Emotion and Cognition in Moral Judgment

Drs。科恩、达利和格林的神经科学道德心理学研究得到了美国国家科学基金会的资助，他们的灵感来自哲学家们提出的一系列令人困惑的道德困境。考虑下面的情况：一辆失控的电车将朝向五个人，如果它继续目前的路线，这五个人将会死亡。唯一能救他们的办法就是扳动开关让电车转到另一条轨道上撞死一个人而不是五个人。你是否应该让电车改道以救五个人而牺牲一个人？大多数人都说是的。现在考虑一个类似的困境：和之前一样，一辆电车威胁要撞死五个人。你站在横跨铁轨的人行桥上，站在迎面驶来的电车和五个人之间，旁边是一个高大的陌生人。这一次，唯一能救这五个人的方法就是把这个陌生人推下桥，推到下面的轨道上。如果你这么做，他会死，但他的身体会阻止电车到达其他人。难道你应该把这个陌生人推死来救那五个人吗？大多数人说不。二十多年来，道德哲学家们一直对这样的案例感到困惑，他们想知道为什么在某些情况下牺牲生命是可以接受的，而在其他情况下则不然。在他们的研究中。科恩、达利和格林从社会心理学和认知神经科学的角度来解决这些问题：人们的大脑中发生了什么，使他们对第一种情况说“是”，而对第二种情况说“不”？现有的道德心理学理论对这个问题给出了截然不同的答案。根据道德心理学的理性主义传统，道德判断是由推理和反思的插曲引起的。更具体地说，理性主义者会说，在这两种情况下，人们通过应用抽象的道德原则得出不同的答案，这些原则解释了为什么这两种情况有重要的不同。道德心理学最近的一个趋势是越来越强调情感。根据情绪主义模型，情绪反应的差异解释了人们在这两种情况下的不同回答。Drs。科恩、达利和格林认为理性主义者和情感主义者都是部分正确的。他们的研究得到了美国国家科学基金会的支持，旨在了解情感和“认知”过程如何相互作用，从而产生道德判断。他们的研究使用了问卷调查和反应时间测量等传统方法，并结合了尖端的神经成像技术，这些技术使他们能够看到人们在做出道德决定时大脑中发生了什么。这项研究与私人和公共事务都有天然的联系。首先，理解人类道德的心理和生物学基础具有根本的人文意义。就像研究地球上生命的起源或宇宙的大规模结构一样，这项研究解决了世界各地人们内在感兴趣的问题。我们的道德判断能力是人类的核心，但目前科学还没有很好地理解这一点。这项研究是纠正这种无知的重要一步。第二，道德判断具有巨大的实际重要性。我们这个时代的许多重大公共辩论，如关于堕胎、干细胞研究、正当战争的限制、对恐怖主义的适当反应等，之所以存在，是因为不同的人对这些和其他是非问题有不同的直觉。为了在这些问题上取得进展，了解产生道德判断的心理学和潜在生物学，以及不同人的不同道德判断，即使不是必要的，也可能是有用的。这项研究的目标之一是研究基于文化的道德判断差异，这有一个额外的好处，即确保在美国科学中代表性不足的群体的参与。本研究还将探讨基于性别和个人气质的道德判断差异。然而，与此同时，这项研究的目的是了解人类道德判断的普遍性。

Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene's research funded by NSF on neuroscientific moral psychology was inspired by a puzzling set of moral dilemmas posed by philosophers. Consider the following case: A runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save them is to flip a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate set of tracks where it will kill one person instead of five. Ought you to turn the trolley in order to save five people at the expense of one? Most people say yes. Now consider a similar dilemma: As before, a trolley threatens to kill five people. You are standing next to a large stranger on a footbridge spanning the tracks, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people. This time, the only way to save the five people is to push this stranger off the bridge and onto the tracks below. He will die if you do this, but his body will stop the trolley from reaching the others. Ought you to save the five others by pushing this stranger to his death? Most people say no. For over twenty years, moral philosophers have been puzzling over cases such as these, wondering what makes it acceptable to sacrifice lives in some cases but not others. In their research, Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene attack these problems from the point of view of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience: What goes on in people's brains that makes them say "yes" to the first case and "no" to the second case? Existing theories of moral psychology suggest strikingly different answers to this question. According to the rationalist tradition in moral psychology, moral judgments are caused by episodes of reasoning and reflection. More specifically, a rationalist would say that people arrive at different answers in these two cases by applying abstract moral principles that explain why these cases are importantly different. A more recent trend in moral psychology places increased emphasis on emotion. According to an emotivist model, differences in emotional response are to explain people's divergent answers in these two cases. Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene believe that rationalists and emotivists are both partly correct. Their NSF-supported research is aimed at understanding how emotional and "cognitive" processes interact to produce moral judgments. Their research uses both traditional methods such as questionnaires and measurements of reaction time in conjunction with cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques that allow them to see what is going on in people's brains while they make moral decisions.This research has natural connections to matters of both private and public concern. First, understanding the psychological and biological bases of human morality is of fundamental humanistic importance. Like research concerning the origins of life on Earth or the large-scale structure of the universe, this research addresses questions that are of intrinsic interest to people around the world. Our capacity for moral judgment is central to our humanity, and yet it is not well understood by science at this time. This research is an important step toward remedying this ignorance. Second, moral judgment is of immense practical importance. Many of the great public debates of our time such as those concerning abortion, stem cell research, the limits of justifiable war, the appropriate response to terrorism, etc. exist because different people have different intuitions about these and other matters of right and wrong. To make progress on these issues it may be useful, if not essential, to understand the psychology and underlying biology that produces moral judgments, and different moral judgments in different people. One of the goals of this research is to study culturally-based differences in moral judgment, which has the additional benefit of ensuring the participation of groups who are underrepresented in American science. This research will also explore differences in moral judgment based on gender and individual temperament. At the same time, however, this research is aimed at understanding that which is universal in human moral judgment.