The neural correlates of integrated aesthetics between moral and facial beauty

Abstract

Facial beauty and moral beauty have been suggested to be two significant forms of social aesthetics. However, it remains unknown the extent to which there are neural underpinnings of the integration of these two forms of beauty. In the present study, participants were asked to make general aesthetic judgments of facial portraits and moral descriptions while collecting fMRI data. The facial portrait and moral description were randomly paired. Neurally, the appreciation of facial beauty and moral beauty recruited a common network involving the middle occipital gyrus (MOG) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). The activities of the mOFC varied across aesthetic conditions, while the MOG was specifically activated in the most beautiful condition. In addition, there was a bilateral insular cortex response to ugliness specifically in the congruent aesthetic conditions, while SMA was selectively responsive to the most ugly condition. Activity associated with aesthetic conflict between facial and moral aesthetic information was limited to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), with enhanced response to the incongruent condition compared to the congruent condition. These findings provide novel neural evidence for the integrated aesthetics of social beauty and suggest that integrated aesthetics is a more complex cognitive process than aesthetics restricted to a single modality.