![]() ![]() Our findings provide important clues towards understanding the mechanisms underlying biases between social groups.Ĭlinical anxietyis associated with generalization of conditionedfear,in whichinnocuous stimuli elicit alarm. ![]() Our findings are the first to identify the neural mechanism of fear learning biases towards out-group members, and its relationship to interactive behavior. Moreover, we showed that brain activity in the fear-learning-bias network was related to participants' discriminatory interactions with novel out-group members on a later day. In addition, functional connectivity between the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus increased during perception of conditioned out-group faces. In particular, we found that the amygdala and anterior insula (AI) played key roles in differentiating between in-group and out-group faces both when the faces were paired with an aversive event (acquisition) and when no more shocks were administered (extinction). Our results indicate that activity in brain regions previously linked to conditioned fear and perception of individuals belonging to the racial out-groups, or otherwise stigmatized groups, jointly contribute to the expression of race-based biases in learning and behavior. Using a fear conditioning paradigm, we investigated the neural activity underlying aversive learning biases towards in-group (White) and out-group (Black) members, and their predictive value for discriminatory interactive behavior towards novel virtual members of the racial out-group (n = 20). These findings, which parallel those of research on self-interested economic decision-making, support the hypothesis that the amygdala provides an affective assessment of the action in question, while the vmPFC integrates that signal with a utilitarian assessment of expected outcomes to yield “all things considered” moral judgments.Īssociations linking a fearful experience to a member of a social group other than one's own (out-group) are more resistant to change than corresponding associations to a member of one's own (in-group) (Olsson et al., 2005 Kubota et al., 2012), providing a possible link to discriminative behavior. Amygdala-vmPFC connectivity varies with the role played by emotional input in the task, lowest for pure utilitarian assessments and highest for pure emotional assessments. During such integrative moral judgments, the vmPFC is preferentially engaged, relative to utilitarian and emotional assessments. Amygdala response tracks the emotional aversiveness of harmful utilitarian actions as well as overall disapproval of such actions. Behavioral data indicate that emotional aversiveness and utility jointly predict “all things considered” integrative judgments. Participants undergoing fMRI responded to moral dilemmas, separately evaluating options for their utility (Which does the most good?), emotional aversiveness (Which feels worse?), and overall moral acceptability. ![]() Drawing on insights from research on self-interested, value-based decision-making in humans and animals, we test a theory concerning the respective contributions of the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to moral judgment. Here we examine such integrative moral judgments. ![]() It is unknown how such competitions are resolved to yield “all things considered” judgments. pushing someone off of a footbridge) compete with controlled responses favoring the best consequences (e.g. Specifically, negative automatic emotional responses to prototypically harmful actions (e.g. A decade’s research highlights a critical dissociation between automatic and controlled influences on moral judgment, subserved by distinct neural structures. ![]()
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