of stimuli, thereby avoiding possible learning effects that have been shown to decrease BOLD signal – e.g. in visual cortex, PFC etc. [69,70]. Second, it remains somewhat uncertain to what extent participants attributed external causes to the 1PP, and internal causes to the 3PP, since the subjects were not required to describe the way in which they evaluated the stimuli. Future studies could employ a post-scanning interview during which subjects are asked to explain their decision-making processes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we opine that the present study suggests differential patterns and mechanisms of 1PP and 3PP moral judgments. Such findings have implications for consideration of how moral decisions are made and morally-relevant acts are tendered (e.g.- “Good Samaritan” acts, “by-stander effects”, etc.), and prompt further inquiry to how patterns of neural activity may affect types and extent of behaviors in morally-relevant situations, and if and how such patterns of activity are stable, modifiable, and/or learned. Yet, we also advocate prudence in interpretation of these and related findings [2-4,7-9], as the limitations of fMRI, like any neurotechnology, must be appreciated (see van Meter [71] for overview).

This encourages engagement of neuroethics’ second tradition, namely, an analysis of the ways that neuroscience and neurotechnology are, can, and should be employed to gain understanding of cognitions, emotions and behaviors, and how such information is used (in medicine, law and the public sphere). Indeed, while findings such as those presented in this study may be provocative, care must be taken in extrapolating such information to real-world circumstances, so as to avoid over- or under-estimating the role of neurobiology in psychological and social activity, and/or the capabilities of neuroscience and neurotechnology to address and answer perdurable and pressing questions about the “nature” of morality, and other dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to study concept. MA was responsible for data collection, data analysis and interpretation, and manuscript preparation. EG and KF were responsible for data analysis and interpretation and critical review of the manuscript, MR and JB were responsible for data collection and preliminary data evaluation. YB, EP and JG made substantial contributions to interpretation of data, have been involved in developing and revising the manuscript for important intellectual content, and have given final approval of the version to be published.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a research scholarship of the Bayerische Forschungsstiftung for M.A., and the Clark Foundation Award for JG. The authors thank Liana Buniak for assistance in preparation of this manuscript.

References are available at the BMC Neuroscience site.