Introduction
intention-oriented attribution
People judge the nature of individual behaviors not only relying on the outcomes caused by their behaviors but also on the underlying intentions. Studies have shown a transition from outcomes-oriented to intention-based moral judgment from children to adults in the normal populationTranscranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), as non-invasive brain stimulation technique, allows it possible to enhance or disrupt cortical excitability artificially and transiently and further examine the causal role of the rTPJ in intention/outcome attribution during social judgmentUsing a low-frequency (1 Hz) TMS, Young et al., demonstrated that inhibiting the activity of rTPJ enhanced the moral permissibility of attempted (Besides the polarity of the tDCS stimulation, another study examined the effects of stimulation intensity on moral judgments, in which 1.5 mA cathodal tDCS over the rTPJ decreased moral appropriateness of accidental harm (Notably, the aforementioned studies only considered socially undesirable scenarios—bad/neutral intentions and bad/neutral outcomesTo approach the above two questions, a combined behavioral and tDCS study was performed among 62 participants, who randomly underwent anodal (n = 20), cathodal (n = 21), and sham (n = 21) tDCS over the rTPJ. Based on our previous work, we hypothesized that a similar pattern of intention-oriented attribution could be observed in a mixed scenario with good and bad intentions/outcomes in a baseline condition. Moreover, the anodal tDCS and cathodal tDCS may show differentially modulatory effects with anodal tDCS may increase intention attribution while the cathodal may decrease it.