Summary: A new study of brain images reveals that the sense of agency, our feeling of being responsible for our actions, decays when we remain orders, regardless of whether we are civilians or military officers. Participants were asked to make moral decisions that involve inflicting damage, either freely or low coercion, and FMRI results showed reduced neuronal markers of the agency during coercion actions.
Interestingly, no significant differences were found between civilians and official cadets, which suggests that the brain processes moral responsibility in a similar way between the groups. The findings shed light on neuroscience behind obedience and moral decision making, with important implications for ethics, justice and leadership training.
Key facts:
The sense of the agency falls under the orders: the participants felt less responsible when the commands followed than when choosing freely. Nor the civil-military division: the patterns of brain activity linked to moral decision making were similar in both groups. Implications for ethical training: The results highlight the importance of promoting responsibility in hierarchical systems.
Source: Bial Foundation
A study analyzed the brain activity of the cadets and civilians of the military officers while making moral decisions and concluded that the perception of being the author of our actions and its consequences decreases when we follow the orders, whether we are civil or military.
Understanding how the brain processes moral responsibility is important due to the implications it can have for ethics, justice and psychology of human behavior.
Although we can make some decisions freely in our daily lives, an important part of the elections we take are conditioned by the rules established by society or other people, which can strongly influence our behaviors. Numerous historical examples and experimental research have shown that restrictions on freedom of choice can lead to behavior that causes serious damage to others.
Therefore, understanding how people make moral decisions and neuronal processes that underlie these decisions are critical scientific and social issues, particularly for a better understanding of irregularities.
A key neurocognitive process for decision making is the so -called Agency Sense (SOA), which refers to the perception that we are the authors of our actions and their consequences, assuming the responsibility of our elections. SOA is a cognitive process that seems to be reduced when people obey orders, instead of making free decisions.
Previous studies have shown that this feeling really decreases when we obey orders, reducing our perception of responsibility. This effect is particularly relevant in contexts where the following orders are part of the routine, as in the army.
To assses whether the neural basis of soa during moral decision-making differs Between Civilian and Military Populations When Making Free Orcerced Decions, While Occupying Different Positions Within to Hierarchical Chain, Axel Cleremans (Center for Research In Cognition and Neuroscience, University Free from Bruxelles, Belgium) and Collaborators used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) to analyze the brain activity of 19 military officer and 24 civil controls while making moral decisions.
In the article “Neural correlates of the sense of the agency in free moral decision making and coercion between civilians and military personnel”, published in March in the Cortex cerebral journal, the authors explain that in the experiment they carried out, the participants could freely choose or follow orders to inflict a slight shock in a victim.
SOA was evaluated through the temporal union, a phenomenon in which the perception of time between the action and the consequence changes depending on the degree to which the decision was voluntary.
The results of the study, backed by the Bial Base, indicated that SOA decreases when we follow orders, regardless of whether we are civil or military, that is, no significant differences were found between the groups, which suggests that the neural base of moral decision making is consistent, regardless of the professional environment.
In addition, several brain regions, including the occipital lobe, the frontal turn and the Precuneus, were associated with this perception.
Axel Cleeremans points out that, “in addition to confirming that the perception of being the author of our actions and its consequences decreases when we follow the orders, there were no differences between military and civilian personnel, which suggests that daily environments have a minimum influence on the neural basis of moral decision making, which allows the results to be generalized.”
Although these results may suggest that the effects of coercion in the brain are generalizable among populations, it is important to emphasize that in this case, military participants were officers trained to assume responsibility for their actions.
“One might ask if being a mere executor would influence these results, since a previous study showed that having a low military range had a detrimental effect on SOA. This would suggest important ways for responsibility training,” says Cleeremans.
On this morality and neuroscience research news
Author: Sandra Pinto
Source: Bial Foundation
Contact: Sandra Pinto – Bial Foundation
Image: The image is accredited to Neuroscience News
Original research: open access.
“Neural correlates of the sense of agency in making free moral decision and coercion between civilians and military personnel” by Axel Cleeremans et al. Cerebral cortex
Abstract
Neuronal correlates of the sense of agency in making free moral decision and coercion between civilians and military personnel
The feeling of agency, the feeling of being the author of the actions and results of one, is essential for decision making. Although previous research has explored its neural correlates, most studies have focused on neutral tasks, overlooking moral decision making.
In addition, previous studies mainly used signs of convenience, ignoring that some social environments can influence how authorship in moral decision making is processed.
This study investigated the neuronal correlates of the sense of agency in civilians and cadets of military officers, examining the free and coercion options in the roles of agent and commander.
Using a functional magnetic resonance paradigm where participants could freely choose or follow orders to inflict a slight shock to a victim, we evaluate the sense of agency through the temporal union, a temporary distortion between voluntary and less voluntary decisions.
Our findings suggested that agency sensation is reduced when orders are followed compared to acting freely in both roles.
Several brain regions were correlated with the temporal union, especially the occipital lobe, the upper/lower/lower frontal turn, the pre -resign and the lateral occipital cortex.
It is important to highlight that there were no differences between the military and civilians in corrected thresholds, which suggests that daily environments have a minimal influence on the neural basis of moral decision making, which improves the generalization of findings.
