Rational thinking isn't the only thin guiding your moral compass. (© Jane - stock.adobe.com)
In a nutshell
- Your internal bodily awareness, like sensing your heartbeat, may influence how closely your moral decisions align with social norms. People with higher interoceptive awareness tended to make choices more in line with group consensus in moral dilemmas.
- Brain activity during rest, especially in regions linked to judgment and self-awareness, helps explain this connection. Resting-state brain patterns involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus mediated the relationship between bodily awareness and moral alignment.
- Moral intuition may stem not just from emotion or logic, but from a deep integration of bodily signals, brain function, and social experience. This suggests our “gut feelings” could be biologically grounded ways of navigating complex social decisions.
SEOUL, South Korea — Intuition might be more than just a hunch; it could be your body telling you what’s morally right or wrong. Scientists from Korea University have discovered that people who are more in tune with their heartbeats and internal bodily signals tend to make moral decisions that align with group consensus. This suggests our bodies may play a crucial role in shaping our moral compass and helping us navigate complex ethical dilemmas.
Study results, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, explain that while many people experience intuitive feelings when making moral choices, we’ve never fully understood their origins. Their research indicates that people who can better detect their own heartbeats typically make moral decisions that correspond with what most people consider acceptable.
Research on moral decision-making has typically focused on rational thought processes. Instead, researchers found that our internal bodily awareness, known as interoception, might be the biological foundation for how we develop and maintain our sense of right and wrong in society without having to consciously analyze every ethical situation we encounter.
Researchers conducted two separate experiments involving over 100 participants. In the first study, 74 participants completed online moral dilemma scenarios and had their brain activity measured during rest. The second study involved 30 participants who completed similar moral dilemmas and also underwent a heartbeat detection task, where they counted their heartbeats without taking their pulse.
The moral dilemmas presented scenarios with no clear right or wrong answers, but forced participants to choose between conflicting ethical values. For example, one scenario asked whether a doctor should transplant organs from one healthy young person against their will to save five dying patients.
Participants who demonstrated greater interoceptive awareness, the ability to perceive internal bodily signals like heartbeats, showed a stronger tendency to make moral decisions that aligned with what the majority of participants chose. This alignment with group consensus wasn’t related to whether the decisions were utilitarian (focused on the greatest good for the greatest number) or deontological (focused on following moral rules regardless of consequences).
The researchers explain that people with enhanced interoceptive abilities can more accurately recognize and prioritize relevant information when interpreting their physiological responses across various social situations.
Inside the Brain’s Moral Compass
Brain scans revealed that activity in specific brain networks during rest predicted how closely a person’s moral decisions would match group consensus. People who were more in tune with their bodily signals tended to spend more time in certain brain activity patterns during rest. These patterns, especially in areas linked to judgment and self-reflection, helped explain why their moral decisions were more likely to match what most people chose.
One key brain area, called the precuneus, was less active in people whose moral choices differed from the group. This region helps us reflect on ourselves and recall personal memories, which may play a role in how we understand and respond to social expectations.
The patterns of brain activity observed during rest can be linked to individual differences in future moral judgments, suggesting these neural networks continuously shape our moral compass even when we’re not actively engaged in decision-making. Cultural norms and expectations may become internalized through bodily signals, influencing our intuitive sense of right and wrong without conscious deliberation.
Beyond understanding individual differences, this research questions the nature of morality itself. Rather than being purely rational or emotional, moral judgments may arise from complex interactions between our bodies, brains, and social environments.
Those gut feelings you get during a tough moral decision? They could be your body’s way of nudging you toward the kinds of choices most people around you would make.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The researchers conducted two independent experiments. In Study 1, they recruited 74 participants (mean age = 23.55 years, 36 males) who completed online moral dilemma scenarios and underwent resting-state functional MRI scans. In Study 2, 30 participants (mean age = 24.63 years, 15 males) completed the same moral dilemma task and a heartbeat counting task to measure interoceptive accuracy. All participants also completed the Korean Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (K-MAIA) questionnaire. The moral dilemma task included 48 scenarios (25 personal and 23 impersonal dilemmas) where participants made binary choices. Researchers calculated each participant’s “moral distance” from group consensus by measuring how much their choices deviated from the group-level percentage of utilitarian choices across scenarios. Brain activity during rest was analyzed using Hidden Markov Models to identify dynamic brain states.
Results
Two independent experiments demonstrated that both male and female participants’ interoceptive awareness and accuracy were associated with their moral preferences aligned with group consensus. Additionally, the fractional occupancies of brain states involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus during rest mediated the link between interoceptive awareness and the degree of moral preferences aligned with group consensus. Participants showed a significant tendency to make moral decisions that matched group consensus at above-chance levels. Importantly, this tendency was not related to whether participants made more utilitarian or deontological choices overall. Individuals with higher interoceptive awareness (measured by K-MAIA) and better interoceptive accuracy (measured by the heartbeat counting task) showed moral preferences more closely aligned with group consensus. The brain state analysis revealed that participants who spent more time in a brain state characterized by lower precuneus activity showed greater deviation from group moral consensus, while a brain state with heightened medial prefrontal cortex activity was associated with interoceptive awareness.
Limitations
The study notes several limitations. First, while resting-state functional connectivity reveals stable traits over time, task-related fMRI studies might provide more precise understanding of mechanisms involved in interoceptively-influenced moral decision-making. Second, heightened interoceptive sensibility has been associated with certain mental health conditions like panic disorders, anxiety disorders, and depression, indicating that excessive interoceptive awareness could become maladaptive in some contexts. Third, the moral consensus observed might be culture-specific, as all participants were Korean university students, suggesting future cross-cultural studies are needed to distinguish universal from culture-specific moral norms.
Funding and Disclosures
The research was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (No. 2022M3E5E8018285 & No. RS-2023-00218987). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Publication Information
The paper titled “Neural Processes Linking Interoception to Moral Preferences Aligned with Group Consensus” was published in the Journal of Neuroscience in April 2025. The authors are JuYoung Kim and Hackjin Kim from the Laboratory of Social and Decision Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
