Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Moral Judgment

道德审判的认知和情感神经科学考虑以下道德困境：这是战争时期。你和你的村民们躲在地下室里躲避附近的敌军。你的宝宝开始哭，你捂住宝宝的嘴以阻止声音。如果你把手拿开，你的孩子就会大声哭，士兵们也会听到。他们会找到你，你的孩子，还有其他人，他们会杀了你们所有人。如果你不把手拿开，你的孩子就会窒息而死。为了救自己和其他村民，把孩子闷死在道德上可以接受吗？像这样的两难境地，除了令人不安和令人困惑之外，还是一扇了解道德决策的心理学和神经科学的窗口。人们经常谈到“道德能力”或“道德感”，这表明道德判断是一个统一的现象，但最近的研究有力地表明，事实并非如此。相反，道德判断似乎依赖于直觉情绪反应和更深思熟虑的受控反应之间的复杂相互作用，这取决于大脑的不同部分。当我们面对像上面这样的困境时，这些神经系统会争夺对行为的控制权。这个项目的目标是使用行为测试和尖端神经科学技术来帮助我们了解不同类型的道德决定是如何受到情绪反应和受控认知过程的影响的。一些实验旨在阐明大脑如何代表道德成本和利益。其他实验的重点是社会义务在道德判断中的作用。一些实验使用了上面这样的假设道德困境，而另一些实验涉及对真人具有真实后果的真实决定。从基础科学的角度理解人类大脑如何做出道德判断是重要的，但这也是一个更广泛的社会关注的问题。我们的道德判断能力是我们作为人的身份的核心，从生物学的角度理解这种能力可能会改变我们处理有争议的道德问题的方式，从长远来看，也可能极大地改变我们看待自己和彼此的方式。

Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Moral JudgmentConsider the following moral dilemma: It's wartime. You and your fellow villagers are hiding from nearby enemy soldiers in a basement. Your baby starts to cry, and you cover your baby's mouth to block the sound. If you remove your hand, your baby will cry loudly, and the soldiers will hear. They will find you, your baby, and the others, and they will kill all of you. If you do not remove your hand, your baby will smother to death. Is it morally acceptable to smother your baby to death in order to save yourself and the other villagers?Dilemmas such as this one, in addition to being troubling and puzzling, are a window into the psychology and neuroscience of moral decision-making. People often speak of a "moral faculty" or a "moral sense," suggesting that moral judgment is a unified phenomenon, but recent research strongly suggests that this is not so. Rather, it seems that moral judgment depends on a complex interplay between intuitive emotional responses and more deliberative controlled responses that depend on different parts of the brain. When we confront dilemmas like the one above, these neural systems compete for control of behavior.The goal of this project is to use behavioral testing and cutting-edge neuroscientific techniques to help us understand how different kinds of moral decisions are influenced by emotional responses and controlled cognitive processes. Some experiments aim to illuminate how the brain represents moral costs and benefits. Other experiments are focused on the role of social obligations in moral judgment. Some experiments use hypothetical moral dilemmas such as the one above, while others involve real decisions with real consequences for real people.Understanding how the human brain makes moral judgments is important from a basic science perspective, but it is also a matter of broader social concern. Our capacity for moral judgment is central to our identities as humans, and understanding this capacity in biological terms may change the way we approach controversial moral issues and may also, in the long run, dramatically change the way we see ourselves and each other.