The behavioral and neural basis of empathic blame.

ABSTRACT: Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator's intent to cause harm, and also on the actual harm caused-even when unintended. Much prior research asks how intent information is represented neurally, but little asks how even unintended harms influence judgment. We interrogate the psychological and neural basis of this process, focusing especially on the role of empathy for the victim of a harmful act. Using fMRI, we found that the 'empathy for pain' network was involved in encoding harmful outcomes and integrating harmfulness information for different types of moral judgments, and individual differences in the extent to which this network was active during encoding and integration of harmfulness information determined severity of moral judgments. Additionally, activity in the network w

SUBMITTER: Patil I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5508012 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature