Innocent intentions: A correlation between forgiveness for accidental harm and neural activity☆

Young, Liane; Saxe, Rebecca

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.020

Cited by 249Psychology of Moral and Emotional JudgmentForgiveness and Related BehaviorsNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

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Innocent intentions: A correlation between forgiveness for accidental harm and neural activity☆

Young, Liane, Saxe, Rebecca·2009·Neuropsychologia

DOI 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.020

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Abstract

Contemporary moral psychology often emphasizes the universality of moral judgments. Across age, gender, religion and ethnicity, people's judgments on classic dilemmas are sensitive to the same moral principles. In many cases, moral judgments depend not only on the outcome of the action, but on the agent's beliefs and intentions at the time of action. For example, we blame agents who attempt but fail to harm others, while generally forgiving agents who harm others accidentally and unknowingly. Nevertheless, as we report here, there are individual differences in the extent to which observers exculpate agents for accidental harms. Furthermore, we find that the extent to which innocent intentions are taken to mitigate blame for accidental harms is correlated with activation in a specific brain region during moral judgment. This brain region, the right temporo-parietal junction, has been previously implicated in reasoning about other people's thoughts, beliefs, and intentions in moral and non-moral contexts.

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Activity in the RTPJ while participants make moral judgments about attempted and accidental harms shows the same asymmetry: greater activity for attempted than accidental harms.
“Activity in the RTPJ while participants make moral judgments about attempted and accidental harms shows the same asymmetry: greater activity for attempted than accidental harms (9, 10, 24, 25).”
From Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments (2010) · cites this paper as [24]

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Neuroanatomical correlates of forgiving unintentional harmsPreprint
Patil, I., Calo, M., fFornasier, F., Young, L., & Silani, G. (2017) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/bhf87_v1
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Decoding moral judgments from neural representations of intentions
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The behavioral and neural basis of empathic blame
Patil, I., Calo, M., fFornasier, F., Cushman, F., & Silani, G. (2017) · Open Science Framework · doi:10.17605/osf.io/xhtzr
Neural evidence for “intuitive prosecution”: The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts
Young, L., Scholz, J., & Saxe, R. R. (2011) · Social Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/17470919.2010.529712 · Cited by 71
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Rapid rTPJ-driven signals encode malicious intentions during implicit moral evaluation: a TMS-EEG study
Cenka, K., Spaccasassi, C., Petkovic, S., Arcara, G., & Avenanti, A. (2025) · International Journal of Psychophysiology · doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2025.112744

Authors: Young, L., & Saxe, R.
Affiliations: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Corresponding author: Young, Liane
ORCID: Young, Liane
Saxe, Rebecca
Venue: Neuropsychologia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Published: 2009-08
Volume: 47
Issue: 10
Pages: 2065-2072
ISSN: 0028-3932 (ISSN-L)
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.03.020
OpenAlex: W2104698746
Semantic Scholar: c2b5c3e3d88e1e12a3dacfb86b433205fa758d50
Cited by: 249
References: 67
Citations by year: 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 42 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 17
FWCI: 7.58
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: closed
Licence: www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations: Neuropsychologia (publishedVersion)
PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders: National Science Foundation
Topics: Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Forgiveness and Related Behaviors
Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
Keywords: accidental harm, moral judgment, intention, forgiveness, blame, right temporoparietal junction, individual differences, moral reasoning, theory of mind
MeSH terms: Accidents, Adolescent, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Judgment, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Morals, Oxygen, Reaction Time, Statistics as Topic, Imaging, Three-Dimensional, Intention, Young Adult

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Innocent intentions: A correlation between forgiveness for accidental harm and neural activity☆

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