ArticleScientific reports2022
On the cognitive mechanisms supporting prosocial disobedience in a post-genocidal context.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of mobile brain/body imaging studies using the P300 event-related potentials to investigate cognition beyond the laboratory.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Pooled it
- The effect of experimenter identification on (dis)obedience and its mechanisms.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- A cross-cultural EEG study of how obedience and conformity influence reconciliation intentions.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Neuro-cognitive specificities in prosocial disobedience: A comparative fMRI study of civilian and military populations.PloS one · 2025Article
- Obedience induces agentic shifts by increasing the perceived time between own action and results.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- When the brain says "No!": An MRI study on the neural correlates of resistance to immoral orders.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to offer a first investigation of the neuro-cognitive processes and the temporal dynamics at the neural level, together with cultural, social and psychological dimensions, that may support resistance to orders to harm another person. Using a novel experimental approach to study experimentally disobedience, we recruited individuals from the first generation born after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Seventy-two were recruited and tested in Rwanda and 72 were recruited and tested in Belgium. Results indicated that a higher neural response to the pain of others and a higher feeling of responsibility when people obeyed orders were associated with more resistance to immoral orders. We also observed that participants who had a higher processing, as measured through mid-frontal theta activity, when listening to the orders of the experimenter disobeyed less frequently to immoral orders. Further, participants experiencing a higher conflict before administering a shock to the 'victim' also disobeyed more frequently to immoral orders. Finally, a low cultural relationship to authority and a high estimated family suffering during the genocide were also associated with more disobedience to immoral orders. The present study opens new paths for interdisciplinary field research dedicated to the study of obedience.
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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.