Impaired Decoding of Fear and Disgust Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment in Alcohol-Dependent Individuals Carmona-Perera, Martina Clark, Luke Young, Liane Pérez García, Miguel Verdejo García, Antonio Javier Moral decision-making Utilitarian judgments Alcohol dependent individuals Emotional face recognition Fear Disgust decoding The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com Background: Recent studies of moral reasoning in patients with alcohol use disorders have indicated a “utilitarian” bias, whereby patients are more likely to endorse emotionally aversive actions in favor of aggregate welfare (e.g., throwing a dying person into the sea to keep a lifeboat of survivors afloat). Here, we investigate the underlying psychological and neuropsychological processes. Methods: Alcohol-dependent individuals (n = 31) and healthy comparison participants (n = 34) completed a validated moral judgment task, as well as measures of impulsivity, mood symptoms (anxiety and depression), and emotional face recognition. Results: Alcohol-dependent individuals were more likely to endorse utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas compared with controls and rated these choices as less difficult to make. Hierarchical regression models showed that poorer decoding of fear and disgust significantly predicted utilitarian biases in personal moral dilemmas, over and above alcohol consumption. Impulsivity and mood symptoms did not predict moral decisions. Conclusions: These findings suggest that impaired fear and disgust decoding contributes to utilitarian moral decision-making in alcohol-dependent individuals. 2013-12-04T10:12:32Z 2013-12-04T10:12:32Z 2013-12-04 info:eu-repo/semantics/preprint 0145-6008 1530-0277 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/29540 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License