The price of your soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values

Abstract

Sacred values, such as those associated with religious or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life, and individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values in exchange for material benefits. Deontological theory suggests that sacred values are processed based on rights and wrongs irrespective of outcomes, while utilitarian theory suggests that they are processed based on costs and benefits of potential outcomes, but which mode of processing an individual naturally uses is unknown. The study of decisions over sacred values is difficult because outcomes cannot typically be realized in a laboratory, and hence little is known about the neural representation and processing of sacred values. We used an experimental paradigm that used integrity as a proxy for sacredness and which paid real money to induce individuals to sell their personal values. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that values that people refused to sell (sacred values) were associated with increased activity in the left temporoparietal junction and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behaviour through the retrieval and processing of deontic rules and not through a utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits.

Figure 1.

Relationship of auction behaviour to hypothetical solicitation of money. Averaged over participants (n = 43), each point represents one pair of personal values. The fraction of individuals submitting auction bids to change their answer for a given pair is plotted against the fraction of individuals who indicated that hypothetically they would accept money to change the corresponding behaviour. These two measurements are highly correlated (adjusted R² = 0.87 for quadratic). Items in the lower left (sacred) had a low percentage of individuals willing to accept either hypothetical or real money. These items pertained to the sanctity of human life, especially children. Items in the upper right (non-sacred) had a high percentage of individuals willing to accept both hypothetical and real money to change and represented utilitarian preferences (e.g. Coke versus Pepsi and dog versus cat). Despite this correlation, all of the points lie above the diagonal, indicating a hypothetical bias (participants sold more often than they said they would hypothetically). The mode of decision-making (inset) was significantly different for statements that were not auctioned (optout) versus those that were (bid) (F_2,132 = 58.7, p < 0.001). Light grey bars, optout; dark grey bars, bid.

Figure 2.

Functional localizer for brain regions with differential activity to deontic (yellow) and utilitarian (green) processing (p < 0.005, extent ≥ 53). Regions were classified as deontic when the participant indicated that their choice was based on rights and wrongs, and utilitarian when their choice was based on costs and benefits. These regions were then applied to the passive phase activation in which each statement had been presented individually in the absence of choice. Each statement was categorized based on whether the participant sold a particular personal value during an auction held after the brain imaging session (bid) or opted out of the auction for that value (optout). At the time of imaging, participants did not know that they were going to have the opportunity to sell these values for real money. The left temporoparietal junction (MNI coordinates: −63, −39, 42) showed significantly greater activity for the optout statements than the bid statements (T = 3.19, p = 0.003), indicating that these were processed in the deontic region. Both the left and right inferior parietal lobule (MNI coordinates: −45, −72, 46 and 48, −66, 35) had the opposite pattern (T = 4.09, p = 0.001), which was driven primarily by the not chosen bid statements, indicating that these statements were processed in utilitarian regions. Vertical scale on bar graphs is estimated beta values for the individual conditions ± s.e.m. across all subjects.

Figure 3.

Additional regions identified in which sacred (optout) items resulted in greater activation than non-sacred (bid) items during the passive phase (p < 0.005, extent ≥ 53). These included the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (L VLPFC) and the right amygdala. Relative to the other three conditions, only the not chosen optout items resulted in more amygdala activation. The latter statements represent the most repugnant items to the individual (those not chosen and not auctioned) and would be expected to provoke the most arousal, which is consistent with the idea that when sacred values are violated they induce outrage [–3].

Figure 4.

Difference in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activation to sacred items (optout) relative to non-sacred (bid) items as function of each participant's level of involvement in group activities (n = 31). The activist score was calculated as the sum of ratings for membership in 10 types of organization. Participants rated their involvement as 0 (do not belong), 1 (inactive member) or 2 (active member) for each organization: religious, sports/recreational, art/music/educational, labour union, political party, environmental, professional, humanitarian/charitable, consumer, other. There was a significant positive correlation between the overall level of organization involvement and the average difference in VLPFC activation to sacred and non-sacred items (R² = 0.39, p = 0.032). This suggests that individuals who have stronger semantic representations of sacred values are more likely to act on their beliefs.