Acute lorazepam administration does not significantly affect moral attitudes or judgments

Abstract

Recent scientific studies exploring the neuropsychological foundations of moral decision-making have shown that moral attitudes and evaluations are significantly influenced by emotion, particularly negative emotionality, as well as personality traits such as neuroticism. Further psychopharmacological research has observed that GABAergic agonists are capable of influencing moral decision-making by modifying anxiety-related emotional negativity and/or through cognitive modulation. The aim of this double-blind, crossover design, placebo-controlled study is to evaluate said GABAergic modulation on moral cognition. Importantly, unlike the aforementioned research, the present study not only utilizes explicit moral evaluation measures [e.g., the Justice Sensitivity Inventory (JSI) and evaluations of moral scenarios], but also uses the morality Implicit Association Test (mIAT) to assess unacknowledged attitudes towards morally charged scenarios. Our results indicate that acute lorazepam administration does not significantly alter moral judgments, including implicit moral attitudes, explicit justice sensitivity, and blame/praise evaluations. Lorazepam-induced changes in moral sensitivity appeared to vary with baseline levels, with individuals exhibiting higher baseline JSI or D scores tending to show greater reductions following administration. These findings support the involvement of GABAergic modulation in moral cognition, albeit without clear behavioral consequences.

Keywords: Gender differences; Implicit moral attitudes; Justice sensitivity; Lorazepam; Moral judgement.

Fig. 1

Lorazepam effects on implicit moral attitudes (mIAT) as a function of baseline D scores. Baseline D scores in the placebo condition were significantly correlated with △D (r = − 0.74, p < 0.001).

Fig. 2

Lorazepam effects on justice sensitivity (JSI) as a function of baseline scores. (A) Baseline JSI-self scores in the placebo condition were significantly correlated with △JSI-self (r = − 0.36, p = 0.001). (B) Baseline JSI-other scores in the placebo condition were significantly correlated with △JSI-other (r = − 0.33, p = 0.003).

Fig. 3

(A) The association between justice sensitivity and moral evaluation was modulated by the gender factor. While men showed a significant association between other-oriented JSI and blameworthy ratings for harming actions in lorazepam condition (r = -0.524, P < 0.001), women did not show this pattern of correlation (r = -0.14, P = 0.39). Fisher r-to-z transformation tests further corroborated the modulating role of gender on the justice sensitivity-moral evaluation relationship (△z = 1.91, P = 0.028, one-tailed). (B) The reliability of test-retest association between placebo and lorazepam condition was modulated by the implicit versus explicit measure of moral attitudes. While JSI showed a strong correlation between placebo and lorazepam condition (r = 0.872, P < 0.001), mIAT did not show this pattern (r = 0.135, P = 0.231). Fisher r-to-z transformation tests further corroborated the modulating role of implicit versus explicit moral attitudes on the placebo-lorazepam test-retest relationship (△z = 7.51, P < 0.001).