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Science 14 September 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5537, pp. 2105 - 2108
DOI: 10.1126/science.1062872
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Reports

An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment

Joshua D. Greene,12* R. Brian Sommerville,1 Leigh E. Nystrom,13 John M. Darley,3 Jonathan D. Cohen134

The long-standing rationalist tradition in moral psychology emphasizes the role of reason in moral judgment. A more recent trend places increased emphasis on emotion. Although both reason and emotion are likely to play important roles in moral judgment, relatively little is known about their neural correlates, the nature of their interaction, and the factors that modulate their respective behavioral influences in the context of moral judgment. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using moral dilemmas as probes, we apply the methods of cognitive neuroscience to the study of moral judgment. We argue that moral dilemmas vary systematically in the extent to which they engage emotional processing and that these variations in emotional engagement influence moral judgment. These results may shed light on some puzzling patterns in moral judgment observed by contemporary philosophers.

1 Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior,
2 Department of Philosophy, 1879 Hall,
3 Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
4 Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jdgreene{at}princeton.edu

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