Moral emotions when reading quotidian circumstances in contexts of violence: an fMRI study

Abstract

The increase of violence in Mexico and consequent suffering during the last decades is evident, but its effects over feelings and moral judgments remain uncertain. We used journalistic news showing real-life situations to investigate the effects of facing violence over the experience of four moral emotions which represent powerful impulses for social actions in situations of suffering linked to violence: Negative Compassion, Positive Compassion, Schadenfreude, and Indignation. We evaluate brain activation by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during three cognitive conditions: reading, introspection, and resting. When reading the news, only Indignation-evoking stimuli elicited salient brain activations in the posterior cerebellum, and temporal and parietal cortical regions, whose functions are related to anger experiences and processing of socially relevant circumstances. When introspecting the emotional experience, cerebellar, frontal, parietal, and occipital activations related to self-focused experiences were observed for all emotions. When resting after facing the stimuli, only the Negative Compassion emotion elicited brain activations in the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus related to emotional self-reference processing; thus, negative compassion may produce more perdurable cognitive-affective effects related to sadness while perceiving suffering in others. Our results may suggest different emotional-based social decisions to face suffering and violence and to motivate pro-social actions in the collectivistic Mexican culture.