Download Group 2

Anthony Correa
Stephanie Regan
Kasha Geels
Moral Judgments
 Broadly defined as evaluative judgments of the
appropriateness of one’s behavior within the context of
socialized perceptions of right and wrong (Moll et al.
2005)
Development of Thinking about
Moral Judgment
 Moral judgments have been thought to rely solely on
controlled, rational, and logical thought processes
(Kohlberg, 1969; Turiel, 1983).
 More recent research includes an emotional
component in moral judgments as well. Some argue
for the belief that moral judgments are direct products
of implicit processes (e.g. guilt, compassion; compete
and interact to guide morality without having
conscious awareness that this is taking place).
 “Moral intuitions”
Moral Emotions
 Derive from self consciousness and evaluation
 Implicit processes
 Examples are guilt; compassion
Controlled Cognitive Processes
 They play a role in moral judgment only when
situational demand necessitates them (e.g. moral
dilemma)
 Explicit processing
Dual Process and Interactionist
Models of Moral Judgment
 Dual Process – implicit and explicit processes both
form moral judgments and often compete against one
another
 Interactionist – believes that moral judgments are
formed by the integration of social contextual
knowledge, social semantic knowledge, and basic
motivational and emotional drives.
Table 1 Summarized
 5 types of moral judgments accessed:
 Impersonal moral dilemmas
 Personal moral dilemmas
 Violation of social norms
 Social affective situations
 Intent involved in situations that engender self-benefit
The moral judgment is the resolution to the dilemmas.
Brain Function
 We know where the processing center of neural thought
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takes place, it is in the Basal Ganglia where the caudate is
transmitting continuously between its Two spheres.
The Fornix which retains working memory and long term
episodic memory trigger like in PTSD, borders the Basal
Ganglia and the Cingulate Gyrus.
The Caudate is proximal to the fornix share transmission.
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex is a Hub for signal
distribution, highly active in attention, perception, social
cognition and moral judgment.
The emotional component resides in the Amygdala which
is directly linked to the Basal Ganglia therefore the pathway
would progress anterior toward PFC.
Regions of Prefrontal Cortex
Brain Regions
Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex
VMPFC
Function of PFC
 The area associated with cognitive and executive
function
 PFC segmented into DLPFC, VLPFC, VMPFC, DMPFC,
OFC regions.
 Medial and Orbital Frontal regions hubs for
integrating emotional and viscerally arousing
information
 Fusiform face area – neural mechanism dedicated to
perception of faces
DLPFC involved in “working
memory?”
 Is according to the article involved in receiving
emotional and visceral arousing information from the
medial and orbital frontal region of the brain.
 Given the top down afferent transmission in relation to
the Basal Ganglia this remains speculative.
 Through proximity DLPFC gathers information from
the somatosensory and motor cortices.
 Reasoning the Striatum of the Basal Ganglia is where
the stop/go mechanism resides
Basal Ganglia transmission
pathway
Pyramid Neuron
Pyramid Cells