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The Neuroeconomics of Emotional Conflicts in Moral Dilema Judgment

A. F. Rocha*, E. Massad, M.N. Burattini and F. T. Rocha.

Medical Informatics, University of São Paulo, Brazil
*armando@enscer.com.br

ABSTRAT

 

We are used to think about moral judgment as a predominantly rationally based decision making. But emotion is a key issue on decision-making because it arose in nature as the tool to asses how adequate is animal behavior in adapting the animal to its environment.
Neuroeconomics has the purpose to ground economic models in the biological substrate of the brain for decision-making.

We used neuroeconomic tools to model experimental results on moral dilemma judgment and voting-decision on firearm control. Our model involves both an emotional component and a cognitive factor in the estimation of the expected utility
of conflicting dilemma (voting) propositions. This conflict is the major component determining the decision-making probability.

The agreement between our experimental and the theoretical response time distribution seems to validate the proposed model. The EEG activity recorded during dilemma judgment is also in agreement with our theoretical propositions. Our results contribute to make neuroeconomic models predictive and explanatory.