Abstract:  In current studies on the brain mechanism of moral decision, more attention has been given to the interaction between cognition and emotion with very little focus on the individual’s integrated processing about the self-relevance and risk level information, which ignores the difference and similarity of psychological and brain mechanism from moral decision in both harming and helping situation. Hence, this study adopts behavioral experiments, event related potential technology and multi modality brain functional imaging technology to explore the inter-influence between self-relevance and risk level and its effects on moral decision’s cognitive and neural mechanism in both situations, with a further discussion on the empathy training’s intervention on moral decision. The purpose of this study is to investigate the temporal course and neural substrate of moral decision, and to elaborate the influence of self-relevance and risk level on moral decision and its possible variations in different situations and empathy levels; at same time, this study also evaluates empathy training’s effects on the enhancement of individual’s moral decision.

Key words:  moral decision, self-relevance, risk level, empathy, neural mechanism