Example stimulus set used to create one "bad" scenario/trial. (a) Depicts an actor's face with a neutral expression. (b) Depicts the actor engaging in a morally bad act. (c) Text of the verbal description heard during the presentation of (b). 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... experiment was performed using Presentation software (Version 0.70, www.neurobs.com). All stimuli were presented on a Sony Trinitron Multiscan E540, 21- inch color display. Participants were asked to make judgments of people before and after learning moral information about them. Each trial consisted of a series of screens, corresponding to a particular good, bad, or neutral moral scenario. Each trial began with a fixation cross presented for 1.5 seconds, followed by a static image of an actor's neutral expression for five seconds (Figure 4a). Then, a second screen appeared, which asked the participants to make the following judgment: "How morally GOOD or BAD do you think this person is?" Importantly, the participants are asked to make an initial moral judgment at this point that is solely based on their first impression of the ...

Context 2

... followed by a corresponding static image depicting the same actor engaging in a unique moral behavior (either morally good, bad, or neutral), and simultaneously heard an auditory description of the social scenario, which lasted for a total of ten seconds (Figure 4b,c). On the next screen, the participants viewed the same static image of the actor as before (Figure 4a) for five seconds, and then on the last screen, were asked to make an "updated" moral judgment with the same exact question as before: ("How morally GOOD or BAD do you think this person is?"). There were a total of 15 trials (five unique good, bad, and neutral scenarios), each involving a novel actor (with no reoccurring actors), as well as two practice trials. The order of the experimental trials was randomized for each ...

Context 3

... followed by a corresponding static image depicting the same actor engaging in a unique moral behavior (either morally good, bad, or neutral), and simultaneously heard an auditory description of the social scenario, which lasted for a total of ten seconds (Figure 4b,c). On the next screen, the participants viewed the same static image of the actor as before (Figure 4a) for five seconds, and then on the last screen, were asked to make an "updated" moral judgment with the same exact question as before: ("How morally GOOD or BAD do you think this person is?"). There were a total of 15 trials (five unique good, bad, and neutral scenarios), each involving a novel actor (with no reoccurring actors), as well as two practice trials. The order of the experimental trials was randomized for each ...

Context 4

... complex social scenarios were created to depict actions and events that would be readily judged as being morally "good," "bad," or "neutral." In order to verify the intended moral status of the scenarios, I obtained moral ratings of the "goodness," "badness," or "neutrality" of the moral acts at the end of the experiment from a group of 10 normal, healthy individuals, in addition to the experimental participants (vmPFC, HC, and BDC patients). After completing all of the experimental trials, the participants saw a screen that read, "Next, you will see a picture and be asked to judge how morally good or bad the ACTION shown in the picture is." The participants then saw each of the 15 previously viewed complex social scenes (Figure 4b), presented in a randomized ...

Context 5

... created 15 sets of novel stimuli each comprised of: a photograph of an actor's face with a neutral expression, a corresponding photograph of a complex social scenario depicting the actor engaged in either morally good (n = 5), morally bad (n=5), or morally neutral (n=5) behaviors, and an auditory description of the scenario read in a neutral tone by a female actor (see Figure 4 for an example stimulus set). In order to create the images of the social scenarios, the actors were asked to perform the behavior described in the scenario and were photographed in a real world setting. Each stimulus set contained a novel actor so that each actor was only seen once. For both the morally good (n = 5) and bad (n = 5) scenarios, there were two female and three male actors for each moral ...