Doing Good Feels Better: Moral Appeals Shape Reward-Related Neural Activity for Pro-Environmental Gains

However, prior neuroscientific research has often revealed that reward-motivation is enhanced for self-relevant gains. Here, we draw on social psychological research showing that people have a strong desire to be moral, to examine whether the motivation for investing effort towards collective goals can be increased by appealing to people’s desire to be a morally responsible person.

We conducted an ERP study examining how a moral appeal influences motivated performance and neural markers of reward processing. After reading either a moral or a non-moral appeal about one’s responsibility toward climate action, participants (N = 70) completed a time estimation task where they could earn monetary rewards for themselves or a climate-friendly charity. We compared behavioral and ERP responses on self-gain, charity-gain, and no-gain trials between appeal conditions.