Moral decision-making in a company context and leadership: the contribution of neuroscience

Background:Moral decision-making can be considered a multidimensional construct mediated by cognitive and emotional processes that appear to be influenced by several factors such as fairness and unfairness perception and personal or social gains or losses. The present research aimed to investigate the electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioral correlates underlying moral behavior in a company context during three choice contexts: professional fit, proposing managers to decide to divide a monetary sum for a work with a colleague; company fit, proposing to decide to donate a monetary sum for company benefits, and social fit proposing to decide to donate a monetary sum for sick colleague’s relative. For each context, three offers were proposed: fair, financially favorable for managers, unfair, financially unfavorable, and neutral, financially equal. Results:A difference in brain and behavioral responses during moral decision-making emerged. Specifically, EEG results showed an increase of frontal delta, theta, and beta activity. Furthermore, an increase of positive emotional engagement supported by an increase of beta, delta and theta left frontal activity was observed for fair offers in professional fit condition; while, an emotional engagement decrease emerged for unfair offers in company fit condition, as shown by an increase of right frontal activity. Moreover, an increase of empathic response supported by a delta and theta left parietal activity increase for unfair offers in social fit condition emerged. From behavioral data, an increase of accepted responses for fair and neutral offers emerged in professional and social fit conditions. Finally, longer reaction times for unfair offers in company fit condition emerged. Conclusion:These results provide evidence on the neural correlates underlying moral behavior in company context allowing us to better understand the cognitive and emotional processes and factors that influence moral decision-making.