There was recently a fascinating story from NPR about how researchers sent magnetic signals to people’s brains while they were judging the morality of behavior in some hypothetical examples.
People in the study read stories designed to produce moral judgments. One such story begins with a woman named Grace putting powder in her friend’s coffee. After that, the story can go in several different directions.
In one version, Grace believes she’s putting sugar in her friend’s coffee. But it turns out to be poison and her friend dies. In another version, Grace believes she’s putting poison in the coffee but it turns out to be sugar and her friend is fine.
They found that when the brain was influenced by the magnet, the way people judge morality reverts back to how we view things when you were 3 or 4 years old.
“If no harm was done, then subjects would judge [Grace's behavior] as OK,” she says, even if the story made it clear Grace was trying to poison her friend. That’s the sort of moral judgment you often see in kids who are 3 or 4 years old, Young says.
Studies show that at this age, children will usually say a child who breaks five teacups accidentally is naughtier than a child who breaks one teacup on purpose, she says. That’s probably because their brains are still developing the ability to understand the intentions of other people.
It’s interesting because of the implications it has on the notion of a soul. If moral judgment is shown to be “just another brain process” then it reduces the possibility that we are more than just the sum of our parts.
Richard Beck, a research psychologist who also happens to be a Christian (and whom i have linked to before), has written a series of posts about what this means to him from a Christian perspective. I’m fascinated by this topic, since if you follow it, it goes all sorts of other places, too (such as discussions about free will). Beck’s approach is intriguing. He sees a future where science has proved that there is no such thing as a “soul” and yet he still finds a “universalist” approach to Christianity that is satisfying to him.
Fascinating stuff.
Tags: religion, science
