Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30766017›Full record

ArticlePsychology, crime & law : PC & L2018

The neuroscience of morality and social decision-making.

Keith J Yoder, Jean Decety

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Psychology, crime & law : PC & L, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
23citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Pooled it
  3. Trial
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. How to judge emotions? Measuring moral emotions of lawyers in a retrospective situation.Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law · 2026
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Neural Processes Linking Interoception to Moral Preferences Aligned with Group Consensus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
  11. Article
  12. The meaning of ethical collaborative research according to young people.International journal of adolescence and youth · 2025
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Neural Correlates of Social Decision-Making.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2024
    Article
  15. Review
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Review
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Keith J YoderDepartment of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Jean DecetyDepartment of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Funding

Socioemotional processing in female offenders - Resubmission 01R01MH109329 · NIMH · UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO · PI DECETY, JEAN, KIEHL, KENT A · 2016 to 2020
$3.6M
NIMH NIH HHS R01 MH109329
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Across cultures humans care deeply about morality and create institutions, such as criminal courts, to enforce social norms. In such contexts, judges and juries engage in complex social decision-making to ascertain a defendant's capacity, blameworthiness, and culpability. Cognitive neuroscience investigations have begun to reveal the distributed neural networks which interact to implement moral judgment and social decision-making, including systems for reward learning, valuation, mental state understanding, and salience processing. These processes are fundamental to morality, and their underlying neural mechanisms are influenced by individual differences in empathy, caring and justice sensitivity. This new knowledge has important implication in legal settings for understanding how triers of fact reason. Moreover, recent work demonstrates how disruptions within the social decision-making network facilitate immoral behavior, as in the case of psychopathy. Incorporating neuroscientific methods with psychology and clinical neuroscience has the potential to improve predictions of recidivism, future dangerousness, and responsivity to particular forms of rehabilitation.

Indexed as

empathyjustice motivationmoralityneurosciencepsychopathysocial decision-making

Identifiers

PMID30766017
PMCPMC6372234

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceTDM
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.