There are many inconsistent people in the world, hence the saying “You preach well and you scratch badly”. But today we know that this is not just a behavior, it is due to an area of the brain that is less active in those who do not do what they say. The discovery is the result of a study led by University of Science and Technology of China.
The researchers discovered in particular that a brain region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in the mechanism that leads a person to do or not do what you say.
Although previous studies have identified brain regions involved in behavior and moral judgment, little is known about the correlation between brain activity and moral inconsistency. A deeper understanding of this relationship could have many practical implications and applications.
The study
This latest and revolutionary study was conducted using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with the aim of identifying patterns of brain activity associated with behavior and moral judgment. Specifically, people who behaved dishonestly while judging the same behavior in others to be immoral showed less activity in the vmPFC.
Moral coherence is an active biological process – explains Xiaochu Zhang, co-author of the work – Being a moral person requires the brain to integrate moral knowledge into daily behavior, a process that can fail even in people who know the moral principle perfectly
Participants could earn more by behaving dishonestly, but they were also asked to rate their behavior on a scale of 1 to 10, from “extremely immoral” to “extremely moral.” All this while the scientists monitored their brain activity even as they passed judgment on the morality of other people engaged in the same task.
Additionally, to test whether vmPFC activity played a causal role in moral inconsistency, the researchers stimulated the area of participants’ brains via a noninvasive method called transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) before they undertook the behavioral and judgment tasks.
The results
In morally consistent people, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was activated in a similar way during both the behavioral and judgment tasks. In morally inconsistent participants, however, i.e. those who judged other people’s cheating to be immoral but evaluated their own more leniently, the same area was less active during the behavioral task and less connected to other brain regions involved in decision-making and morality.
Furthermore, stimulation of the vmPFC was clearly shown to lead to higher levels of moral inconsistency compared to participants who received sham stimulation.
These findings, according to the scientists, suggest that morally inconsistent people do not use the vmPFC to integrate information when making behavioral decisions.
Individuals who show moral inconsistency are not necessarily blind to their moral principles – Zhang specifies – They simply, on a biological level, fail to consider them and apply them in their moral behavior
Possible future implications
In future research, the team plans to study brain activity related to the victim’s perspective to understand how these neural circuits react when people are treated unfairly.
Our results suggest that we should consider moral coherence as an ability that can be strengthened through conscious decision making – concludes Hongwen Song, who led the research – These results have enormous implications for education and artificial intelligence
The work was published on Cell Reports.
Sources: EurekAlert / Cell Reports
