Emotion and Cognition in Moral Judgment

描述（由候选人提供）：拟议的研究是使用功能磁共振成像和其他措施，在格林等人2001年报告的工作（附录）的基础上，对认知和情绪在道德判断中各自的作用进行调查。本研究有两个具体的目的，第一，进一步研究高，低情绪的道德判断的神经相关，第二，研究道德判断的个体和群体差异的情绪和认知基础。这项工作解决了道德心理学中长期存在的问题，即产生道德判断的过程的性质。道德心理学中的理性主义传统强调理性的作用，而最近的趋势则更加强调情感。目前的研究旨在通过发展一种道德心理学理论来综合这两种传统，这种理论在阐明道德判断的理性和情感方面的同时，也阐明了它们之间的关系以及它们与神经结构之间的关系。虽然这项研究作为基础科学很有价值，但它也对健康有影响。 额叶损伤的患者往往逃避临床检测，因为他们有正常的“认知”功能。作为本研究的一部分，正在开发的道德判断任务已被证明以可预测的方式参与认知和情感过程，因此，如果适当改进，可能被证明是有用的诊断工具，用于识别额叶损伤和其他病理状况，如涉及认知-情感互动失衡的精神病。

DESCRIPTION (provided by candidate): The proposed research is an investigation of the respective roles of cognition and emotion in moral judgment using fMRI and other measures, building on the work reported on in Greene et al. 2001 (appended). This research has two specific aims, first, to further examine the neural correlates of high- and low-emotion moral judgment and, second, to examine the emotional and cognitive bases for individual and group differences in moral judgment. This work addresses the longstanding issue in moral psychology concerning the nature of the processes that produce moral judgments. The rationalist tradition in moral psychology emphasizes the role of reason while a more recent trend places increased emphasis on emotion. The present line of research aims at a synthesis of these two traditions through the development of a theory of moral psychology that does justice to the rational and emotional aspects of moral judgment while elucidating their relation to one another and to the neural structures that underlie them. While this research is valuable as basic science, it has health implications as well. Patients with frontal damage often evade clinical detection because they have normal "cognitive" function. The moral judgment tasks that are being developed as part of this research have been shown to engage both cognitive and emotional processes in predictable ways, and therefore, if properly refined, may prove to be useful diagnostic tools for the identification of frontal lobe damage and other pathological conditions such as psychopathy that involve imbalances in cognitive-emotional interaction.