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Free keywords:
Moral Judgment; Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex; Moral Dilemma; Posterior Cingulate Cortex; Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex
Abstract:
Moral judgment can be defined as the evaluation of actions with respect to social norms and values established in a society (such as not stealing or being an honest citizen).
For our purposes, we use the term “moral judgment” as an inclusive description of all judgments and decision-making processes about those things that ought to be done and those that ought not to be done, particularly in the social context of interactions with other people and do not distinguish between moral and socio-conventional judgments. In the literature (Turiel, 1983; Smetana, 1993; Blair, 1995; Nucci, 2001) this distinction is used to differentiate cases where harm is caused to a person (= moral transgressions) from cases where only socio-conventional norms are violated (= conventional transgressions) without necessarily causing harm (e.g., spitting in a glass of wine at a dinner party).
