ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2015
The neural correlates of justified and unjustified killing: an fMRI study.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Neural Signatures of Shame, Embarrassment, and Guilt: A Voxel-Based Meta-Analysis on Functional Neuroimaging Studies.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- The neuroscience of intergroup threat and violence.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- Morality and management: an oxymoron? fNIRS and neuromanagement perspective explain us why things are not like this.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2020Article
- Moral cognition, the missing link between psychotic symptoms and acts of violence: a cross-sectional national forensic cohort study.BMC psychiatry · 2019Article
- Spontaneous Brain Activity Did Not Show the Effect of Violent Video Games on Aggression: A Resting-State fMRI Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Long-Time Exposure to Violent Video Games Does Not Show Desensitization on Empathy for Pain: An fMRI Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Modulating prefrontal control in humans reveals distinct pathways to competitive success and collective waste.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2016Article
- The Dark Side of Morality - Neural Mechanisms Underpinning Moral Convictions and Support for Violence.AJOB neuroscienceArticle
- Larger Volume and Different Activation of the Brain in Response to Threat in Military Officers.Basic and clinical neuroscienceArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite moral prohibitions on hurting other humans, some social contexts allow for harmful actions such as killing of others. One example is warfare, where killing enemy soldiers is seen as morally justified. Yet, the neural underpinnings distinguishing between justified and unjustified killing are largely unknown. To improve understanding of the neural processes involved in justified and unjustified killing, participants had to imagine being the perpetrator whilst watching 'first-person perspective' animated videos where they shot enemy soldiers ('justified violence') and innocent civilians ('unjustified violence'). When participants imagined themselves shooting civilians compared with soldiers, greater activation was found in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Regression analysis revealed that the more guilt participants felt about shooting civilians, the greater the response in the lateral OFC. Effective connectivity analyses further revealed an increased coupling between lateral OFC and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) when shooting civilians. The results show that the neural mechanisms typically implicated with harming others, such as the OFC, become less active when the violence against a particular group is seen as justified. This study therefore provides unique insight into how normal individuals can become aggressors in specific situations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.