The problem with having a compass as the symbolic representation of morality is that due north is not a fixed point. Liane Young, Boston College associate professor and director of the Morality Lab, explains how context, bias, and tribal affiliation influence us enormously when we pass moral judgments.
Moral instinct is tainted by cognitive bias. Humans evolved to be more lenient to their in-groups—for example excusing a beloved politician who lines their pockets while lambasting a colleague for the exact same transgression—and to care more about the harm done close to them than harm is done farther away, for example, to people in another country.
The challenge for humans in a globalized and polarized world is to become aware of our moral biases and learn to apply morality more objectively. How can we be more rational and less hypocritical about our morals? "I think that clarifying the value that you are consulting for a particular problem is really critical," says Young.
About Speaker: Liane Young is an associate professor of psychology at Boston College, where she is the director of the Morality Lab, which specializes in moral psychology. Dr. Young’s current research focuses on the role of the theory of mind and emotions in moral judgment and moral behavior. To explore these topics, she uses the methods of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and examination of patient populations with specific cognitive deficits. Dr. Young’s insight and findings have appeared in The New York Times, National Public Radio, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, ABC News, and CBS.
What makes morality unique is that a lot of times people experience a moral judgment as
a flash of intuition or feeling, good or bad. But underneath that feeling is complex
moral psychological structure. We think that our morals are steadfast, as if they were set
in stone or inscribed in ink. But it turns out our morals are far more fluid than we'd like to believe.
Studying moral psychology allows us access to others' perspectives, that others could have
different values. And so just knowing that there is this complex space of moral psychology could
help us to understand where other people are coming from. I'm Leanne Young. I'm a psychology
professor at Boston College and in my lab we study human moral decision making.
A key question in our lab right now is what the role of reasoning is for moral psychology. So
when do people and how do people think about different principles for making moral decisions?
Morality might seem like a compass needle, always guiding us north. But as we start to
add information and context that trigger biases, the needle begins to spin. Moral cognition
depends hugely on context. So if I tell you about somebody who helped a stranger, you would say
they're much better than the person who helped their brother. But if I told you about a person
who helped the stranger instead of the brother, you wouldn't think they're very good at all. And
it turned out through the research that we did, it was really people's intuitions about familial
obligation that structured people's moral intuitions across all of these different cases.
We may say adultery is wrong, but if it's a friend who we know well who had a troubled marriage,
maybe we're more forgiving. We say stealing is wrong, but we might be more understanding of
our favorite politician when they're caught lining their pockets. We do this all the time.
The point is that there are lots of different contextual influences that contributes to
people's moral judgments. Morality has evolved with our species because of humans' practical
and psychological need for social bonds. But even early human societies began codifying
immorality into laws and norms that were meant to be applied universally.
Back in evolutionary time, people didn't interact with others across the world. We interacted with
the people in our family, the people that we could see. And so because of that, moral psychology has
developed these sorts of biases that have to do with social distance. So we think that the harm
that is being done up close and personal right in front of us matters more than the harm that is
being done to somebody across an ocean. So it shouldn't surprise us that the biases our minds
exhibit are pragmatic. The moral judgments we make about our close associates are more forgiving
and nuanced than the judgments we make of strangers. The evolutionary origin of morality
is coordination or cooperation to help people get onto the same page by pointing to common
normative principles that we can use to negotiate relationships, to organize interactions across
many different social contexts. When we examine the moral judgments of others, it's tempting to
think that we live in different worlds. But there's only one. The challenge today is that our
social contexts are far more global and complicated. So can our sense of tribal morality evolve to
encompass people outside of our tribe? And so I think learning about the psychology that drives
that experience for individuals thinking about what to do and also individuals thinking about
how to evaluate others is going to be a really important process for negotiating complex social
interactions. I think that clarifying the value that you are consulting for a particular problem
is really critical. We're all connected in some way. Between any two people in the world there's
some common value or experience. Finding that commonality could be the best path towards a
more morally consistent world. To learn more about challenging ideas like this,
visit us at templeton.org slash big questions.
