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Exposure to violence affects the development of moral impressions and trust behavior in incarcerated males.

ABSTRACT: Individuals exposed to community violence are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior, resulting in a dramatic increase in contact with justice and social service systems. Theoretical accounts suggest that disruptions in learning underlie the link between exposure to violence and maladaptive behaviors. However, empirical evidence specifying these processes is sparse. Here, in a sample of incarcerated males, we investigated how exposure to violence affects the ability to learn about the harmfulness of others and use this information to adaptively modulate trust behavior. Exposure to violence does not impact the ability to accurately develop beliefs about agents' harm preferences and predict their choices. However, exposure to violence disrupts the ability to form moral impressions that dissociate between agents with distinguishable harm preferences, and subsequently, the ability to adjust trust behavior towards different agents. These findings reveal a process that may explain the association between exposure to violence and maladaptive behavior.

SUBMITTER: Siegel JZ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6486592 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Exposure to violence affects the development of moral impressions and trust behavior in incarcerated males.

Siegel Jenifer Z JZ Estrada Suzanne S Crockett Molly J MJ Baskin-Sommers Arielle A

Nature communications 20190426 1

Individuals exposed to community violence are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior, resulting in a dramatic increase in contact with justice and social service systems. Theoretical accounts suggest that disruptions in learning underlie the link between exposure to violence and maladaptive behaviors. However, empirical evidence specifying these processes is sparse. Here, in a sample of incarcerated males, we investigated how exposure to violence affects the ability to learn about the harm ...[more]

PMID: 31028269

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Project description:Exposure to violence (ETV) has been linked to epigenomics mechanisms such as DNA methylation (DNAm). We used epigenetic profiling of blood collected from 32 African American young adult males who lived in Washington DC to determine if changes in DNAm at CpG sites affiliated with nervous and immune system were associated with exposure to violence. Pathway analysis of differentially methylated regions comparing high and low ETV groups revealed an enrichment of gene sets annotated to nervous system and immune ontologies. Many of these genes are known to interact with each other which suggests DNAm alters gene function in the nervous and immune system in response to ETV. Using data from a unique age group, young African American adult males, we provide evidence that lifetime ETV could impact DNA methylation in genes impacted at Central Nervous System and Immune Function sites.MethodMethylation analysis was performed on DNA collected from the blood of participants classified with either high or low lifetime ETV. Illumina®MethylationEPIC Beadchips (~850k CpG sites) were processed on the iScan System to examine whole-genome methylation differences. Differentially methylated CpG-sites between high (n = 19) and low (n = 13) groups were identified using linear regression with violence and substance abuse as model covariates. Gene ontology analysis was used to identify enrichment categories from probes annotated to the nearest gene.ResultsA total of 595 probes (279 hypermethylated; 316 hypomethylated) annotated to 383 genes were considered differentially methylated in association with ETV. Males with high ETV showed elevated methylation in several signaling pathways but were most impacted at Central Nervous System and Immune Function affiliated sites. Eight candidate genes were identified that play important biological roles in stress response to violence with HDAC4 (10%), NR4A3 (11%), NR4A2 (12%), DSCAML1(12%), and ELAVL3 (13%) exhibiting higher levels in the low ETV group and DLGAP1 (10%), SHANK2 (10%), and NRG1(11%) having increased methylation in the high ETV group. These findings suggest that individuals subjected to high ETV may be at risk for poor health outcomes that have not been reported previously.

Project description:Moral behavior has been a key topic of debate for philosophy and psychology for a long time. In recent years, thanks to the development of novel methodologies in cognitive sciences, the question of how we make moral choices has expanded to the study of neurobiological correlates that subtend the mental processes involved in moral behavior. For instance, in vivo brain imaging studies have shown that distinct patterns of brain neural activity, associated with emotional response and cognitive processes, are involved in moral judgment. Moreover, while it is well-known that responses to the same moral dilemmas differ across individuals, to what extent this variability may be rooted in genetics still remains to be understood. As dopamine is a key modulator of neural processes underlying executive functions, we questioned whether genetic polymorphisms associated with decision-making and dopaminergic neurotransmission modulation would contribute to the observed variability in moral judgment. To this aim, we genotyped five genetic variants of the dopaminergic pathway [rs1800955 in the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene, DRD4 48 bp variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR), solute carrier family 6 member 3 (SLC6A3) 40 bp VNTR, rs4680 in the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) gene, and rs1800497 in the ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1 (ANKK1) gene] in 200 subjects, who were requested to answer 56 moral dilemmas. As these variants are all located in genes belonging to the dopaminergic pathway, they were combined in multilocus genetic profiles for the association analysis. While no individual variant showed any significant effects on moral dilemma responses, the multilocus genetic profile analysis revealed a significant gender-specific influence on human moral acceptability. Specifically, those genotype combinations that improve dopaminergic signaling selectively increased moral acceptability in females, by making their responses to moral dilemmas more similar to those provided by males. As females usually give more emotionally-based answers and engage the "emotional brain" more than males, our results, though preliminary and therefore in need of replication in independent samples, suggest that this increase in dopamine availability enhances the cognitive and reduces the emotional components of moral decision-making in females, thus favoring a more rationally-driven decision process.

Dataset Information

Exposure to violence affects the development of moral impressions and trust behavior in incarcerated males.

Publications

Exposure to violence affects the development of moral impressions and trust behavior in incarcerated males.

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