Why (and how) should we study the interplay between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind, and inhibitory control to understand moral cognition?

Findings in the field of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shed new light on our understanding of the psychological and biological bases of morality. Although a lot of attention has been devoted to understanding the processes that underlie complex moral dilemmas, attempts to represent the way in which individuals generate moral judgments when processing basic harmful actions are rare. Here, we will outline a model of morality which proposes that the evaluation of basic harmful actions relies on complex interactions between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind (ToM) capacities, and inhibitory control resources. This model makes clear predictions regarding the cognitive processes underlying the development of and ability to generate moral judgments. We draw on data from developmental and cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology research to evaluate the model and propose several conceptual and methodological improvements that are needed to further advance our understanding of moral cognition and its development.- We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank Marianne Habib and Eamon McCrory for useful discussions and insights. We are also very grateful to the Fyssen Fundation whose grant to Marine Buon supported this work. During the writing of this paper, Ana Seara Cardoso was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT: SFRH/BD/60279/2009; SFRH/BPD/94970/2013), partially at the Psychology Research Centre, University of Minho (UID/PSI/01662) co-funded by FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and by FEDER through COMPETE2020, PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653)

Why (and how) should we study the interplay between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind, and inhibitory control to understand moral cognition?

Findings in the field of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shed new light on our understanding of the psychological and biological bases of morality. Although a lot of attention has been devoted to understanding the processes that underlie complex moral dilemmas, attempts to represent the way in which individuals generate moral judgments when processing basic harmful actions are rare. Here, we will outline a model of morality which proposes that the evaluation of basic harmful actions relies on complex interactions between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind (ToM) capacities, and inhibitory control resources. This model makes clear predictions regarding the cognitive processes underlying the development of and ability to generate moral judgments. We draw on data from developmental and cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology research to evaluate the model and propose several conceptual and methodological improvements that are needed to further advance our understanding of moral cognition and its development.- We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank Marianne Habib and Eamon McCrory for useful discussions and insights. We are also very grateful to the Fyssen Fundation whose grant to Marine Buon supported this work. During the writing of this paper, Ana Seara Cardoso was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT: SFRH/BD/60279/2009; SFRH/BPD/94970/2013), partially at the Psychology Research Centre, University of Minho (UID/PSI/01662) co-funded by FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and by FEDER through COMPETE2020, PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653)

Callous-unemotional traits moderate anticipated guilt and wrongness judgments to everyday moral transgressions in adolescents

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.625328/full#supplementary-materialCallous-unemotional (CU) traits observed during childhood and adolescence are thought to be precursors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. Adults with high levels of psychopathic traits typically present antisocial behavior. Such behavior can be indicative of atypical moral processing. Evidence suggests that moral dysfunction in these individuals may stem from a disruption of affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se. No study to date has tested if the dissociation between affective and cognitive dimensions of moral processing linked to psychopathic traits in adulthood is also linked to CU traits during development. Here, 47 typically developing adolescents with varying levels of CU traits completed a novel, animated cartoon task depicting everyday moral transgressions and indicated how they would feel in such situations and how morally wrong the situations were. Adolescents with higher CU traits reported reduced anticipated guilt and wrongness appraisals of the transgressions. However, our key finding was a significant interaction between CU traits and anticipated guilt in predicting wrongness judgments. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgement was significantly weaker for those with higher levels of CU traits. This evidence extends our knowledge on the cognitive-affective processing deficits that may underlie moral dysfunction in youth who are at heightened risk for antisocial behavior and psychopathy in adulthood. Future longitudinal research is required to elucidate whether there is an increased dissociation between different components of moral processing from adolescence to adulthood for those with high psychopathic traits.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) research grant awarded to AS-C (PTDC/MHC-PCN/2296/2014), co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016747). The study was conducted at the Psychology Research Center (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by FCT through the Portuguese State Budget (Ref.: UIDB/PSI/01662/2020)

Affective resonance in response to others' emotional faces varies with affective ratings and psychopathic traits in amygdala and anterior insula

Despite extensive research on the neural basis of empathic responses for pain and disgust, there is limited data about the brain regions that underpin affective response to other people's emotional facial expressions. Here, we addressed this question using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural responses to emotional faces, combined with online ratings of subjective state. When instructed to rate their own affective response to others' faces, participants recruited anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate, inferior frontal gyrus, and amygdala, regions consistently implicated in studies investigating empathy for disgust and pain, as well as emotional saliency. Importantly, responses in anterior insula and amygdala were modulated by trial-by-trial variations in subjective affective responses to the emotional facial stimuli. Furthermore, overall task-elicited activations in these regions were negatively associated with psychopathic personality traits, which are characterized by low affective empathy. Our findings suggest that anterior insula and amygdala play important roles in the generation of affective internal states in response to others' emotional cues and that attenuated function in these regions may underlie reduced empathy in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciencia e Tecnologia) under grant number [SFRH/BD/60279/2009] awarded to A.S.C.; the Economic and Social Research Council under grant number [RES-062-23-2202] award to E.V; E.V. is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder; C.L.S. was partially supported during the writing of this article by an Economic and Social Research Council award [ES/K008951/1]; J.P.R. is funded by the Wellcome Trust

Neural responses to others’ pain vary with psychopathic traits in healthy adult males

Disrupted empathic processing is a core feature of psychopathy. Neuroimaging data have suggested that individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show atypical responses to others' pain in a network of brain regions typically recruited during empathic processing (anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and mid- and anterior cingulate cortex). Here, we investigated whether neural responses to others' pain vary with psychopathic traits within the general population in a similar manner to that found in individuals at the extreme end of the continuum. As predicted, variation in psychopathic traits was associated with variation in neural responses to others' pain in the network of brain regions typically engaged during empathic processing. Consistent with previous research, our findings indicated the presence of suppressor effects in the association of levels of the affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial dimensions of psychopathy with neural responses to others' pain. That is, after controlling for the influence of the other dimension, higher affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits were associated with reduced neural responses to others' pain, whilst higher lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were associated with increased neural responses to others' pain. Our findings provide further evidence that atypical function in this network might represent neural markers of disrupted emotional and empathic processing; that the two dimensions of psychopathy might tap into distinct underlying vulnerabilities; and, most importantly, that the relationships observed at the extreme end of the psychopathy spectrum apply to the nonclinical distribution of these traits, providing further evidence for continuities in the mechanisms underlying psychopathic traits across the general population

A comunicação na transição para cuidados paliativos:um estudo exploratório da realidade portuguesa

Mestrado em BioéticaMaster Degree Course in Bioethic

Psychopathy

SummaryPsychopathy is a condition that has long captured the public imagination. Newspaper column inches are devoted to murderers with psychopathic features and movies such as No Country for Old Men and We Need to Talk About Kevin focus on characters who are exceptionally cold and callous. Psychopathy is in fact a personality disorder characterised by lack of empathy and guilt, shallow affect, manipulation of other people and severe, premeditated and violent antisocial behaviour. Individuals with psychopathy generate substantial societal costs both as a direct financial consequence of their offending behaviour and lack of normal participation in working life, but also in terms of the emotional and psychological costs to their victims

Emotion regulation moderates the association between empathy and prosocial behavior

Theory and evidence suggest that empathy is an important motivating factor for prosocial behaviour and that emotion regulation, i.e. the capacity to exert control over an emotional response, may moderate the degree to which empathy is associated with prosocial behaviour. However, studies to date have not simultaneously explored the associations between different empathic processes and prosocial behaviour, nor whether different types of emotion regulation strategies (e.g. cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) moderate associations between empathy and prosocial behaviour. One hundred–and-ten healthy adults completed questionnaire measures of empathy, emotion regulation and prosocial tendencies. In this sample, both affective and cognitive empathy predicted self-reported prosocial tendencies. In addition, cognitive reappraisal moderated the association between affective empathy and prosocial tendencies. Specifically, there was a significant positive association between empathy and prosocial tendencies for individuals with a low or average tendency to reappraise but not for those with a high tendency to reappraise. Our findings suggest that, in general, empathy is positively associated with prosocial behaviour. However, this association is not significant for individuals with a high tendency for cognitive reappraisal

Psychopathic traits and reinforcement learning under acute stress

Individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits are often characterized by aberrant reinforcement learning. This type of learning, which implicates making choices that maximize rewards and minimize punishments, may be affected by acute stress. However, how acute stress affects reinforcement learning in individuals with different levels of psychopathic traits is not well-understood. Here, we investigated whether and how individual differences in psychopathic traits modulated the impact of acute stress on reward and punishment learning.ASC was supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) [SFRH/BPD/94970/2013, PTDC/MHC-PCN/2296/2014, co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016747)]. AM was supported by FCT and from EU through the European Social Fund and from the Human Potential Operational Program [IF/00750/2015]. JC was supported by FCT through the Portuguese State Budget and European Social Fund through the Human Capital Operational Program, North Portugal Regional Operational Program (PD/BD/128467/2017). This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by FCT through the Portuguese State Budget (UID/PSI/01662/2020)

Editorial on the research topic Cognitive empathy and perspective taking:understanding the mechanisms of normal and abnormal experiences and abilities

[Extract] Human behavior is largely based on our understanding and interpretation of the feelings and actions of others. In order to function in and adapt to this social world, we rely on social cognitive processes such as empathy and perspective taking (1, 2). Empathy is now commonly characterized as consisting of cognitive and affective components.AS-C contribution was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (Ref.: UIDB/PSI/01662/2020)