Posted by Helen on: 04.10.2007 /
A Caltech media release summarizes new research about the role of emotions in making moral judgments:
Quick response! What’s the best thing to do on a lifeboat with one too many people on board? Should one throw a mortally injured person overboard to ensure definite survival for everyone else, or refuse to act and ensure certain death for all individuals in the boat?
For most of us, the biggest stumbling block is the word “quick.” Many of us will eventually concede that the greatest good for the greatest number of people is the only reasonable alternative, and that the injured person will have to be thrown overboard. However, we typically blanch at grim decisions involving actions that in other contexts would clearly be deemed immoral. Some people, in fact, never reach the utilitarian conclusion, saying that they would not be able to throw the injured person overboard, regardless of the final outcome.
But new research reveals that there is one type of person who can quickly reach the decision to act in the greater interest of the majority–the person who has suffered damage to an area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. In the current issue of the journal Nature, researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Southern California report that experimental tests on patients with prefrontal cortex damage reveal for the first time that emotions play an important role in feelings about what is right and wrong.
There’s also an article in The Economist about these findings: the neurology of morality