Why some don’t lead by example

Researchers from the Guizhou University of Education (China) reveal that a brain region called ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in moral inconsistency, that is, not leading by example.

In an article published in the magazine Cell Reports From Cell Press, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify patterns of brain activity associated with behavior and moral judgment.

People who behaved dishonestly despite judging that same behavior as immoral in others They had less activity in the vmPFC, and when the researchers stimulated the participants’ vmPFC, they became more morally inconsistent.

“Moral coherence is an active biological process. Being a ‘moral person’ requires the brain to integrate moral knowledge into everyday behaviora process that can fail even in people who know the moral principle perfectly,” says Xiaochu Zhang, co-author of the study and researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China and Guizhou University of Education.

Although previous studies have identified brain regions involved in behavior and moral judgment, Little is known about how brain activity underlies moral inconsistency.. “As neuroscience researchers, we wanted understand why knowing what is right doesn’t always translate into doing it“says Zhang.

To identify brain regions associated with moral inconsistencyresearchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan participants’ brains during a task that required weigh honesty and profit. Participants could make more money by being dishonest, but they were also asked to rate their own behavior on a 10-point scale, from “extremely immoral” to “extremely moral.”

The team also monitored the brain activity of participants while judging the morality of other people who performed the same task.

In people with moral coherence (that is, they judged themselves and others by the same moral standards) The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was similarly activated in both behavioral and judgment tasks. However, in participants with moral inconsistency (those who considered other people’s deception immoral, but rated their own deception more leniently) the vmPFC showed less activity during the behavioral task and less connection with other brain regions involved in decision making and morality.

To examine whether activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a causal role in moral inconsistency, the researchers stimulated the vmPFC of some participants using a non-invasive method called transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) before they performed the behavioral and judgment tasks. They showed that stimulation of the vmPFC resulted in higher levels of moral inconsistency compared to participants who received sham stimulation.

These results suggest that morally inconsistent people do not use their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) to integrate information when making behavioral decisionssay the researchers. “Individuals who show moral inconsistency do not necessarily ignore their own moral principles; they simply biologically fail to consider and apply them in their moral behavior,” Zhang explains.

In future research, the team plans to study brain activity related to the “victim perspective” to understand how these neural circuits react when people are treated unfairly. The findings suggest that moral coherence should be considered a skill that can be strengthened through deliberate decision making. These findings have enormous implications for education and artificial intelligence.