Why (and how) should we study the interplay between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind, and inhibitory control to understand moral cognition?

Findings in the field of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shed new light on our understanding of the psychological and biological bases of morality. Although a lot of attention has been devoted to understanding the processes that underlie complex moral dilemmas, attempts to represent the way in which individuals generate moral judgments when processing basic harmful actions are rare. Here, we will outline a model of morality which proposes that the evaluation of basic harmful actions relies on complex interactions between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind (ToM) capacities, and inhibitory control resources. This model makes clear predictions regarding the cognitive processes underlying the development of and ability to generate moral judgments. We draw on data from developmental and cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology research to evaluate the model and propose several conceptual and methodological improvements that are needed to further advance our understanding of moral cognition and its development.
- We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the previous version of this manuscript. We thank Marianne Habib and Eamon McCrory for useful discussions and insights. We are also very grateful to the Fyssen Fundation whose grant to Marine Buon supported this work. During the writing of this paper, Ana Seara Cardoso was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT: SFRH/BD/60279/2009; SFRH/BPD/94970/2013), partially at the Psychology Research Centre, University of Minho (UID/PSI/01662) co-funded by FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and by FEDER through COMPETE2020, PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653).