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An fMRI Investigation of Spontaneous Mental State Inference for Moral Judgment
Open accessAbstract
Human moral judgment depends critically on “theory of mind,” the capacity to represent the mental states of agents. Recent studies suggest that the right TPJ (RTPJ) and, to lesser extent, the left TPJ (LTPJ), the precuneus (PC), and the medial pFC (MPFC) are robustly recruited when participants read explicit statements of an agent's beliefs and then judge the moral status of the agent's action. Real-world interactions, by contrast, often require social partners to infer each other's mental states. The current study uses fMRI to probe the role of these brain regions in supporting spontaneous mental state inference in the service of moral judgment. Participants read descriptions of a protagonist's action and then either (i) “moral” facts about the action's effect on another person or (ii) “nonmoral” facts about the situation. The RTPJ, PC, and MPFC were recruited selectively for moral over nonmoral facts, suggesting that processing moral stimuli elicits spontaneous mental state inference. In a second experiment, participants read the same scenarios, but explicit statements of belief preceded the facts: Protagonists believed their actions would cause harm or not. The response in the RTPJ, PC, and LTPJ was again higher for moral facts but also distinguished between neutral and negative outcomes. Together, the results illuminate two aspects of theory of mind in moral judgment: (1) spontaneous belief inference and (2) stimulus-driven belief integration.
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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 (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 [25]
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Young, L., & Saxe, R.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2009-07-01
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 1396-1405
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2142847572
- Semantic Scholar
- ba042938610f9a26e4a5f3fa0f5c78fdc2e798c9
- Cited by
- 208
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 22 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 6.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- moral judgment, theory of mind, mental state inference, right temporoparietal junction, precuneus, medial prefrontal cortex, moral facts, social cognition
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Analysis of Variance, Brain Mapping, Concept Formation, Culture, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Judgment, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Morals, Neuropsychological Tests, Oxygen, Parietal Lobe, Reaction Time, Social Perception, Young Adult
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