Immoral Thoughts: How Does The Brain React?

Scientist discover that the left side of the brain reacts more to immoral stimuli

From The Guardian

When a person thinks about naughty things, does one side of the brain get more exercised than the other? Eight scientists studied that question. Their report, Hemispheric Asymmetries During Processing of Immoral Stimuli, appears in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. The stated goal is to describe “the neural organisation of moral processing.”

Debra Lieberman, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Miami, Florida, acts as spokesperson for the team. Other members are based at Miami, and at the University of New Mexico and at Stanford University in California. Another, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, is at Duke University in North Carolina.

The study restricted itself to the simple question: how does immorality play out in the brain?

The scientists sought their answer by recruiting some test subjects. They confronted each volunteer with several levels of immorality, in the form of words and images.

The team used MRI machines to indirectly (via electromagnetic emissions) monitor where largish amounts of blood flowed in the brain as each volunteer confronted each example of immorality. In theory, anyway, blood flows most freely near whichever brain parts are actively thinking, or have just thought, or are just about to think, or are busily doing something else.

After all the immorality was seen, and the measurements made, the researchers calculated that the left side of the brain had been more involved than the right side. Thus, concludes the study: “There is a left-hemisphere bias for the processing of immoral stimuli across multiple domains.”