How the Brain Makes Moral Choices

Study Pinpoints Area Linked to Emotionally Tough Moral Judgments

(WebMD)  Scientists may have pinpointed the area in the brain where morality and emotions clash in dicey situations.

The area is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), report the researchers.

Michael Koenigs, PhD, of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, worked on the study while on staff in the neurology division of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Koenigs and colleagues studied six people who suffered VMPC damage as adults. The VMPC is involved in emotional responses and social emotions such as compassion, shame, and guilt, Koenigs' team notes.

For comparison, the researchers also looked at 12 healthy adults with no brain damage and 12 adults with brain damage that didn't affect the VMPC or other emotion-related areas.

In the study, participants read fictional scenarios that presented dilemmas, such as sacrificing one person's life to save the lives of others.

For example, one scenario featured a runaway boxcar careening towards a crowd. Study participants were asked if they would push one person off a bridge to save five other people from the boxcar.

Those with VMPC damage were the most likely to agree with that action and similar choices in other personal, emotional, life-and-death scenarios. They also made such decisions faster than other participants.

However, these VMPC-damaged participants handled impersonal, low-stakes scenarios much like the other study participants.

The researchers aren't calling the VMPC-damaged participants cold or immoral. But they say the findings support the theory that the VMPC is involved in making personal, emotional, intense moral decisions.

[vortextower]

The brain damaged participants made life and death decisions faster than other participants.

Perhaps we all could learn a lesson from that and think more carefully about our actions.

[rousta_bout]

great comments. I think my favorite has to be "This shows the sad state of what passes for science."

No, your taking a three hundred word digest of a study as being "science." That shows the sad state of each and every one of the people who had a hand in getting you access to a keyboard. I think I just heard your teachers from grade school have gargled drain opener after reading your, ahem, thoughts.

The article you're all responding to is just another example of web science writing; writing about science at blog quality != science.

The particular difference outlined is explained poorly. What the folks involved in the study found interesting is that in normal subjects, there's a big difference between killing one to save five depending on personal contact: If killing one involves switching the railcar onto a track with one person from a track with five on it, the majority in all groups quickly say 'throw the switch.' If killing one involves actually pushing that one in front of a railcar to stop it, that's when normals have a relatively harder time than VMPC damaged patients.

Reading the back and forth here, though, it's depressingly clear why it is that Bush was able to tell the Iraqis it was incumbent on them to prove a negative, and not one person in the journalistic corps was willing to take the risk of trying to explain to the public that Bush had committed a classic logical fallacy.

[vortextower]

"Those with VMPC damage were the most likely to agree with that action and similar choices in other personal, emotional, life-and-death scenarios. They also made such decisions faster than other participants."

This would imply that those with higher moral thinking take longer to think about the right decision because they care more about doing the right thing. Perhaps we could all learn a lesson from that before we do things.

[rousta_bout]

great comments. I think my favorite has to be "This shows the sad state of what passes for science."

No, your taking a three hundred word digest of a study as being "science." That shows the sad state of each and every one of the people who had a hand in getting you access to a keyboard. I think I just heard your teachers from grade school have gargled drain opener after reading your, ahem, thoughts.

The article you're all responding to is just another example of web science writing; writing about science at blog quality != science.

The particular difference outlined is explained poorly. What the folks involved in the study found interesting is that in normal subjects, there's a big difference between killing one to save five depending on personal contact: If killing one involves switching the railcar onto a track with one person from a track with five on it, the majority in all groups quickly say 'throw the switch.' If killing one involves actually pushing that one in front of a railcar to stop it, that's when normals have a relatively harder time than VMPC damaged patients.

Reading the back and forth here, though, it's depressingly clear why it is that Bush was able to tell the Iraqis it was incumbent on them to prove a negative, and not one person in the journalistic corps was willing to take the risk of trying to explain to the public that Bush had committed a classic logical fallacy.

[crater7]

These Scientist should have used 12 people from the Bush administration starting from the top down, maybe they could have saved thousands of lives.

[realwillow]

This study seems to show that those with the VMPC damage can make concise decisions. Logical decisions much akin to Mr. Spock from Star Trek that do not require emotion.

The study has nothing to do with the VMPC damaged individuals talking about what to do with a Saddam or a Hitler, so why don't you quit whining about it.

This study shows that when a specific area of the brain is damaged, that damaged area correlates to not having to add-in societal pressures to save everyone even if its not good for the whole group.

I am not comforted by this discovery, but I can see where it may have its uses.


The Real Willowreed, not the dime-store phony.

[chime57]

I am confused. Are we supposed to answer yes- push one and save the others, or no- let them all die?

Apparently the US is VMPC-damaged, having supplied the satellite photos used by the mass murderer to set up the gas attack and the helicopters used during the attack on Halabja. Oh wait!! We of course never thought anyone who bought weapons from us might actually use them.

[dzzzz1]

This shows the sad state of what passes for science. First "morality". Did these guys talk to anybody first? Anybody who studied ethics would doubt whether "morality" is a thing that could be located, and would be more likely to talk about "ethics" and "ethical choices." Second, it is hard to believe this is cutting-edge brain science. Are cognitive processes involving tough decisions to be "pinpointed" or do they involve interaction between various centers?
Third, the scenario given as an example involves an ethical equation between the consequences of action and non-action (pushing the person off a cliff or not pushing them off). This equation can't be taken as given but is the product of a particular cultural ideology of action and of ethics. For instance, someone with a worldview according to which injustice flows from individual actions but not from cosmic events would not even consider intervening in the accident, and would not consider this abstention immoral. So the question even of whether the example involves ethical (or "moral") choice is an imposition of those conducting the test. All told, this is garbage science.

[XFunc_CaRteR]

So did this the VMPC-damaged respond by saying they wouldn't bring a mass-murderer - who had been one of the few modern leaders of the world who actually used nerve gas, who had paid money to terrorists and who had murdered countless thousands - to justice? And were the VMPC-damaged unaware that their continual need to tear down the silent resolve of others committed to a workable democracy in the middle-east (as if such a task would be easy) was actually fanning the flames of war rather than calming them?

[rochest]

so did this study involve dummy rummy and the rest of the Republican administration? that would explain a lot!