The Psychology of Morality
Summary
TLDRThis script delves into the complexities of morality, exploring its philosophical, psychological, and societal aspects. It outlines the branches of moral philosophy, including meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. It highlights Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development and critiques them, suggesting that moral decisions are influenced by emotional responses rather than pure logic. The script also discusses the role of empathy in moral judgments and the societal implications of moral beliefs, emphasizing that morality is a dynamic construct shaped by interactions, emotions, and cultural influences.
Takeaways
- 🤔 Morality is a complex subject with philosophical, psychological, and scientific dimensions.
- 📚 Moral philosophy is divided into three branches: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics, each with its own set of questions and concerns.
- 👶 Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development suggests that individuals progress through six stages of moral reasoning, from preconventional to postconventional morality.
- 🧩 Kohlberg's stages are categorized into three levels: Preconventional Morality, Conventional Morality, and Postconventional Morality, each with two stages reflecting different aspects of moral reasoning.
- 🔍 Psychologists study morality by examining how people make moral judgments and what motivates moral behaviors such as trust and cooperation.
- 💊 The Heinz Dilemma is a moral scenario used by Kohlberg to understand the reasoning behind moral decisions, focusing on why individuals make the choices they do.
- 🤝 Moral development is influenced by factors such as learning from parents, societal norms, and personal experiences as one ages.
- 🤔 Haidt's studies suggest that moral decisions are often driven by emotional, gut reactions rather than purely logical reasoning.
- 🚂 The trolley problem illustrates the complexity of moral judgments and how they can be influenced by our emotional responses to different scenarios.
- 👣 Empathy plays a significant role in moral decision-making, influencing how we respond to the needs and suffering of others.
- 🌐 Morality is not just an individual matter; it is also shaped by societal interactions, cultural norms, and our innate sense of right and wrong.
Q & A
What are the three main branches of moral philosophy?
-The three main branches of moral philosophy are meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Meta-ethics deals with questions about the nature of morality and justice, normative ethics focuses on how people should behave and provides a framework for moral decisions, and applied ethics addresses specific practical moral questions.
What is the Heinz Dilemma and what does it illustrate?
-The Heinz Dilemma is a moral dilemma used by Lawrence Kohlberg to study moral development. It presents a scenario where a man named Heinz must decide whether to steal a life-saving drug for his wife, who is dying of cancer, from a druggist who is charging an exorbitant price. The dilemma illustrates the complexity of moral decision-making and is used to explore the reasoning behind an individual's moral choices.
What are the six stages of Kohlberg's theory of moral development?
-Kohlberg's theory of moral development consists of three levels, each with two stages. The first level, Preconventional Morality, includes stages one and two, where children's moral decisions are influenced by obedience, punishment, and personal needs. The second level, Conventional Morality, has stages three and four, where adolescents and adults internalize social norms and expectations, focusing on social roles and maintaining social order. The final level, Postconventional Morality, includes stages five and six, where individuals recognize differing values and opinions and may follow universal ethical principles even if they conflict with laws.
How does the script describe the role of emotions in moral decision-making?
-The script suggests that moral decisions are often driven by emotional, gut reactions rather than logical reasoning. Psychologists like Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green propose that our initial moral judgments are emotional responses that we later justify with reasoning.
What is the trolley problem and what does it reveal about moral judgments?
-The trolley problem is a classic moral dilemma that presents a scenario where a person must decide between allowing a trolley to kill five people or actively switching the trolley to kill one person instead. It reveals that our moral judgments are influenced by emotional responses and that we often find it more acceptable to let a harmful event occur passively rather than causing it actively, even if the outcome is the same.
How does the script discuss the relationship between empathy and moral behavior?
-The script discusses empathy as a fundamental human emotion that allows us to feel the feelings and experiences of others. It suggests that empathy has direct consequences for our moral responses to dilemmas and that individuals with higher empathy are more likely to make moral judgments that prioritize the well-being of others.
What criticisms are mentioned in the script regarding Kohlberg's theory of moral development?
-The script mentions that Kohlberg's theory has been criticized for focusing too heavily on justice and not taking into account other factors that might drive moral reasoning, such as compassion and empathy. Additionally, it points out that moral reasoning does not always translate into moral behavior.
What is the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis proposed by Daniel Batson?
-The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis suggests that when individuals experience empathy for someone in need, it leads them to care more and offer more help. Empathy can drive moral behavior by influencing how we respond to moral dilemmas and the decisions we make.
How does the script explain the societal aspect of morality?
-The script explains that morality is not just about individual beliefs and actions but also involves how we interact with others and perceive their moral views. It discusses how feelings of gratitude, anger, guilt, and trust can shape our moral responses and how societal norms and expectations influence our moral judgments.
What does the script suggest as the origins of morality?
-The script suggests that the origins of morality are complex and involve a combination of basic intuitions like fairness and cooperation, emotional responses like empathy and anger, as well as our ability to reason, the influence of social situations, and the role of culture.
Outlines
🤔 Exploring Moral Philosophy and Psychological Perspectives
This paragraph delves into the complexities of moral decision-making, introducing the field of moral philosophy and its three main branches: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. It outlines the fundamental questions each branch seeks to answer, such as the nature of morality, societal behavior norms, and practical moral dilemmas. The script then shifts focus to the scientific exploration of morality by psychologists, who examine how individuals form moral judgments and the psychological processes involved. The Heinz Dilemma is presented as a case study, illustrating Kohlberg's theory of moral development, which is broken down into three levels with two stages each, reflecting a person's progression from obedience to internalized universal ethical principles.
🔍 Critique and Emotional Underpinnings of Moral Decisions
The second paragraph critiques Kohlberg's theory, highlighting its limitations, such as the distinction between moral reasoning and behavior and the emphasis on justice over other moral drivers like compassion. It then introduces the idea that moral decisions may be driven more by emotional responses than by logical reasoning, as suggested by psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green. Haidt's study involving the scenario of siblings, Julie and Mark, is used to illustrate how moral judgments are often made first on an emotional level and then justified logically. The paragraph also presents the classic trolley problem to further explore the emotional and intuitive aspects of moral decision-making.
🚂 The Trolley Problem and the Role of Empathy in Moral Judgment
This section of the script uses the trolley problem to examine the impact of emotional responses on moral judgments. It contrasts the reactions to two versions of the problem, one involving pulling a lever and the other pushing a man, to demonstrate the inconsistency in our moral reasoning when it comes to direct versus indirect harm. The discussion then transitions to the role of empathy in moral decision-making, explaining how empathy can lead to more caring and helpful responses in moral dilemmas. The Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis by Daniel Batson is introduced, which posits that empathy can drive moral behavior more than logical reasoning.
🌐 Societal Morality, Cooperation, and the Origins of Morality
The final paragraph explores the societal context of morality, discussing how our moral views are influenced by our interactions with others and the emotions associated with cooperation and betrayal, such as gratitude, anger, and guilt. It suggests that these emotions shape our moral responses and behaviors. The paragraph also ponders the origins of morality, considering the interplay of basic intuitions, emotional responses, reasoning abilities, social situations, and cultural influences. It concludes by emphasizing that morality is not absolute but is shaped through our ongoing interactions and experiences with others.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Morality
💡Moral Philosophy
💡Meta-ethics
💡Normative Ethics
💡Applied Ethics
💡Lawrence Kohlberg
💡Preconventional Morality
💡Conventional Morality
💡Postconventional Morality
💡Empathy
💡Trolley Problem
💡Prisoner's Dilemma
Highlights
Difficult decisions in life often require us to discern right from wrong and good from bad, prompting questions about the existence of objective moral answers.
Moral philosophy is divided into three branches: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics, each addressing different aspects of morality.
Meta-ethics explores the nature of morality and justice, questioning the existence of moral truth.
Normative ethics provides a framework for determining right and wrong behavior.
Applied ethics focuses on practical moral dilemmas and the actions required to be a good person.
Psychologists study morality by examining what qualifies as moral and the psychological processes behind moral judgments.
Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development outlines three levels with two stages each, describing how moral understanding evolves from childhood to adulthood.
Preconventional Morality is characterized by obedience to avoid punishment and considering individual needs.
Conventional Morality involves internalizing societal norms and maintaining social order through adherence to rules.
Postconventional Morality signifies an abstract understanding of morality, with individuals recognizing differing values and universal ethical principles.
Critiques of Kohlberg's theory point out the distinction between moral reasoning and behavior, and the emphasis on justice over compassion.
Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green propose that moral decisions are driven more by emotional reactions than logical reasoning.
Empirical studies suggest that moral judgments often follow an initial emotional response, which is then justified through reasoning.
The trolley problem illustrates the complex nature of moral decisions, showing that our gut reactions can influence our judgments more than logical outcomes.
Empathy, as a fundamental human emotion, plays a crucial role in moral judgments and behaviors, influencing how we respond to others' experiences.
Daniel Batson's Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis posits that empathy leads to increased caring and helping in moral situations.
The societal context of morality is shaped by our interactions with others, influencing our moral views and behaviors through emotions like gratitude, anger, and guilt.
Morality emerges from a combination of basic intuitions, emotional responses, reasoning abilities, social situations, and cultural influences.
The complexity of morality suggests that what is considered right or wrong is not absolute and is influenced by various factors.
Transcripts
In life we are often faced with difficult decisions. We may come across situations where we
have to ask ourselves, what is right and what is wrong? What is good and what is bad? While we may
have some sense of how to go about answering these questions, how do we know that we are correct? How
do we even know that there are objective answers to these questions? Philosophers have been
wrestling with morality for a long time. There’s actually a whole branch of philosophy called moral
philosophy. Moral philosophy has three main branches, each with its own specific set of
questions. The first branch, known as meta-ethics, asks big picture questions like: What is morality?
What is justice? Is there truth? Another branch is normative ethics. Normative ethics asks how should
people behave, and tries to provide a framework for deciding what is right and what is wrong.
The last branch, applied ethics, focuses on specific, practical moral questions. What
do we need to do to be a good person? Is it okay to lie, for example, to help a friend?
Of course, this isn’t a philosophy lecture, so we don’t need to answer these questions
right now. We will approach morality from that angle in a future philosophy series. Right now,
we’re interested in the science behind morality. Psychologists examine morality by asking things
like, what do people think qualifies as morality? What psychological processes are involved in
making moral judgements? What motivates behaviors linked to morality, like trust and cooperation?
Some psychologists are particularly interested in how morality develops. Do kids learn morality
from their parents or from society? How does morality change as a person ages? Psychologist
Lawrence Kohlberg tested these ideas by presenting a series of moral dilemmas to
participants of varying ages, and asking them to explain their reasoning. Here’s one example
of a moral dilemma the participants might hear, which is called the Heinz Dilemma.
In this scenario, a woman was dying from cancer. There was only one drug that the doctors thought
would save her: a special 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 produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went around town and borrowed money to pay for the drug. Still,
he could only get $1,000, or half of what the druggist was charging. Heinz told the druggist
that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it for a lower price, or let him pay the full amount
later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So
Heinz got desperate, broke into the druggist’s laboratory, and stole the drug for his wife.
So, was this the right thing to do? Kohlberg asked his participants if Heinz should have
stolen the drug, as well as the reasoning behind their decision. Kohlberg didn’t care
if the participants thought Heinz was right or wrong. Instead, he wanted to know why they
made the moral decision they did. He used these answers to create a theory of moral development.
So how does morality develop? According to Kohlberg’s theory, moral development can be
broken down into three primary levels, each with two stages. The first level is Preconventional
Morality, which lasts until a person reaches around nine years old. At this level,
a child’s moral decisions are primarily shaped by the expectations of adults and consequences
for breaking the rules. What do the adults in my life think I should do? A child in
the first stage of Preconventional Morality understands morality through obedience and
punishment. Rules are fixed and absolute, and they need to be obeyed to avoid punishment.
When they reach stage two, children are able to account for an individual’s point
of view. In the Heinz dilemma, for instance, children reasoned that the ‘right’ thing for
Heinz to do was the thing that best served his needs, so it was okay that he stole the drug.
The next level of moral development is Conventional Morality. This is the level
where adolescents and adults are internalizing the moral standards they’ve learned from others.
They are able to accept authority and the norms of the group they’re a part of.
In stage three, people are focused on living up to social expectations and roles. There is an
emphasis on being a “good boy” or “good girl”, being “nice,” and having the respect of others.
Stage four is about maintaining social order. People begin to consider society as a whole
when making decisions and focus on maintaining order by following rules and doing one’s duty.
The final level in Kohlberg’s theory is Postconventional Morality. This is when
people start to understand morality in an abstract manner. People begin at stage five to recognize
that others may have differing values, opinions, and beliefs. Rules are important to follow,
but all the members of a society should work together to agree on what the rules are.
Finally, stage six is when people have internalized universal ethical principles
and abstract values like dignity, equality, and justice. They will follow these principles even
if they conflict with laws. So if we look at the Heinz Dilemma, a person at stage six might say
that Heinz was right to steal the drug. Heinz did break a rule since stealing is against the law,
but it was unjust for the druggist to charge so much money for the drug and to let Heinz’s
wife eventually die just because Heinz couldn’t pay the full price immediately.
Although it’s a decent theory, some have criticized Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
For example, moral reasoning isn’t the same as moral behavior. Just because we know what’s right
doesn’t mean we’ll do what’s right. Kohlberg also put a large emphasis on justice, and didn’t take
into account other things that might drive moral reasoning, like compassion and empathy. Still,
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development played a critical role in the emergence of moral
psychology as a field. Today, researchers continue to study how moral development
emerges and how universal the stages really are. Understanding these stages offers some insight
into how children and adults make moral choices. Of course, the manner in which morality develops
is not the only question in moral psychology. Another question asks how we actually make our
decisions. Psychologists like Jonathan Haidt and Joshua Green suggest that our
moral decisions are driven by emotional, gut reactions instead of logical reasoning.
Here’s a scenario drawn from one of Haidt’s studies illustrating this idea. Quoting now
from the study: “Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in
France on summer vacation from college. One night, they are staying alone in a cabin
near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love.
At the very least, it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth
control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love,
but they decide never to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them
feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that? Was it okay for them to make love?”
Now, most people will say that it was not okay for Julie and Mark to make love. But take a second and
try to come up with a justification for this conclusion. Why isn’t it okay? You might say,
“there could be genetic defects from inbreeding.” But they were using two forms of birth control
correctly, so it’s extremely unlikely that Julie will get pregnant. You could then say,
“There could be emotional harm.” But they enjoyed it and the act brought them closer together.
One could then say, “It’s illegal.” Not in France as long as they were consenting adults,
which they were. Finally, one could resort to, “It’s disgusting and wrong.” They didn’t
find it disgusting. Are private acts morally wrong if a lot of other people
find them disgusting? They were both consenting adults, using multiple forms of birth control,
and there was no lasting harm after the act. None of this is to condone incest of course,
it is simply to demonstrate that we can logically dismiss the most common moral
objections to incest, yet most people still find it to be morally wrong. This provides
evidence for Haidt’s point: we judge first and reason later. Moral reasoning is a way
of justifying judgements we’ve already made after an emotional gut response to a situation.
Let’s look at the gut decisions behind moral reasoning through a classic moral dilemma
known as the trolley problem. Imagine there is an out-of-control trolley hurtling down some tracks.
Up ahead, the track splits into two different paths. On the path the trolley is currently on,
five people are tied to the tracks, and the trolley is headed straight towards them.
You are standing on the side of the tracks next to a lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley will
go down the other set of tracks. On this second set of tracks, there is a single person standing.
So what do you do? If you do nothing, the trolley will continue down the original path and kill
five people. If you pull the lever, the trolley will switch tracks, saving the five people but
killing the single person on this second set of tracks. What is morally right in this scenario?
Most people who are asked this question think it’s morally right to pull the switch. After all,
only one person would die instead of the original five. You save more lives by throwing the switch.
Now let’s change the scenario a little. A trolley is still hurtling down some tracks,
headed straight towards five people who are tied up. But instead of being next to a switch,
you are standing on a bridge above the tracks next to a very large man.
If you push the large man over the bridge, he’ll fall on the tracks and will certainly
stop the trolley from running over the five people. What’s morally right in this scenario?
Set up in this manner, most people view it as morally wrong to push the man. Instead,
they let the trolley kill the five people on the track. But why? By not pushing the man,
more people die. Aren’t five lives worth more than one life? If we were to apply the same logic as
in the previous example, we should conclude that the moral decision is to push the man,
since we will save more lives that way. But our gut reaction tells us that pushing a single person
to their death is worse than letting five people get run over. Somehow the act of pushing the man
seems different than pulling a lever, even though both result in the death of someone who would not
have died, had we not acted. Because our moral judgements are often driven by these emotional
reactions and not reasoned calculations, we tend to make these less-than-ideal moral judgements.
So what’s driving these emotional, gut reactions? In many cases, our judgements and willingness
to help others is the result of empathy, a fundamental human emotion. Empathy is when we feel
the feelings and experiences of another person as if we were feeling it ourselves. Have you ever
flinched or moved your own limb when watching a movie where someone breaks their arm or leg? This
is a form of empathy. The 18th century economist Adam Smith described empathy as “When we see a
stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and
draw back our own leg or arm, and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by
it as well as the sufferer.” Empathy also allows us to experience both the happiness and misery of
other people through perspective-taking. We can put ourselves in the shoes of another and imagine
what they are feeling. Starting at birth, human infants will react with distress when they hear
the cries of other infants. After they reach a year old, they may also help others who are upset.
But what is the connection between empathy and morality? It turns out that empathy has
direct consequences for how we respond to moral dilemmas. Daniel Batson argues in his
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis that when we’re in a situation, we can either feel empathy
or think logically about an individual in need. Empathy in these scenarios leads people to care
more and offer more help. Experimentally, how people respond to the trolley problem and other
hypothetical situations is predicted by their empathy. For example, people who experience more
instinctive empathy and unease at even pretending to hurt others are much more likely to say that
pushing the man in the trolley problem is morally wrong. People who don’t have a lot of empathy
for others are much more likely to exhibit psychopathy and make more immoral decisions.
Of course, having emotional, empathetic responses don’t automatically make someone a good person.
But it seems like they are necessary and at the heart of our moral intuitions. Moral
judgement and behavior seems to be driven by basic emotional responses, and people who
lack these emotional responses seem to have very different moral judgments and actions.
Morality gets even more interesting when we put things into a societal context. Think about it, we
don’t just care about our own beliefs and actions. We care about what strangers believe and how they
act. We also treat these moral views as serious and objective. A disagreement about the best
flavor of ice cream has a very different tone than one about murder. But where does this society-wide
sense of right and wrong come from? A lot of the complexity of morality stems from how we interact
with others. Remember the prisoner’s dilemma, the trust and cooperation game we talked about earlier
in the series? We can use people’s reactions to decisions made in this game to explore where
morality might come from. For example, we feel gratitude and fondness for people who cooperate
with us in the prisoner’s dilemma. This motivates us to be nice to them in the future. In contrast,
we feel anger and distrust toward those that betray us. This motivates us to betray or avoid
them in the future. We also feel guilt when we betray someone who cooperates with us. This
motivates us to behave better in the future. These different feelings and emotions will shape how we
respond to situations and what we view as moral. So the big question is of course, where does
morality come from? Moral judgement and behavior seems to be driven by both basic intuitions,
like fairness and cooperation, and emotional responses, like empathy and anger. But to fully
account for the complexity of morality, we also need to take into account our ability to reason,
the power of social situations, and the role of culture. Morality doesn’t appear in a vacuum.
As we interact with others, we shape our moral views and our own future moral behavior. What’s
right and what’s wrong isn’t as black and white as one might first assume. But we
will have to put a pin in this discussion for now, and move on to other topics in psychology.
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