Abstract:

Moral cognition focuses on the processing of information underlying the moral behavior. Recently, researchers have begun to apply computational modelling to moral cognition as to explore how moral cognition is represented in the brain. However, the research on the computational modeling of moral cognition is still at its infancy. The application of computational modelling (the Drift Diffusion Models, Utility Models, Reinforcement Learning Models and Hierarchical Gaussian Filter) in the behavioral and physiological studies of moral cognition quantified the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying moral decision-making, moral judgment, and moral inference. In addition, this new approach could help to understand antisocial behavior and mental disorders. Finally, the computational modeling needs to be improved and future research need to pay attention to the potential limitations.

Key words: moral cognition, computational modelling, moral decision, moral judgment, moral inference