Brain Function and Decision-Making

Some study details are purposely omitted at this time to preserve scientific integrity. Now that the study is completed, full details are included below. The true purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the two computer tasks that participants completed. Specifically, researchers wanted to know if they would be able to accurately measure motivated empathy. To better understand this, participants were asked to rate images of people expressing pain and were told that these were either students from their university or students from a different university. This was not the case. The faces shown were random images produced for a research study. Researchers also wanted to know if they could accurately measure moral decision making and how those judgments relate to aggression. To examine this, participants were asked whether various scenarios were immoral and then asked about aggressive tendencies.