We investigated the modulation of neural and behavioral responses to moral dilemmasby the physical presence of a close friend. We argue that the presence of a close othernot only changes the moral response but also the process of decision-making, some-thing that can only be discovered by combining insights from social and cognitivepsychology. Our participants rated the acceptability of sacrificing ingroup members tosave outgroup members and vice versa while being alone or in the presence of a closeother. We obtained behavioral and functional MRI data from a within-participantfunctional MRI study (N17, native Dutch women). The behavioral data replicatedclassical identity theory with regard to higher acceptability to sacrifice the outgroup (vs.the ingroup) but did not show any differences when deciding alone or in the presenceof the friend. The imaging results did not reveal main and interaction effects in ourhypothesized brain areas. Exploratory analysis however revealed an interaction effectin a region previously found to be related to guilt and shame (superior frontal gyrus),such that reactions to the sacrifice of the outgroup evoked increased activation whenbeing together with a close other

中文翻译：

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在一起更好吗？对道德困境的神经反应受到亲密他人的影响。

我们通过亲密朋友的实际存在调查了对道德困境的神经和行为反应的调制。我们认为，亲近他人的存在不仅会改变道德反应，还会改变决策过程，只有通过结合社会和认知心理学的见解才能发现这一点。我们的参与者评估了在单独或在亲密的人面前牺牲内群体成员以拯救外群体成员的可接受性，反之亦然。我们从参与者功能性 MRI 研究（N17，荷兰本土女性）中获得了行为和功能性 MRI 数据。行为数据复制了经典身份理论，关于牺牲外群体（与内群体）的更高可接受性，但在单独或在朋友在场的情况下没有表现出任何差异。成像结果没有揭示我们假设的大脑区域中的主要和交互作用。然而，探索性分析揭示了先前发现与内疚和羞耻相关的区域（额上回）的相互作用效应，因此当与亲密的其他人在一起时，对外群体牺牲的反应引起了更多的激活