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Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study
Going back to Kohlberg, moral development research affirms that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as cognitive abilities mature. Individuals at a lower level of moral reasoning judge moral issues mainly based on self-interest (personal interests schema) or based on adherenc...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4454660/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26039547 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122914 |
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author | Prehn, Kristin Korczykowski, Marc Rao, Hengyi Fang, Zhuo Detre, John A. Robertson, Diana C. |
author_facet | Prehn, Kristin Korczykowski, Marc Rao, Hengyi Fang, Zhuo Detre, John A. Robertson, Diana C. |
author_sort | Prehn, Kristin |
collection | PubMed |
description | Going back to Kohlberg, moral development research affirms that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as cognitive abilities mature. Individuals at a lower level of moral reasoning judge moral issues mainly based on self-interest (personal interests schema) or based on adherence to laws and rules (maintaining norms schema), whereas individuals at the post-conventional level judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals. However, the extent to which moral development is reflected in structural brain architecture remains unknown. To investigate this question, we used voxel-based morphometry and examined the brain structure in a sample of 67 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students. Subjects completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2) which measures moral development in terms of cognitive schema preference. Results demonstrate that subjects at the post-conventional level of moral reasoning were characterized by increased gray matter volume in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, compared with subjects at a lower level of moral reasoning. Our findings support an important role for both cognitive and emotional processes in moral reasoning and provide first evidence for individual differences in brain structure according to the stages of moral reasoning first proposed by Kohlberg decades ago. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4454660 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-44546602015-06-09 Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study Prehn, Kristin Korczykowski, Marc Rao, Hengyi Fang, Zhuo Detre, John A. Robertson, Diana C. PLoS One Research Article Going back to Kohlberg, moral development research affirms that people progress through different stages of moral reasoning as cognitive abilities mature. Individuals at a lower level of moral reasoning judge moral issues mainly based on self-interest (personal interests schema) or based on adherence to laws and rules (maintaining norms schema), whereas individuals at the post-conventional level judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals. However, the extent to which moral development is reflected in structural brain architecture remains unknown. To investigate this question, we used voxel-based morphometry and examined the brain structure in a sample of 67 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students. Subjects completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2) which measures moral development in terms of cognitive schema preference. Results demonstrate that subjects at the post-conventional level of moral reasoning were characterized by increased gray matter volume in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, compared with subjects at a lower level of moral reasoning. Our findings support an important role for both cognitive and emotional processes in moral reasoning and provide first evidence for individual differences in brain structure according to the stages of moral reasoning first proposed by Kohlberg decades ago. Public Library of Science 2015-06-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4454660/ /pubmed/26039547 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122914 Text en © 2015 Prehn et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Prehn, Kristin Korczykowski, Marc Rao, Hengyi Fang, Zhuo Detre, John A. Robertson, Diana C. Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title | Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title_full | Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title_fullStr | Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title_short | Neural Correlates of Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study |
title_sort | neural correlates of post-conventional moral reasoning: a voxel-based morphometry study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4454660/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26039547 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122914 |
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