Exploring how people face moral dilemmas
New neural evidence suggests that internal bodily signals may shape the intuitions people have about others’ expectations during moral dilemmas
2025-05-05
(Press-News.org) People typically evaluate the preferences of both themselves and others before making decisions in moral dilemmas. Researchers have theorized how people face moral dilemmas, but experimental data is lacking. In a new JNeurosci paper, JuYoung Kim and Hackjin Kim at Korea University provide what they claim is the first experimental data to address the question of how people face moral dilemmas.
The researchers assessed study participants’ awareness of their own bodily signals and how closely they aligned with unknown group moral preferences in different scenarios. Awareness of internal states was measured using self-reports and self-evaluations of heartbeats. Group consensus was measured by the number of participants selecting the same ethical option across various scenarios. The researchers found a link between internal bodily awareness and making decisions that aligned with the group consensus. This link was mediated by brain activity states during rest that featured activity in brain regions associated with self-referential processing and internal attention. Thus, according to the authors, this newfound link between internal state sensitivity and moral alignment may influence the moral intuitions a person develops as they learn the moral expectations of others.
###
Please contact media@sfn.org for full-text PDF.
About JNeurosci
JNeurosci was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2025-05-05
It’s notable when a scientific study reaches the decade mark, but when the topic is the healthy aging of people who have lived 10 times as long, it just means there’s still a lot more to learn.
This month, researchers participating in the Cilento Initiative on Aging Outcomes or CIAO study will gather in Acciaroli (Pollica-Cilento) Salerno, Italy to review a decade of work and plan their next steps. Launched in 2016, the CIAO study seeks to identify key factors (biological, psychological and social) that promote healthy aging and extreme ...
2025-05-05
AMHERST, Mass. — For the cautious – or simply curious – homeowner, an at-home water testing kit may seem reassuring. But there are high levels of variability between test kits’ abilities to detect potential contaminants in water, a new study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found.
“People might be concerned about their drinking water, whether they’ve heard things in the news, or they notice it tastes different, or the color is different,” says Emily Kumpel, associate professor of civil and environmental ...
2025-05-05
PULLMAN, Wash. – When it comes to closing a deal, salespeople may be losing customers before they ever say a word. New research from Washington State University suggests the location of sales interactions may be just as important as the sales pitch.
The research, “Psychological Reactance Among B2C Sales Prospects,” published in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, examines how the physical sales environment affects customer behavior in private and public settings.
Researchers Bitty Balducci and Minjoo Kim, ...
2025-05-05
In the Netflix hit-series Adolescence, young people's online lives and negative male role models are important themes. On the social media site Reddit, the series is being discussed extensively by ordinary streaming users, who not only relate to the show's artistic qualities and acting performances, but also the difficult themes.
“The Adolescence discussions on Reddit are good examples of the types of discussion communities we see today on social media about TV series and films,” ...
2025-05-05
In two randomized studies with around 1,500 participants, the researchers compared the impact of active remembrance work with the mere provision of information. The study focused on the #everynamecounts project, a digital crowdsourcing project run by the Arolsen Archives in which volunteers digitize historical documents related to the persecution of Nazi victim groups. Half of the participants actively took part in this project and digitized so-called prisoner registration cards from the Buchenwald concentration camp. The other group only received information about Nazi persecution and the archived documents ...
2025-05-05
University of Edinburgh scientists have harnessed the power of AI in a new tool that promises to speed up analysis of data from gel electrophoresis experiments.
The technique is widely used across biological sciences to separate and analyse biomolecules and routinely used to inform on many biomolecule activities such as genomic manipulation, DNA supercoiling or evaluating the success or failure of assembly of a bionanostructure or artificial conjugate.
The core principle of gel electrophoresis is simple: biomolecules are suspended within inset wells in a gel matrix, a voltage is ...
2025-05-05
Endemic to China’s Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a perpetual smile on its face. To track how this critically endangered porpoise’s habitat range has changed over time, a team of biodiversity and conservation experts compiled 724 ancient Chinese poems referencing the porpoise from historic collections across China. Publishing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 5, their results show that the porpoise’s range has decreased by at least 65% over the past 1,400 years, with the majority of this decline occurring in the past century. ...
2025-05-05
Young people with a diagnosable mental health condition report differences in their experiences of social media compared to those without a condition, including greater dissatisfaction with online friend counts and more time spent on social media sites.
This is according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge, which suggests that adolescents with “internalising” conditions such as anxiety and depression report feeling particularly affected by social media.
Young people with these conditions are more likely to report comparing themselves to others on social media, feeling a lack of self-control ...
2025-05-05
About The Study: In this study, the prevalence of depressive symptoms increased substantially among U.S. adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worsening mental health trends were concentrated among younger adults.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil, email rwadhera@bidmc.harvard.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.0993)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article ...
2025-05-05
About The Study: Cannabis use in pregnancy was associated with greater odds of preterm birth, small for gestational age, and low birth weight even after adjusting for co-use of tobacco products, and confidence in these findings increased from low in the prior review to moderate in the current meta-analysis. The findings of this study may help inform patient counseling and future public health policies.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jamie O. Lo, MD, email loj@ohsu.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.0689)
Editor’s ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Exploring how people face moral dilemmas
New neural evidence suggests that internal bodily signals may shape the intuitions people have about others’ expectations during moral dilemmas
