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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Imagine you’re standing on a footbridge over some trolley tracks. Below you, an out-of-control trolley is bearing down on five unaware individuals standing on the track. Standing next to you is a large man. You realize that the only way to prevent the five people from being killed by the trolley is to push the man off the bridge, into the path of the trolley. His body would stop the trolley, saving the lives of the five people further down the track.
What would you do? Would you push the man to save the others? Or would you stand by and watch five people die, knowing that you could have saved them? Regardless of which option you choose, you no doubt believe that it will reflect your deeply held personal convictions, not trifles such as your mood.
Well, think again. In a paper published in the March edition of the journal Cognition, a group of German researchers have shown that people’s mood can strongly influence how they respond to this hypothetical scenario. Though this general observation is well-known in the literature on moral judgments and decision making, the current paper helps to resolve a question which has long lurked in the background. That is, how does this happen? What is the mechanism through which moods influence our moral decisions?
Early research showed a difference between personal moral decisions, such as the footbridge problem above, and impersonal moral decisions, such as whether to keep money found in a lost wallet. Areas of the brain usually characterized as responsible for processing emotional information seemed to be more strongly engaged when making these personal as opposed to impersonal moral decisions, they found. These scientists concluded that emotions were playing a strong role in these personal moral judgments while the more calculating, reasoning part of our mind was taking a siesta.
Unfortunately, given the various shortcomings of previous investigations on this particular topic, there are a variety of other explanations for the observation that emotions, or the more general emotional states known as moods, affect how people may respond to the footbridge scenario.
For example, moods could influence the thought process itself. This is the “moral thought” hypothesis: just as something like attention may change our thought process by biasing how we perceive two choices, mood could also bias our thought process, resulting in different patterns of moral thinking. This is different from the “moral emotion” hypothesis, which suggests that emotions directly change how we feel about the moral choice. That is, our good mood could making us feel better (or worse) about potentially pushing, and therefore more (or less) likely to do it. Resolving this ambiguity with neuroimaging studies such as the one detailed above is difficult because of fMRI’s low temporal resolution – a brain scan is similar to taking a camera with the exposure set to a couple of seconds. This makes it difficult to faithfully capture events which happen quickly, such as whether moods change the experience of the decision, or if they directly influence the thought process.
To test these competing ideas, participants were first put into a specific mood by listening to music and write down an autobiographical memory. Those in the positive mood condition listened to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic and wrote down a positive memory, while those in the negative mood condition listened to Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Opus 11 and wrote down a negative memory. The participants in the neutral mood condition listened to Kraftwerk’s Pocket Calculator and wrote about a neutral memory.
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22 Comments
Add CommentFrom their charts, it looks like for the trolley problem, most people wouldn't push regardless, but that the numbers were boosted more by negative emotion + passive questioning than by positive emotion + active questioning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm wondering if that will be the case for every situation, or if for some questions positive emotion + active questioning will be more effective, and what the criteria will be that determines which kind of emotion and its paired thought type will be most effective. If that hasn't shown up in previous research, then I'm looking forward to hearing about more in the future.
I've always thought this line of thought didn't make a lot of sense. It's obvious to me people's decisions are influenced by complex factors..., but killing someone is still killing someone. If your software is not in enough control to stop yourself from killing someone except in self defense, and it's against the rules to "murder" someone, I don't really care how it got to the decision, it's defective, it allowed you to kill a person. end of story. convicted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis was a nice summary of the paper, but I question the validity of morality games to real-world moral behavior. For example, if it is true, as the author states, that “a simple difference in mood changes how likely one person is to throw another over a footbridge” then I’ll eat my hat. While it is difficult to argue that variations in mood (which are probably quite a bit larger than is produced by playing a little Mozart) will affect how people act in their daily lives (e.g. chatting with coworkers), it is entirely implausible to generalize the findings from a hypothetical moral game to a life-and-death situation. The influence of mood may hang large in a controlled experiment where this is the only factor that differs between groups, but it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact in the real situation—not least because minor deviations in mood are likely to be over-ridden by changes in arousal associated with such situations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother point is that abstract moral games are inherently about registering an careful and *explicitly-accessible* moral judgment, and it’s not at all clear that these sorts of judgments reflect how we would act in situations where we aren’t carefully monitoring and calculating our responses. Morality in this sort of lab task is inherently colder and more calculating than moral *actions* that are taken out in the world, often without much time to reconsider or re-evaluate.
Regardless of whether or not the is a yawning gap between legal prescriptions and human behavior (which there is), in order to claim that behavioral science ought to have a say in these laws, we must first demonstrate that the science at hand actually pertains to the situations of interest. In the cases of simulated eyewitness experiments, this might be more realistic, even if not entirely perfect. This study, however, is not even a simulated moral decision—it is entirely abstract and artificial.
neuroautomaton.com
zstansfi, you should read this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/#.UT9xwLuYapc
Moods affect real-life moral situations of importance. Not life-and-death in this case but important nonetheless.
I think most people are aware of their core moral beliefs and how decisions are affected by mood at any particular time. And I think they compensate for that difference as much as they are willing. The more extreme the mood, the less willing we are to compensate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, in this particular case (pushing/not pushing) we are being asked to take an active/non-active role in mortality. Yes, it is better for "fate" or chance to kill 5 people than for one person to make a conscious choice to kill another. We accept the will of 'fate' or chance, but we do not accept the judgement of another person when it comes to taking someones life away from them. Partly because we all accept our mortality in the passive sense (we have no choice, we will eventually die), but we do not accept it in the active sense (we will not allow someone else to choose when or how we die). So this is not a good exercise in morality as far as I'm concerned. Compare what middle class people (healthy, sheltered, fed) do with found money. That might be a little less volatile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs previously stated, this, and other versions of the so called "Trolley dilemma" have an inherent extremely dangerous content. Probably almost none of us will be confronting in his/her lifetime with the situation or the consideration of deliberatley causing the death of another human being. As many propose for the dilemma the approach of killing one to save several (Do you remember the sanedrian deliberations?), and any solution involving any way of causing a death, be it an active or passive death, opens deep in the mind of those endorsing this kind of solution for the dilemma, the possibility of actually causing the death of somebody (remember "I robot", by I Asimov), and as our unconscious, that is the reflect of our instictive life, tuned for the survival of both the individual and the species, in case of conflict, survival of species, i.e. sexual activity, would prevail, the unconscious functions among other ways by the contagion of an image or concept to the one close or next to, as described in S Freud's interpretation of dreams, and later by J Piaget, thus the possibility of any way of killing an human being is opened, probably forever, in the minds of those accepting this solution to the dilemma, a dilemma that probably must be considered poisonous and as a postulate impossible to deny or get rid of just after reading it, as the concept of "Labor surplus" of the Marx's economy, and the high consumption of brain resources the mental representation of the Rubik's cube movements may induce. I'd get rid of this dilemma forever, as the so called "Suicide violin piece" was eliminated from orchestral repertoires in the first quarter of 20th century. Or not? Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter I got past the shock of the question with it's monstrous choice of pushing an innocent bystander to his death because you have some notion that you might save five others down the track, I thought of a better choice: jump in front of the trolley yourself if you're that darned moral.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOMG! You're brilliant Noble! That is the solution! How blind are we to even accept the notion that pushing someone can ever be more acceptable than jumping ourselves!?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very poor thought experiment in my opinion. While reading the article I, like Noble, thought the real moral choice would be to throw yourself in front of the trolley instead of someone else. I think that the idea is that you would somehow quickly calculate that your mass would not be enough to stop the trolley but that the large dude next to you would be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly. It's too often some other person or some other group that those with power use as the sacrificial lamb to make themselves feel like they're good people. I see this experiment from a different angle: the person on the bridge considering his (self-serving, powerful) options is a metaphor for the moral illnesses of our times, be it in the individual or larger group with power. Without realizing it, I suspect, the researchers and their sample unwittingly reflected this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting that, in your thought experiment, there is no option for the reader to throw themselves onto the tracks to save the 5 people...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite an assortment of issues raised here. It is interesting that at least some people's answers could be swayed by emotion, but that just raises many more questions such as how well those answers correlate with what they would actually do, what types of people are more inclined to change according their mood, what types of situations are more amenable to manipulation, etc. Very interesting topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChoice comes before us as something painful-what would be the right choice. If one can bear this pain because no choice seems to be flawless and one can not know the result of exercising choice before hand-one comes in a fluid state. One tastes freedom. Whatever choice emerges is the right choice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.fundamentalexpressions.com
Push. It comes down to a push. What, the large man doesn't want to be pushed, and instead throws you over...hmmm, a case of unintended circumstance. Stuff happens. Trolley or not!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for point that study out Adriana. I have seen it and I find its conclusions fairly compelling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will re-iterate, however, that we must distinguish between the results of controlled psychological experiments and actual human behavior in the real world. Let's take, for example, a feature of human psychology which is well-established to exist such as that variations in mood affect behavior. This concept has been well-studied (including experimentally) and also fits closely with personal experience. It is an undeniable feature of human activities.
On the other hand, any specific study might look at a particular relationship between mood and behavior. We already know that publication bias is rampant in most fields including psychology. Add to this the artificial circumstances of most psychology studies and that the specific findings in many studies are identified based upon an arbitrary statistical cut-off (small effects). The end result is that any study which is plausible (because it fits with a powerful theoretical construct) which by chance demonstrates a significant effect will appear to be an accurate representation of reality, even if the study itself is wrong. The theory may be write, even if the specific fact is wrong.
For this particular study, we can simply focus on one fact: this specific study doesn't add anything to what we know about how people behave in life-and-death situations.
Before I read the comments I had a few thoughts about the "moral choice" test;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not just yell to get the groups attention or maybe throw something?
What kind of droolers stand around on trolley tracks? Are they really worth saving if they are that incompetent? (yes they are but only if I'm feeling charitable)
I'm not going to die to save people being really stupid and certainly not going to murder someone for them.
The group of five are ultimately responsible for their own survival. Situational awareness is not a luxury. If the trolley had jumped the tracks then it would be different or if it were a group of small children.
If they were all texting then letting them die is a public service.
Noble, As someone who has put their own life on the line more than once to save the lives of people stupid, ignorant and arrogant enough to put themselves in harms way, the very thought of pushing someone else to save the lives of these morons, is abhorrent, it would not come down to a matter of what mood I was was in, it is simply a matter of moral upbringing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe if you were brought up in a family like charles manson's you could push another person off the footbridge!
Noble, As someone who has put their own life on the line more than once to save the lives of people stupid, ignorant and arrogant enough to put themselves in harms way, the very thought of pushing someone else to save the lives of these morons, is abhorrent, it would not come down to a matter of what mood I was was in, it is simply a matter of moral upbringing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe if you were brought up in a family like charles manson's you could push another person off the footbridge!
Firstly sorry about the double up, not sure what happened there!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut I am in total agreement with you Squid, the only reason I would risk my life in this situation is if the five were children! But I have a real life situation for everyone -
A man is trapped in a car that is burning, you have tried to get him out but you have already been burnt and dragged away by police, he can not be removed he is on fire and burning, you find a piece of 3x2 and grab it, would you charge at him to put him out of his misery? And be charged for murder? Or would you just stand to one side and watch, listen and smell him burn to death?
Believe me it is not a good choice, and when your stopped by a cop from doing it, because he can't allow you to "murder" someone, all you can do is sit down and cry!
^^^ this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always think the same thing. Why don't I just jump in front of the trolley!
But I think everyone would be dead by the time I had that little chat with myself!
^^^ this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always think the same thing. Why don't I just jump in front of the trolley!
But I think everyone would be dead by the time I had that little chat with myself!