The Neural Basis of Human Social Values: Evidence from Functional MRI

Social values such as ‘generosity’ or ‘fairness’ are not merely abstract moral concepts but dynamic constructs that integrate conceptual knowledge with context-dependent emotional responses, including moral sentiments such as pride or guilt. This fMRI study investigated the neural architecture supporting social values by having participants imagine their own actions toward another person, with actions either conforming to or violating a given social value. The findings reveal that social values engage a network comprising the superior anterior temporal lobe — which represents abstract social conceptual content — in conjunction with ventromedial prefrontal and limbic regions that encode affiliative and moral emotional states. By mapping the neural interactions between social concepts and moral sentiments, this study advances the understanding of how the human brain integrates cognition and emotion to generate value-based social behavior.