EXPLORING MORAL Judgment In High Functioning AUTISM: The ROLE of Emphaty and THEORY of MIND

Background:  People usually rely to mentalistic motivations in order to define moral judgments (MJ) about agents behaviors. While unintentional behaviours are usually explained merely in terms of mechanical causal factors, intentional actions are interpreted considering not merely the intention that precedes the behaviour but also the  beliefs that support it – that is the fact that the agent knows that his/her behavior might cause harmful or negative effects to others (Knobe, 2005). However the effect of perceived beliefs and intentions in MJ is not so linear, because sometimes the emotional reactions elicited by morally based behaviours can distort Theory of Mind (ToM) judgments (Malle, 1999). Despite the centrality of emotion and cognition in moral judgment, little experimental work has been done to study the actual role of empathy and mentalizing abilities in motivating moral judgment. One way to distinguish the role of cognitive and emotional factors in predicting moral decision might be to compare the behavior of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and Normally Developing (NDs) individuals in moral judgment tasks, where both outcomes concern and intention-detection are relevant. While NDs acquire the ability to “mentalize” quite early in their childhood, subjects affected by ASDs show difficulties in understanding others mental states and emotions (Baron-Cohen, 1995). 

Objectives:  Analyze the role of empathy and ToM on MJ, comparing NDs with High Functioning Autistic kids (HF-Aut). 

Methods:  We tested 22 HF-Aut (all males; aver. chron. age=15 yrs; DS=3; aver. IQ=84; DS=10) and 41 NDs (all males; aver.chron.age=10; yrs; DS=9 mths) for MJ with a classical Piagetian task, for ToM with a second order False Belief task and for Empathy with the Cambridge Empathy Quotient (Baron-Cohen et al., 2004). Two versions of a story similar to the classical Piagetian tasks were used to assess the children's moral judgment. While in one version the character intentionally acted unfair and he/she caused a modest material damage, in the other version the character acted fair but, for an error, he/she caused a great material damage. The children had to “morally” judge the behavior of the characters, on the basis of what they think could be more relevant (intentions vs material consequences). The second order false belief task was the “Ice-cream task” (Perner & Wimmer, 1985), that requires the ability to represent one character’s false belief about what another character thinks about the world.

Results:  All HF-Aut were significantly lower than NDs in empathy scores (HF-Aut EQ=32.4; DS=8 -  NDs EQ=42,82; DS=7.52; t=4,97; df=49; p=0.000). The 55% of them who passed the false belief task did not differ from NDs in MJ (U=135; p>0.05). The HF-Aut who lacked of ToM abilities expressed more morale judgments on the basis of “morally appropriate behavior” rules than NDs (U=85; p=0.05).

Conclusions:  A typical pattern of MJ in children with HF-Aut was related with intact ToM abilities but not with empathy, indicating the essential role of cognitive processes in MJ. Furthermore, a lack of intention-detection was involved in perseverant negative moral judgments concerning actions that broke “morally appropriate behavior” rules.