Center for Behavioral Decision Research

CBDR : Seminar Series : Seminar by Joshua Greene

What Pushes Your Moral Buttons?

	presented by Joshua Greene (Harvard)


	Thursday, April 24	link to paper
	Noon-1:15
	Porter 223D	link to Speaker's Site

	Abstract:

	In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one life in order to save several others. In many similar cases people judge such trade-offs to be morally unacceptable. I will present behavioral and neuroscientific evidence for a dual-process theory of moral judgment that partially explains this pattern of judgment: Intuitive emotional responses (sometimes) incline people to judge against such utilitarian trade-offs, while controlled cognitive processes incline people to approve of them. This is only a partial explanation because it doesn’t explain why people respond more emotionally to some cases rather than others. I will then discuss a series of behavioral experiments aimed at (a) isolating the features of harmful actions that trigger the aforementioned emotional responses and (b) understanding the cognitive mechanisms that govern these responses.

	Host at CMU: Moore