New Human Brain Scans Reveal How People Justify Killing Others

How can people justify killing? Scientists have taken a closer look at the brain activity associated with killing and have found that it varies depending whether or not the killing is seen as justified.

In order to better understand the brain activity associated with killing, the scientists turned to video games. Volunteers played video games in which they imagined themselves to be shooting innocent civilians or enemy soldiers. Then, their brain activity was recorded via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they played.

"When participants imagined themselves shooting civilians compared to soldiers, greater activation was found in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), an important brain area involved in making moral decisions," said Pascal Molenberghs, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The more guilt participants felt about shooting civilians, the greater the response in the lateral OFC. When shooting enemy soldiers, no activation was seen in lateral OFC."

The findings reveal that the neural mechanisms that are typically implicated with harming others become less active when the violence against a particular group is seen as justified.

"The findings show that when a person is responsible for what they see as justified or unjustified violence, they will have different feelings of guilt associated with that-for the first time we can see how this guilt relates to specific brain activation," said Molenberghs.

Currently, the researchers hop to further investigate how people become desensitized to violence and how personality and group membership of both perpetrator and victim influence these processes.

The findings are published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

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