“Would You Allow Your Wife to Dress in a Miniskirt to the Party”?: Batterers Do Not Activate Default Mode Network During Moral Decisions About Intimate Partner Violence
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Marín Morales, Agar; Bueso-Izquierdo, Natalia; Hidalgo Ruzzante, Natalia; Pérez García, Miguel; Catena Martínez, Andrés; Verdejo Román, JuanEditorial
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
Materia
Moral norms Intimate partner violence Batterers Default mode network Moral decisions Dilemmas fMRI
Fecha
2020Referencia bibliográfica
Marín-Morales, A., Bueso-Izquierdo, N., Hidalgo-Ruzzante, N., Pérez-García, M., Catena-Martínez, A., & Verdejo-Román, J. (2020). “Would You Allow Your Wife to Dress in a Miniskirt to the Party”? Batterers Do Not Activate Default Mode Network During Moral Decisions About Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. [doi: 10.1177/0886260520926494]
Patrocinador
Spanish Government PSI 2009-13585; Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness PSI2013-42792-R PSI2016-79481-R; Regional Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science from Andalusian Government P2012-SEJ1723; Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (University Faculty Training program) FPU15/04335; Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities FJCI-2017-33396; Andalusian group CTS176Resumen
Moral convictions consist of assessments based on perceptions of morality
and immorality, of right and wrong. There are people who, based on morality, commit crimes. For instance, social and moral norms based on inequality
appear to play an important role in the batterer’s behavior to commit violent acts. Research shows that batterers consider themselves to be moral
persons, are defenders of their beliefs, and, if necessary, are self-delusional,
enjoying a “feeling” of moral worth. The main aim of this work was to
uncover the brain mechanisms underlying moral decision making related to intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study comparing moral decisions
related to IPV and general violence (GV) in a sample of convicted Spanish
men. The two groups of our sample were recruited from the Center for
Social Insertion (CSI; Granada, Spain): batterers (BG, n ¼ 21), people convicted for IPV, and other criminals (OCG, n ¼ 20) convicted of violating
other legal norms without violence against people. Greene’s classical dilemmas were used to validate IPV and GV dilemmas. First, our results showed
that IPV and GV dilemmas activate the same brain areas as those activated
by Greene’s dilemmas, primarily involving the default mode network
(DMN), which suggests that IPV and GV dilemmas are both moral dilemmas.
Second, our results showed that other criminals activated the DMN during
both types of dilemmas. Nevertheless, batterers activated the DMN during
the GV dilemmas but not during the IPV ones, suggesting that decisions
about their female partners do not entail moral conflict. Thus, these preliminary results showed that batterers do not activate moral areas during
IPV dilemmas specifically, but do so during GV dilemmas. These results
suggest that intervention programs for batterers should aim to specifically
modify the value system held by the abuser toward his female partner and
not toward other people.