Right or wrong? The brain's fast response to morally objectionable statements
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Jos J A Van Berkum1, Bregje Holleman, Mante Nieuwland
1Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. jos.vanberkum@mpi.nl
Abstract:
How does the brain respond to statements that clash with a person's value system? We recorded event-related brain potentials while respondents from contrasting political-ethical backgrounds completed an attitude survey on drugs, medical ethics, social conduct, and other issues. Our results show that value-based disagreement is unlocked by language extremely rapidly, within 200 to 250 ms after the first word that indicates a clash with the reader's value system (e.g., "I think euthanasia is an acceptable/unacceptable..."). Furthermore, strong disagreement rapidly influences the ongoing analysis of meaning, which indicates that even very early processes in language comprehension are sensitive to a person's value system. Our results testify to rapid reciprocal links between neural systems for language and for valuation.
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