Moral Psychology

One goal of moral psychologists is to understand the cognitive processes that support and influence human moral judgment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this task has proven to be quite daunting. Moral psychology, as well as moral philosophy and anthropology have revealed great diversity in human moral judgment. Moral philosophers have debated ethics for centuries, yet to this day display a wide diversity of opinion on what a correct solution is. Anthropologists have also documented diversity in moral judgment, only across different cultures – what is moral in some cultures is seen as extremely impermissible in others. Still further, psychologists have used the tools of cognitive neuroscience (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging) to show that individual differences in cognitive processes greatly affect moral judgment. Historically, psychologists have dealt with this diversity by focusing on the unifying aspects of morality, studying commonalities in moral judgment across individuals and cultures. Many moral judgments are robust to different demographic factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, and religion. For example, intent plays a consistent role in people of all ages' moral judgment (e.g. intending to harm someone is worse than accidentally harming someone). Also, in the trolley dilemma (a popular philosophical scenario), an overwhelming majority of participants judge turning a runaway trolley away from a track with five people on it to a track with one person on it to be permissible, but pushing a man off a bridge onto the tracks to stop the trolley to be impermissible (even though both cases trade one life to save five). While these approaches have rendered understanding moral judgment a tractable problem, many complexities in moral judgment are left unresolved. No comprehensive model or 2 taxonomy of moral judgment thus far has accounted for its full diversity. Some models call for a division of the moral space based on the content or kind of moral violation. We judge those who harm others, those who cheat and steal, those who betray their family, friends, and country, those who are disrespectful and disobey authorities, and even those whose actions do not necessarily affect others but instead render themselves " impure, " such as consuming taboo foods. Each of these acts may represent a distinct area of moral judgment. Other models carve up morality in terms of the nature or structure of the relationships affected by the violation. For example, how one should act toward another depends on whether the target …