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

To address societal challenges – such as combating climate change – people have to invest in collective goals rather than pursuing selfish objectives. 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. Results showed significant interactions in both behavioral and ERP measures. Participants performed better on self- and charity-gain trails, compared to no-gain trials, following a moral appeal, whereas no trial-type differences emerged after the non-moral appeal. Confirmatory ERP analyses revealed no effects on the SPN or RewP. Exploratory analyses on the Cue-P3, Feedback-P3, and LPP, however, showed enhanced amplitudes for charity-gain trials following the moral appeal, whereas in the non-moral appeal condition, Feedback-P3 and LPP were more positive on self-gain than no-gain trials. These findings suggest that moral appeals can enhance the reward value of pro-environmental outcomes, potentially promoting positive behavior change.