Feeling Right from Wrong: Brain’s social emotions steer moral judgments

People who suffer damage to a brain area that generates compassion, shame, and other social sentiments apply coldly rational thinking to hypothetical moral dilemmas, even those that involve terrible personal loss, a team of neuroscientists finds.

In contrast, people with healthy brains or with damage to other neural regions usually permit their personal concerns to override rational responses to such moral quandaries, say Michael Koenigs of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md.,