Blame and Praise Cross-culturally: An fMRI investigation into causal attribution and moral judgment

Biol Psychol. 2023 Oct 13:108713. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108713. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTPeople from independent cultures are more likely to causally explain others' behaviors by their disposition [vs. situation] compared to those from interdependent cultures. However, few studies have directly examined how these differences in attribution shape individuals' moral judgment, nor the underlying neural mechanisms of this process. Aiming to address these questions, in the scanner, participants rated the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of protagonists who did either a negative or positive behavior, respectively. These behaviors were pretested and found to be perceived as dispositionally or situationally caused to different extents on average. Regardless of their self-construal, participants showed enhanced dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) activity in response to the behaviors that were evaluated as more situationally caused on average. Importantly, relatively independent participants reduced their blame for the behaviors that they showed greater dmPFC activity to. Relatively interdependent participants reduced blame for the behaviors that they themselves inferred more situational causes for, but dmPFC activity did not explain their blame. These findings suggest that while dmPFC might support relatively independent participants' effortful consideration of situational contributors to a behavior to make moral judgments, relatively interdependent participants mig...

Source: Biological Psychology - October 15, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BoKyung Park Valerie Rae Smith Source Type: research