Moral Intuition

The New York Times reported yesterday on some of Jonathan Haidt's work on the evolutionary roots of human morality. Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, wrote about some of his research in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Greater Good.

The Times piece discusses Haidt's interest in "the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding--when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why."

Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

In exploring our moral intuitions, Haidt has identified five components of morality that are common to most cultures. Two--preventing harm to others and reciprocity/fairness--concern treatment of individuals. The other three promote behaviors geared toward strengthening one's group: loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity. The article goes on to explain the political dimension of some of the research Haidt has conducted with a grad student, Jesse Graham:

They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity. Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective
of individuals.

Haidt makes some pretty provocative claims about the relationship between moral intuitions and political beliefs. I'd be curious to see how he gauged people's opinions of these different moral systems. It seems to me there's a chance that liberals might actually "attach greater weight to moral systems protective of individuals," and assign less importance to group interests like respect for authority, simply because they self-identify as liberals. That is, as liberals, they know they're supposed to demonstrate a preference for individual rights and have a knee-jerk reaction against words or concepts (like "loyalty" and "authority" ) that are associated with conservatives, especially with the current administration). Real-world political allegiences might bias their responses and misrepresent these people's true moral beliefs and behaviors.

Either way, the Times piece, and Haidt's website, are worth checking out. For more on the evolutionary basis of our moral judgments, check out the work of Joshua Greene at Harvard, which I blogged about a few months back.

Altruistic birds vs. altruistic humans

Reports the Washington Post:

A just-published study of birds reports new insights into the evolution of altruistic behavior. It suggests that sometimes the greatest beneficiaries are neither those giving or receiving alms, but those whose main job is the care and feeding of the neediest members of the population.

It is believed that about 10 percent of bird species show "cooperative breeding" behavior, in which one or more mated pairs produce chicks, which are then fed not only by the parents but by other birds sharing their territory. The helpers are usually nonbreeding males from the female's broods of the previous year - the brothers of the hatchlings they are helping to feed...

To find out what motivates this behavior, a team at the University of Cambridge in England "looked at what happened before the baby birds hatched. They compared the eggs laid by females that had helpers with those laid by solo females":

They found that fairy-wrens with helpers produce eggs with less fat, protein and carbohydrate than eggs produced by females that do not have helpers. The hatchlings of those "lite" eggs are smaller than normal chicks, but their initial scrawniness is quickly overcome by the extra food brought by the nonbreeding helpers.

The one who benefits is the mother.

Cooperatively breeding females have a 1-in-5 chance of dying over the next year, compared with a 1-in-3 chance for females without helpers. This is presumably because they are slightly healthier and stronger, having expended less energy to produce their eggs and feed their young. Their longer life span, in turn, gives them a chance to leave more offspring behind, the ultimate measure of evolutionary success.

"The mothers are stealing child care from their current young and spending it on their future young," Kilner said.

What might this say about humans? Maybe nothing. It's simply another clue in solving the mystery of why altruism exists in nature and how cooperation emerges among members of a species.

However, there are parallels with human behavior. The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has pointed out how cooperative child rearing has been essential at certain points in human history--for example, in hunter-gatherer societies--when fathers and adults besides the parents had to take a strong role in the care and feeding of young children. In an essay that will appear in the September issue of Greater Good, I speculate that cooperative child rearing (or alloparenting) is making a comeback in American cities, driven by the geographic and social isolation of new families, rough economic parity between men and women, and the hight cost of quality childcare.

Taxation without Vexation

A new study published in Science suggests that paying your taxes might actually make you feel good. Researchers gave students at the University of Oregon $100, then recorded their brain activity when they were given the chance to make anonymous donations to a food bank with some of that money. When they made their donations, the areas of their brains that lit up were the same as those associated with pleasure and reward. That finding is consistent with similar research, such as that conducted by James Rilling of Emory University, suggesting a link between altruism and positive emotions.

But the researchers here also sometimes levied a tax on the money they'd given out, telling their participants the taxed money would also go to the food bank (which it did). They found that the brain activity was the same, though not as strong, as when people gave money on their own accord.

Reporting on this finding in today's The New York Times, John Tierney writes that the results "bolster the case for 'pure altruism'"--as opposed to altruistic acts performed for selfish motives--"because the student paying the tax could not take personal credit for deciding to feed the hungry." In other words, even though they received nothing in return for their money--not even recognition for their generosity or the personal satisfaction of knowing they'd tried to do something nice for others--the participants still felt good.

Tierney quotes Ulrich Mayr, one of the study's authors, as saying, "The most surprising result is that these basic pleasure centers in the brain don’t respond only to what’s good for yourself. ... They also seem to be tracking what’s good for other people, and this occurs even when the subjects don’t have a say in what happens.”

motivating power of the greater good

An inspiring example from the journals of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, leader of the failed Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916:

"The thought of those fellows on Elephant Island kept us going all the time. It might have been different if we'd had only ourselves to think about. You can get so tired in the snow, particularly if you're hungry, that sleep seems the best thing life has to give. But if you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going. That was the thought which sailed us through the hurricane and tugged us up and down those mountains [of South Georgia Island]... and when we got to the whaling station, it was the thought of those comrades which made us so mad with joy that the reaction beats all effort to describe it. We didn't so much feel that we were safe as that they were saved."

Here's a link to the James Caird Society, named after the small lifeboat that carried Shackleton and five others 800 miles across Drakes Passage to South Georgia Island in the depths of an Antarctic winter.

Human Nature Redux, Redux

Following up on Jeremy Smith's post (below) about David Brooks's recent column in The New York Times, he and I, along with Greater Good co-editor Dacher Keltner, sent this letter to the Times:

To the Editor:

In his Feb. 18 column, “Human Nature Redux,” David Brooks would have us believe that there's no such thing as "natural human goodness"--that human genes condemn us to lives of evil and nastiness. Yet cutting edge research supports the opposite conclusion: that we are wired to be good.

Consider these empirical findings: When people perform altruistic acts, the same regions of their brain light up as when they receive rewards or experience pleasure; humans are equipped with specialized "mirror neurons" that enable us to empathize with others; we produce the hormone oxytocin, which promotes social bonding, trust, and generosity; and activation of our vagus nerve, a bundle of nerves near the spinal cord, increases compassion and cooperation.

Indeed, contrary to Mr. Brooks's ill-informed column, these scientific findings reveal the deep biological roots of human goodness—which promote the kindness and cooperation vital to human survival and progress.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley;
Co-editor, Greater Good magazine

Jason Marsh
Co-editor, Greater Good magazine

Jeremy Adam Smith
Managing Editor, Greater Good magazine

See Something/Do Something Day

We've already blogged about the heroic altruism of Wesley Autrey (aka the NYC "Subway Superman") as a perfect example of someone who has transcended "the psychology of the bystander"--the theme of the latest issue of Greater Good.

Now a group of people, inspired by Autrey, have launched a new holiday called See Something/Do Something Day.

Mark your calendars: The first ever See Something/Do Something Day is this Saturday, February 17th. Here's how the folks behind SSDS Day describe their idea:

"You see something in distress, do the right thing. You know? Help out." Wesley Autrey, the New York City resident who leapt to the aid of a young man in the path of an oncoming train, said that. He saw someone in need. He did something. He saved a life. On February 17, we hope you will do something, too. See Something/Do Something Day is an effort to open all of our eyes to the needs we sometimes choose not to see: the homeless man with no breakfast. The schoolyard with no kickball. The elderly neighbor with no ride to the grocery store. The block where no one stops to clean the littered sidewalks. On See Something/Do Something Day, we hope you will see what you want your world to be. And then we hope you will do something to help create it. For more ideas on what you might see and do, talk to your friends, neighbors, and community members, and see the ideas posted at www.seesomethingdosomething.com. Feb. 17. See Something? Do Something.

In an email, the group's founder, Betsy O'Donovan, added,

We're actively soliciting stories about SSDS activities (and supporting photos or similar) to share ideas and progress. We're in this for the long haul and hope to see the idea gain ground as the years go by.

The concept is simple, but that's part of what makes the whole premise so radical: It's a grassroots effort to induce other people to overcome the powerful bystander effect. That's especially appropriate given how the bystander effect feeds on itself. The more people who witness a crisis, the less likely any one of them will respond to it, as they assume someone else will take action. So SSDS Day runs that kind of social influence in reverse, turning potential bystanders into real-world heroes--and (hopefully) inspiring more of us to follow their example.

Bystanders in the News, Pt. 2

In the 1960s, the late Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted one of psychology's most famous and controversial experiments. He wanted to test how willing the average person would be to obey an authority figure, even when instructed to perform morally dubious acts that violated his or her conscience. Inspired by recent revelations of Nazi war crimes--his first study began around the time that Adolf Eichman went on trial--Milgram wanted to test the idea that, if placed in certain situations, many seemingly good people would be capable of evil deeds.


Study participants were instructed to give a shock to someone in another room each time that person failed to get an answer right on a memory test. (The shocks weren't real, but the participants didn't know that.) The "shocks" supposedly got more intense with every wrong answer; when participants would hesitate, someone in a lab coat would instruct them to proceed. Before the experiment, Milgram's colleagues guessed that 1-2 percent of participants would go all the way to administer the most lethal shocks. His actual results were, well, shocking: 62.5 percent of the participants were willing to keep giving shocks until there were no more shocks to give, even after the shock recipient begged, pleaded, and then become eerily silent.


Milgram's experiment is very relevant to our latest issue of Greater Good, with its focus on "the psychology of the bystander." We wanted to explore why moral people, often influenced by group dynamics, often don't take moral action when it's called for, especially when it involves coming to the aid of someone in distress; we also wanted to try to understand the psychological and social factors that do induce some people to perform altruistically and even heroically when put to the test.


Of course, we were curious to see how we'd hold up in many of the scenarios described in our issue--like seeing people beaten, bullied, or just in need of some spare change--and we also wondered whether people today would in general fare any better than Milgram's subjects did in the '60s.


ABC News took it one step further: They worked with a psychologist at Santa Clara University to recreate Milgram's methods, albeit in a slightly more ethical fashion.





They ran their story about the results last month, just as our bystander issue was coming out. Read their story to check out their results. But in a nutshell: not much as changed.

Bystanders In the News

Our latest issue of Greater Good magazine came out this month, featuring several essays about "the psychology of the bystander." We look at the factors that do--and don't--induce people to come to the aid of others in a crisis situation.

Just before this issue came off the press, the front page of The New York Times told the story of Wesley Autrey, a man who leapt onto the NYC subway tracks to save a stranger who was having a seizure... while a train was approaching the station... while Autrey's two little daughters stood on the platform. A few days later, the Times's Week in Review section included an article that discussed research on the bystander phenomenon, interviewing many of the same people featured in our issue. (Autrey was later honored in President Bush's State of the Union address.)

I won't go until all the factors that may or may not contribute to bystander action or inaction--for that you'll have to read the issue--but one thing I found notable was that Autrey served in the Navy. In an article my co-editor, Dacher Keltner, and I wrote for this issue of Greater Good, psychologist John Darley mentioned how a person's past experiences might determine whether or not they come to someone's aid in the future--i.e., someone accustomed to making snap decisions in a crisis might be more likely to intervene rather than remain a bystander. Darley remembered how one particular participant in one of his studies reacted when Darley and his colleagues pumped (benign) smoke into the room where this guy was sitting, to see how he (and other participants) would react to that sign of danger.

Darley recalled how the guy "got the hell out [of the room] and did something, because of his past experiences." And what "past experiences" was Darley referring to? The man's stint in the Navy, where his ship once caught on fire.

So is military service the key to not acting the bystander? No, but I don't think this should necessarily be dismissed as coincidence, either. Do people who are prone to risk their lives for others join the Navy, or does the Navy make people more willing to risk their lives for others? I don't know that either is true, but I don't doubt there's some connection--do you?