MORAL COGNITION
Morality is a code of conduct telling us what is right and what is wrong
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
HOW DOES MORALITY EMERGE?
Is it the product of emotional, non rational processes?
- Freudian internalisation
- Oedipal conflict resolution construction of SuperEgo
- SuperEgo includes an internalisation of society laws and rules
- By the age of 5, children have accomplished their moral development
- Behaviourist reinforcement
- Immoral act = punishment
- Avoidance of punishment = avoidance of immoral act
Is it the product of reasoning and higher order cognition?
- Piaget’s stages
- Pre Moral: children below 5 don’t think too much about right and wrong
- Moral Realism: dominated by rules imposed from the outside (and authoritarian figures)
- Moral Relativism: after 10, children start to think about moral issues themselves
- Steps parallel to more general cognitive development
Heinz dilemma:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The
drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid
$200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went
to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what
it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dyin and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the
druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and
broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963,
p. 19)
Kolhbergs’ stages
PRECONVENTIONAL STAGE: (most children < 9)
- Level One: obedience and punishment orientation
- I obey because I have been told to
- Heinz dilemma: “it’s against the law to steal.” “Heinz can steal because he asked first and it’s not like
he stole something big: he won’t get punished”
- Level Two: personal needs determine right or wrong
- Heinz dilemma: “Heinz may think it is right to take the drug but the druggist would not”
, CONVENTIONAL STAGE: (most adolescents and adults)
- Level Three: mutual interpersonal expectations and conformity
- Trust, care, loyalty, avoidance of blame
- Heinz dilemma: “ He was a good man for wanting to save her” “his intentions were good”
- Level Four: social systems morality
- Doing ones duty
- Heinz dilemma: “His motives were good, but what would happen if we all started breaking the law. It
would be chaos”
POST-CONVENTIONAL STAGE (minority of adults)
- Level Five: social contract and individual rights
- Individual reasons may transcend the law
- Level Six: universal ethical principles: individual principle of conscience
- Heinz: “Heinz and the druggist should agree that the wife must be saved - this would be the fair
solution”.
Not everyone reaches level 6
Cognitive neuroscience shows morality emerges from both emotional, non rational processes and reasoning
and higher order cognition
ACQUIRED SOCIOPATHY
Ethical dilemmas in fMRI scanner Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation
Trolley question - should you switch to kill one or let it kill five?
Personal moral: pushing person under train
Interpersonal moral: pushing switch to change direction of trolley
Utilitarian vs. Non utilitarian:
Enemy soldiers have taken over your village. They have orders to kill all remaining civilians. You and some of
your townspeople have sought refuge in the cellar of a large house. Outside, you hear the voices of soldiers
who have come to search the house for valuables. Your baby begins to cry loudly. You cover his mouth to block
the sound. If you remove your hand from his mouth, his crying will summon the attention of the soldiers who
will kill you, your child, and the others hiding out in the cellar. To save yourself and the others, you must
smother your child to death.
Is it appropriate for you to smother your child in order to save yourself and the other towns people?
Non Utilitarian response = “Don’t smother the baby”
- Don’t do the harmful act
- Automatic emotional aversion for the harmful act
Utilitarian response: “The baby will die no matter what; therefore smother the baby and save everyone else”
- Collective good
- General reasoning
- More anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation (Greene et al., 2004)
Morality is a code of conduct telling us what is right and what is wrong
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
HOW DOES MORALITY EMERGE?
Is it the product of emotional, non rational processes?
- Freudian internalisation
- Oedipal conflict resolution construction of SuperEgo
- SuperEgo includes an internalisation of society laws and rules
- By the age of 5, children have accomplished their moral development
- Behaviourist reinforcement
- Immoral act = punishment
- Avoidance of punishment = avoidance of immoral act
Is it the product of reasoning and higher order cognition?
- Piaget’s stages
- Pre Moral: children below 5 don’t think too much about right and wrong
- Moral Realism: dominated by rules imposed from the outside (and authoritarian figures)
- Moral Relativism: after 10, children start to think about moral issues themselves
- Steps parallel to more general cognitive development
Heinz dilemma:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The
drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid
$200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went
to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what
it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dyin and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the
druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and
broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963,
p. 19)
Kolhbergs’ stages
PRECONVENTIONAL STAGE: (most children < 9)
- Level One: obedience and punishment orientation
- I obey because I have been told to
- Heinz dilemma: “it’s against the law to steal.” “Heinz can steal because he asked first and it’s not like
he stole something big: he won’t get punished”
- Level Two: personal needs determine right or wrong
- Heinz dilemma: “Heinz may think it is right to take the drug but the druggist would not”
, CONVENTIONAL STAGE: (most adolescents and adults)
- Level Three: mutual interpersonal expectations and conformity
- Trust, care, loyalty, avoidance of blame
- Heinz dilemma: “ He was a good man for wanting to save her” “his intentions were good”
- Level Four: social systems morality
- Doing ones duty
- Heinz dilemma: “His motives were good, but what would happen if we all started breaking the law. It
would be chaos”
POST-CONVENTIONAL STAGE (minority of adults)
- Level Five: social contract and individual rights
- Individual reasons may transcend the law
- Level Six: universal ethical principles: individual principle of conscience
- Heinz: “Heinz and the druggist should agree that the wife must be saved - this would be the fair
solution”.
Not everyone reaches level 6
Cognitive neuroscience shows morality emerges from both emotional, non rational processes and reasoning
and higher order cognition
ACQUIRED SOCIOPATHY
Ethical dilemmas in fMRI scanner Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation
Trolley question - should you switch to kill one or let it kill five?
Personal moral: pushing person under train
Interpersonal moral: pushing switch to change direction of trolley
Utilitarian vs. Non utilitarian:
Enemy soldiers have taken over your village. They have orders to kill all remaining civilians. You and some of
your townspeople have sought refuge in the cellar of a large house. Outside, you hear the voices of soldiers
who have come to search the house for valuables. Your baby begins to cry loudly. You cover his mouth to block
the sound. If you remove your hand from his mouth, his crying will summon the attention of the soldiers who
will kill you, your child, and the others hiding out in the cellar. To save yourself and the others, you must
smother your child to death.
Is it appropriate for you to smother your child in order to save yourself and the other towns people?
Non Utilitarian response = “Don’t smother the baby”
- Don’t do the harmful act
- Automatic emotional aversion for the harmful act
Utilitarian response: “The baby will die no matter what; therefore smother the baby and save everyone else”
- Collective good
- General reasoning
- More anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation (Greene et al., 2004)
