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.