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Cognitive science and moral philosophy might seem like strange bedfellows, but in the past decade they have become partners. In a recent issue of Cognition, the Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene and colleagues extend this trend. Their experiment utilizes conventional behavioral methods, but it was designed to test a hypothesis stemming from previous fMRI investigations into the neural bases of moral judgments (see here and here).
In their study Greene et al. give subjects difficult moral dilemmas in which one alternative leads to better consequences (such as more lives saved) but also violates an intuitive moral restriction (it requires a person to directly or intentionally cause harm to someone else). For example, in the “crying baby” dilemma subjects must judge whether it is wrong to smother their own baby in order to save a large group of people that includes the baby. In this scenario, which was also used by the television show M.A.S.H., enemy soldiers will hear the baby cry unless it is smothered. Sixty percent of people choose to smother the baby in order to save more lives. A judgment that it is appropriate to save the most lives, even if it requires you to suffocate a child, is labeled “utilitarian” by Greene et al., whereas a judgment that it is not appropriate is called “deontological.” These names pay homage to traditional moral philosophies.
Emotion vs. Rationality
Based on previous fMRI studies, Greene proposes a dual-process model of moral judgments. This model makes two central claims. First, when subjects form deontological judgments, emotional processes are said to override controlled cognitive processes. In other words, the subjects who are unwilling to smother the baby are being swayed by their emotions, and they can’t bear the idea of hurting a helpless child. This claim has been supported by a flurry of recent behavioral studies and neural studies. Greene’s dual-process model also claims that controlled cognitive processes cause utilitarian moral judgments. The new Cognition study puts that second claim to the test.
Neuroimaging reveals only correlations; it cannot determine whether a certain brain area is causing a particular judgment. But intervening in a process can provide evidence of causation. In the Cognition study, Greene et al. attempted to interfere with moral reasoning by increasing the cognitive load on subjects. They had subjects perform the moral judgment task at the same time as a monitoring task, in which subjects viewed a stream of numerals and responded to occurrences of “5.” If this added cognitive load interferes with the controlled cognitive processes that cause utilitarian judgments, the researchers surmised, then subjects should make fewer utilitarian judgments and should form these judgments more slowly. (For more on factors that influence judgment speed, see here.)
As hypothesized, added cognitive load led to longer reaction times for utilitarian judgments, but the researchers found no effect on reaction times for deontological judgments. Although it took subjects longer to approve of acts like smothering a baby when also looking for the number 5, it did not take them longer to approve of acts like not smothering the baby. This differential effect suggests that some of the cognitive processes involved in the monitoring task are also needed for the processes that lead to utilitarian judgments but not for those that lead to deontological judgments.
The cognitive load did not, however, decrease the proportion of utilitarian judgments, as the dual process model predicts. People were just as likely to approve of smothering the baby, even if it took them a little bit longer to make that judgment. This is puzzling, and suggests that the two processes do not compete. Greene et al. try to explain away this counterevidence by speculating that subjects “were determined to push through” the cognitive load, but this story makes sense only if subjects knew in advance that they wanted to reach a utilitarian judgment.
Anomalous Result
The dual process model also predicts that in the absence of cognitive load utilitarian judgments will still be slower than deontological judgments. Because utilitarian judgments (such as that it is appropriate to smother the baby) rely on controlled, deliberate processes, they should take longer than deontological judgments, which depend on emotions, instincts and other fast, automatic processes. Greene et al. found this difference for low-utilitarian participants (who made fewer utilitarian judgments) but not for high-utilitarian participants. To explain this anomaly, Greene et al. postulate “an additional process” that enables high-utilitarian participants to make utilitarian judgments quickly.
These gaps in the theory are, perhaps, not very serious in the absence of any alternative explanation of Greene et al.’s main finding that utilitarian judgments were slowed by cognitive load and deontological judgments were not. This effect might be due to the particular form of cognitive load, however. Greene et al. used numbers to create the cognitive load, but utilitarian judgments often hinge on numbers. Hence, confusion caused by the stream of numbers might lead subjects to recheck before forming utilitarian judgments, but not before forming deontological judgments that do not depend on getting the numbers right. Scientists might test this alternative explanation by checking whether the same differential effect arises when the cognitive load takes other forms, such as monitoring for letters, colors or faces.
Future studies should explore the distinctions that the current literature roughly characterizes as emotion versus cognition, and deontological judgments versus utilitarian judgments. Further clarification will come with a more precise specification of which functional processes constitute the controlled cognition that is supposed to cause utilitarian moral judgments. Clearly, more work needs to be done. But that is the sign of a useful experiment: it raises tractable questions that further research can illuminate. For the time being, this study takes an important step forward both by addressing a crucial issue for the dual-process model and also by presenting strong, though not conclusive, evidence for the role of controlled cognition in utilitarian moral judgment.
Mind Matters is edited by Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex and the book Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
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8 Comments
Add CommentI'm skeptical of the emotion vs. cognition characterization; both types of judgment are produced in response to hypothetical situations, with the participants all pondering the "right" course of action. Instead, I suspect that by default we all make moral judgments using an internalized version of the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. This default rule is more rational than the researchers seem to assume, in that choices in real life are rarely as stark as presented in hypotheticals (are there really soldiers outside the bus who (a) haven't heard the baby already, (b) will hear very soon if the baby isn't killed, and (c) once they hear, will murder at least two people on the bus?). So the cognitive delay may be less about the distinction between "rational" and "emotional" choices, and more about the additional rational caution needed to depart from the default rule. This could also explain why high-utilitarian judgers experience less of a delay, in that such judgers are presumably those who feel the tug of the default rule less strongly (perhaps because they are more willing to accept the stark choices presented, with less concern for possible alternative courses of action or additional facts that could influence their judgments). Given the gender-based differences in moral reasoning processes pointed out by Carol Gilligan, it would be interesting to examine whether such high-utilitarian judgers tend to be male.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI strongly agree with Tucker M above. Much ethics research seems to be created by researchers who seem to think that there is no ethical difference between actively killing and passively allowing a death to occur. In real life, we do not always know the consequences of our choices, and there is usually more uncertainty in the consequences of allowing a high risk of death than in actively killing (as Tucker points out in the analysis of the bus scenario). Researchers might create scenarios where there is not a passive versus active choice, but a choice between two active or two passive choices, to avoid this extra factor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't understand why it is presupposed that the morally correct action will be the practically correct action. Couldn't it be that we are forced by circumstance into doing the morally incorrect thing? So in this case, the baby gets smothered even though it is morally wrong to do so. It seems like that is more realistic than assuming that the action taken is the morally correct one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, the distinction is between lesser and greater morality. It presupposes that while, in most cases, a particular act is immoral, in certain situations the greater morality may require such an act to be committed. It's bad to smother a baby, but it may be worse to allow a dozen people to die instead. Even a "passive" act, such as "allowing" first requires an active decision.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also agree with Tucker that making the counter intuitive decision requires intervention and that is why those decisions take longer. So we must decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether our instincts are the best course of action, or if some sort of rational override needs to be applied. Our moral instincts developed for a species that was concerned with immediate, in-group survival, with emphasis on the self, kin and outwards, to lesser degrees. They don't take into account the social groups that we deal with in modern society, nor does it deal with long term consequences. Even knowing what the moral instincts are, I doubt that we can simply say, "OK, that's what's right, regardless." We still have to decide for ourselves.
Well, what makes a practically correct decision practically correct? In this case, what is "practical" is probably the moral decision to save the most people. So which morality wins? Not killing a baby, or saving the most lives?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also agree with Tucker. The extra time required is from having to act against a moral instinct. But is the moral instinct ultimately correct? Instincts generally evolve to make immediate decisions about a given situation regardless of context and, for the most part, long term consequences. So even if we zero in on what our moral instincts are, I doubt that we will then say, "OK, these are what we will follow, regardless". More likely, we will try to discover how and why our moral instincts evolved as they did, and, on a case-by-case basis, decide if those instincts are appropriate to follow. If not, we will need to override our instincts and make decisions more appropriate to the situation, as we do with our other instincts.
Regarding the article's accompanying title photo - why is the tie over the shoulder? It diverts attention from the rest of the image. Are you just hiring anybody to do your photography work now? Time to take the job seriously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuasimodo,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe tie is over the shoulder as people often "tuck their ties" before engaging in some work or effort. This ties together with the over all theme of the article that individuals are being tested or challenged in some way (the divergent decision arrows leading from the head) it is actually quite a brilliant touch to illustrate visually what the article is about in my view.
What if 6 million innocents endangered the lives of 72 million people?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould the latter betray the previous to Gestapo?
Therefore, the key issue is about sinning against the law: You must not murder .
Indeed, the person unrighteous in what is least is also unrighteous in what is much.
The people that refrained from killing the innocent child have stronger morals.
They would have prevented the holocaust.