Moral decisions linked to brain activity

What makes our decisions morally just or objectionable? It is the brain activity that is responsible for the differences in our moral behaviour, reveals a new study.

"Our study demonstrates that with moral behaviour, people may not in fact always stick to the golden rule. While most people tend to exhibit some concern for others, some others may demonstrate 'moral opportunism', where they want to look moral but want to maximize their own benefit," said lead author Jeroen van Baar, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University, US.

For the study, published in Nature Communications journal, researchers developed a computational strategy model to examine the brain activity patterns linked to the moral strategies.

The team tried to determine which type of moral strategy the participant was using – inequity aversion; guilt aversion; greed or moral opportunism.

The study showed that people used different moral principles to make their decisions and also changed their moral behaviour depending on the situation.

"Our results demonstrate that people may use different moral principles to make their decisions, and that some people will apply different principles depending on the situation," said Chang.