Social dominance and moral decision-making: An investigation of cognitive and emotional processing as indicated by contingent negative variation and late positive potential

Social dominance has long been assumed to bias moral cognition, yet its neuro-temporal signatures remain poorly defined. To clarify this link, we contrasted behavioral and electrophysiological responses in participants classified into high- and low-dominance groups while they evaluated moral dilemmas (22 personal, 17 impersonal, and 12 neutral scenarios) during EEG recording. Our results showed that scenario types, rather than dominance status, shaped behavioral results. Both personal and impersonal moral dilemmas generated significantly shorter reaction times than neutral scenarios, and utilitarian responses were more frequent in impersonal than personal dilemmas across both social dominance groups. Electrophysiologically, social dominance level was associated with differences in the temporal dynamics of moral judgment. High-dominance participants consistently showed a more negative contingent negative variation (CNV), and this effect was strongest for deontological responses across both personal and impersonal dilemmas, consistent with enhanced proactive control. By contrast, low-dominance participants displayed a selectively enlarged late positive potential (LPP) amplitude during impersonal dilemmas, and this enhancement was especially prominent when individuals made deontological choices, consistent with intensified affective-evaluative processing. These findings suggest that individual differences in social dominance are associated with preparatory attention (CNV) and emotional appraisal (LPP) without altering the final moral verdict, supporting dual-process models in which hierarchy selectively biases early anticipatory cognitive control and late emotional evaluation stages of moral judgment. • Trait dominance dissociates anticipatory control and evaluation in moral choice. • No dominance-group differences emerged in reaction times or utilitarian choices. • High dominance showed stronger response-locked CNV during deontological choices. • Low dominance showed larger LPPs in impersonal dilemmas, especially deontological. • CNV and LPP reveal hierarchy-linked neural mechanisms preceding moral decisions.