This post was written by guest contributor, Jillian Meyer.
How do we separate right from wrong in moral decision making? Some moral decisions, like whether or not to commit murder, seem like easy and intuitive moral decisions. However, we are often caught in moral dilemmas in our lives where the “right” thing to do is not as clear. Neuroscience and cognitive psychology can provide insight into how we form our moral perspectives and what might affect our moral decisions. Antonio Damasio’s book, Descartes’ Error, focuses on the neuropsychology of rational thoughts and decision-making. He begins the book by discussing the well-known psychology case study of Phineas Gage. This story follows a middle-aged railroad worker who was pierced through the skull with an iron pipe during an explosion at work. After the accident, Gage seemingly had no issues with things like attention, memory, and language, but his entire personality had changed. His previous understanding of social conventions and ethical rules was suddenly gone, and his personality seemed to have been replaced with that of someone who did not uphold the same values. Damasio points out that this was an extremely significant case for the study of moral reasoning, as it demonstrated how previously understood ethical values could be erased with brain damage to the frontal cortex.
Recent neuroscience literature has further informed which parts of the brain are involved in moral reasoning. One of the most popular neuroscience pieces in the moral psychology literature is a paper that studied brain activity in emotion-related brain areas with fMRI. Joshua Greene, a leading neuroscientist in moral psychology, concluded that we use our moral emotions (or intuitions) more often with a moral dilemma that feels personal as opposed to dilemmas that feel impersonal. When the moral dilemma presented in the studies had a personal implication, the researchers found neural activity in the emotion-related brain area of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. However, when the moral dilemma was more impersonal, the neural activity was found in the more reason-related brain area of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Greene points out that we have two different ways of approaching moral dilemmas: the emotional route and the rational route. This may explain why there are times we can reason through a moral situation, and other times when we just have a gut feeling that something is right or wrong, but cannot explain why. Greene presents this take on moral decision making as a dual process theory, coined by psychologist Daniel Kahneman and part of the “automaticity revolution,” suggesting the brain has two cognitive processes for moral decisions. One process is our intuition, which is fast and emotionally driven, as seen in the fMRI scans of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The other is our reasoning, which is slow and consciously driven and takes place in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Daniel Kahneman elaborates on this dual process theory in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Dual process theory is the neuroscientific explanation of the System 1 (intuition) and System 2 (reasoning) processing methods that have become more popular in recent psychology literature. System 1 processing defines our automatic and intuitive processing that is driven by instincts. This is the intuition that Hume suggested dictates our decision making, and that Haidt relies on in his Moral Foundations Theory. System 2 processing is the slower and more deliberative processing that is conscious and more logical. Plato argued for this rational process being the dominant process, and it is what is being studied in Kohlberg’s moral reasoning study and the Defining Issues Test. However, neuroscience researchers like Kahneman and Greene are not suggesting an either/or of emotions and reason, but rather an interplay between the two.
When it comes to System 2 reasoning skills, studies in cognitive psychology tell us a lot about how we have adapted these skills to our practical lives. The Wason Selection Task first presents participants with four cards with a different letter or number on each card. The participants have to figure out which two cards should be turned over to determine whether a rule is true or false. This is an example of System 2 processing at work, as it is the rational system trying to reason which cards should be turned over, and only about 4% of the participants figure out the most logically correct answer without turning over any logically irrelevant cards.
The second part of the Wason Selection Task presents participants with a different set of four cards, two with the phrases “beer” and “coke,” and the other two with numbers, one of which is a number under 21, and the other a number over 21 (the legal drinking age in the United States). Rather than these four cards being random words or numbers, participants are told that each of these cards represents a person at a bar. The card tells the age of the individual on one side, and what the individual is drinking on the other. Participants are then given the rule that if a person is drinking a beer (it says “beer” on the card), then they are over 21 (the other side of the card is a number that is 21 or greater). Now participants must turn over the relevant cards that will determine whether this rule is true or false. As opposed to the mere 4% who picked the correct cards in the first part of the experiment, about 72% picked the correct cards in this part, demonstrating that we are much better at using our reasoning skills in situations we have experience with than situations in which we are unfamiliar.
By studying the brain and particular cognitive tasks, we can learn more about the different factors that contribute to how we make moral decisions. Neuroscientific research also allows us to study how changes to the brain can affect our conceptions of right and wrong. System 1, intuitive moral feelings drive certain moral decisions, while System 2, reasoned moral thoughts drive others. Cognitive research on both of these processes further inform moral psychological research, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the moral brain.
Acknowledgements:
Thank you to Dr. Kevin Moore for pushing me to expand my horizons into neuroscience research to gain a more thorough understanding of moral psychology.
Edited by Chloe Holden and Emma Cleary
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