Patterns of neural activity associated with honest and dishonest moral decisions.

ABSTRACT: What makes people behave honestly when confronted with opportunities for dishonest gain? Research on the interplay between controlled and automatic processes in decision making suggests 2 hypotheses: According to the "Will" hypothesis, honesty results from the active resistance of temptation, comparable to the controlled cognitive processes that enable the delay of reward. According to the "Grace" hypothesis, honesty results from the absence of temptation, consistent with research emphasizing the determination of behavior by the presence or absence of automatic processes. To test these hypotheses, we examined neural activity in individuals confronted with opportunities for dishonest gain. Subjects undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) gained money by accurately predicting

SUBMITTER: Greene JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2718383 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature