The Moral Brain in Context: Political Orientation, Empathy, and Evaluation of Everyday Behavior

Abstract

Moral judgments are central to guiding social interactions, influencing whom we trust, cooperate with, or avoid. While extensive research has examined the cognitive and affective bases of moral evaluation, less is known about how stable traits - such as political orientation and empathy - shape these judgments and their neural correlates in ecologically valid contexts. Across two studies, we investigated how people evaluate individuals who committed harmful, helpful, or neutral actions. In Study 1 (N = 214), participants read everyday moral scenarios paired with neutral faces. Empathy moderated gender effects in judging harmful acts, and political orientation selectively influenced ratings of morally ambiguous (neutral) actions. In Study 2 (N = 39), pre-screened conservatives and progressives (N = 675 prescreen) viewed the same agents in an EEG paradigm. Likeability ratings varied by moral valence but not political orientation. Event-related potential analyses revealed that conservatives showed consistently elevated Late Positive Potentials (LPPs) across all conditions, whereas progressives displayed selective LPP enhancement for helpful individuals, suggesting group differences in motivational salience attribution. Together, these findings show that political orientation and empathy influence both explicit moral evaluations and neural processing of socially relevant information. Such insights deepen our understanding of how enduring traits shape moral judgments.