Born to be moral
NEW SCIENTIST
September 1, 2007
What good is God?
Helen Phillips
Born to be moral
The idea that we have an innate sense of right and wrong has been brought to prominence
again by the Harvard University cognitive psychologist Marc Hauser, with the publication
of his book Moral Minds. He likens morality to language and its innate core to our innate
sense of grammar. In other words, at the heart of human moral codes lie common rules and
features that come hard-wired at birth.
Hauser suggests that each culture and generation learns to interpret the moral grammar
slightly differently, but the rules, fixed in the biology of the brain, remain the same. One
reason he believes this is that the origins of morality, altruism and fair play can be seen in
our group-living primate cousins, in behaviours such as loyalty to kin, intolerance of theft
and punishment of cheats...
...Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia used a hypnosis experiment to show how
important emotions are. Under hypnosis, he induced people to feel disgust when they
heard a couple of arbitrary words. When these words later came up in connection with
moral dilemmas, the subjects judged certain scenarios to be wrong when people who had
not been hypnotised did not. When asked to justify their choices, they could not do so to the
researchers' satisfaction. Without knowing how or why, their emotions had altered their
sense of right and wrong.
Brain-scanning studies have shown a link between damage to the brain regions that
house the social emotions and a tendency to make aberrant moral choices. Still, there is
more to morality than emotion. Most researchers now think that emotions influence the way
our moral decisions are turned into actions or choices, rather than how the decisions are
made in the first place. Other brain regions involved in empathy and attributing beliefs
about intentions are important too.
Next
NEW SCIENTIST
September 1, 2007
What good is God?
Helen Phillips
Born to be moral
The idea that we have an innate sense of right and wrong has been brought to prominence
again by the Harvard University cognitive psychologist Marc Hauser, with the publication
of his book Moral Minds. He likens morality to language and its innate core to our innate
sense of grammar. In other words, at the heart of human moral codes lie common rules and
features that come hard-wired at birth.
Hauser suggests that each culture and generation learns to interpret the moral grammar
slightly differently, but the rules, fixed in the biology of the brain, remain the same. One
reason he believes this is that the origins of morality, altruism and fair play can be seen in
our group-living primate cousins, in behaviours such as loyalty to kin, intolerance of theft
and punishment of cheats...
...Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia used a hypnosis experiment to show how
important emotions are. Under hypnosis, he induced people to feel disgust when they
heard a couple of arbitrary words. When these words later came up in connection with
moral dilemmas, the subjects judged certain scenarios to be wrong when people who had
not been hypnotised did not. When asked to justify their choices, they could not do so to the
researchers' satisfaction. Without knowing how or why, their emotions had altered their
sense of right and wrong.
Brain-scanning studies have shown a link between damage to the brain regions that
house the social emotions and a tendency to make aberrant moral choices. Still, there is
more to morality than emotion. Most researchers now think that emotions influence the way
our moral decisions are turned into actions or choices, rather than how the decisions are
made in the first place. Other brain regions involved in empathy and attributing beliefs
about intentions are important too.
Next
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