“The Role of the Human Prefrontal Cortex in Social Cognition and Moral Judgment” Group 3: Kindra Akridge, Antoinette Sellers, Hannah Stolarczyk, Tawni Voyles

Explicit Thinking The DLPFC is used for predicting outcomes of one’s behavior The frontopolar cortex assesses long-term consequences of behavior with respect to others. The VLPFC /VMPFC allows one to adhere to social norms and cultural values.

Explicit Thinking The VMPFC allows one to adhere to social norms and cultural values Implicit Thinking The OFC is used for comparing social cues in a given context with one’s preexisting representations of social knowledge to help determine appropriate behaviors The hypothalamus connects nervous and endocrine systems and regulates homeostasis; it’s the connection between brain and body. The amygdala is mostly involved with emotion, particularly fear.

Implicit The insula acts in generating awareness of body states and ownership, emotional experience, degree of pain, non-painful sensations of warmth and cold, interpretation of music, laughter, and crying, and the feelings of empathy and compassion.

Implicit The sensory cortex is used for experiencing the sense of touch. The ACC is used for error detection, reward based learning, empathy, and emotion.

In-groups and Out-Groups Brown Eye/Blue Eye experiment – Gave the brown eyed children ribbons to ensure their division – Began to instill the idea that the “Blue Eyes” were better and created a division – Reversed the idea that brown eyes were superior – The eye color of the children served as the Minimal Group Paradigm

Out-Groups and the Amygdala Fear From an evolutionary standpoint, it is natural to fear what we do not know to ensure survival Amygdala activation is sensitive and able to change accordingly with group membership and categorization

Van Bavel et al. Findings – Support the Minimal Group Paradigm – Encoded in-group/out- group information supersedes that of previous associations – Implicit learning systems were activated with in-group faces Significance – Social perceptual networks are reflective of changes in situations – In-group/out-group networks are specifically reflective of social perceptual flexibility – Categorization of self and others is also prone to change situationally

The VMPFC and Social Categorization VMPFC damage elicits difficulty with tasks related to “reading” others and categorizing self This indicates social categorization… – May largely take place in both the VMPFC and medial PFC – The VMPFC is integral in differentiating the self from others

Forbes et al. The implicit processing of the amygdala indicates malleability of stereotyping The coupling of fast and slow processing in implicit and explicit processing supports the adaptability of social categorization

Contributions to Knowledge About the PFC Greene and colleagues suggest that when personal moral dilemmas are considered, the areas of the brain that increase in activity are mainly involved in emotion. The medial PFC will mediate this. Similarly, when impersonal moral dilemmas are considered, Greene and colleagues suggest that the areas of the brain that are involved have to do with cognitive control, rather than emotion

Testing the Hypothesis Subjects are asked to read a series of scenarios, to do with both impersonal and personal moral dilemmas Subjects were then asked to pick which scenario they would rather be in: one in which they had a personal dilemma or an impersonal dilemma The results showed that personal moral dilemmas caused activity in the medial PFC along with other regions. On the other hand, impersonal moral dilemmas showed an increase in activity in the DLPFC. This showed that the subjects engaged in more cognitive thought when asked to think about impersonal situations, and they engaged in more emotional thought when asked about personal situations

References Elliott, J. (2006). Jane elliott's blue eyes brown eyes exercise. Retrieved from