On a recent episode of the BrainMatters podcast, guest Dr. Philip Ryan shared how studying neuroscience had changed his perspective on victims of addiction, increasing his compassion and empathy for their struggles. Conversely, in many true crime cases, one often finds themselves wondering where the perpetrator’s empathy has gone. Is there something wrong with them? How could they do this? By asking such questions, we are making moral judgements of others. Understanding how we make moral decisions helps us to not only empathise with other people, but also appreciate when our judgements are being manipulated.
You have probably heard of the ‘trolley problem’. For a recap, the trolley problem asks the participant to imagine themselves in front of a lever, looking at a camera feed of a railway track. Before them are 5 people tied to one fork in the track, and one person tied to the rails on the other fork. The lever chooses which direction the oncoming train will take, inevitably taking the lives of those in its path. From your viewpoint, you can see that the train will currently kill the five and you can change that — sacrificing one to save five. This is a moral dilemma, but it is one that is largely impersonal; you are removed from the situation and your only action is to shift the lever. But, what if the situation were more involved? In this scenario, you are on a footbridge above the tracks with the five victims below you. Standing beside you is a very large man, who you know would provide enough of an obstacle to the oncoming train cart to save the five people. All you must do to save five people is sacrifice his life by pushing him into the path of the train.
Unsurprisingly, people change their decisions when presented with these two scenarios. Where before they may have felt capable of making the utilitarian (greatest benefit) choice to sacrifice the one to save the many, in the more personal scenario, they instinctively choose not to act. From the perspective of psychology, the reasoning was clear; the more personal the situation, the less likely we are to make the utilitarian decision. The neuroscience supports this and goes deeper still. Brain scans of people undergoing the trolley problem and other moral dilemmas found that the more personally involved the people felt, the more activation was seen in emotional centres of the brain. Most notable among these was the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which has close network with other regions known for emotional processing, including the amygdala. These regions, active when emotionally relating to a situation or person, inhibit more rational regions, making it harder to think and function purely rationally. Thus, in the more personal scenario, people are generally more likely to not push the man because they are unable to coherently assess the utilitarian decision.
If emotions are so closely tied to emotion, does that mean we can manipulate how people judge morally charged situations? Yes, and it is more prevalent than ever. In people with antisocial personality disorders, like psychopathy and sociopathy, the atypical moral judgement results in a breakdown of communication between the vmPFC and other areas. But, changing instinctive moral judgements is much easier than removing them. Violence against another, especially against large numbers of people, is generally morally condemned. However, studies have shown that if people believe that they will be excluded from their social group if they do not promote immoral behaviour, then they will alter their moral compass to maintain their social standing. This manipulation of a desire to belong to a community affects us not only in personal circles, but online ones as well, which can lead to the hateful language frequently encountered in social spaces.
Finally, a highly effective way to manipulate moral judgements is controlling the way the moral scenario is presented. By inciting disgust, for example, in participants by having them stand in a dirty room versus a clean one, researchers observed that participants are harsher in their judgement of morally charged scenarios. In this way, the simple act of presenting information in a way that disgusts the viewer makes them more likely to morally condemn the information.
It can be quite horrifying to be reminded how easily we can be manipulated in our decisions, moral or otherwise, by how we feel or are made to feel. However, by understanding how the processes above are used, we can give ourselves the means to undo them. Returning to what Dr Ryan said, understanding fosters compassion. By taking the time to understand our emotional responses and trying to understand the situations of others, we can make better moral judgments from a basis of compassion.
Author: Thomas von Rein
References:
