Professor Paul Bloom: Let me begin by just reminding us wherewe are in this course, reminding us of what we've done and what we haveyet to do. We started by talking about the brain, the physical basis ofthought. And then we moved to some general introductions to somefoundational ideas in the study of psychology, Freud and Skinner. Wespent a bit of time on more cognitive stuff: development, language,vision, memory. Then we took a little break and the dean told us aboutlove. Then we dealt with the emotions, rationality, and evolution, anda lot of that. What we learned particularly regarding the evolution ofthe mind provided supporting material for what follows. We learnedabout cognitive neuroscience using the study of face recognition as animportant case study--human differences, behavioral genetics, natureand nurture, sex and food. My lecture was on sex. Dr. Brownell came andspoke to us about food. Today, morality. Next week, social thought andsocial behavior, mysteries; basically, a series of topics that don'tfit anywhere in the course and really make psychologists scratch theirheads. These topics are sleep, laughter, and religion, mental illness,two lectures on madness, what can go wrong in your minds, and a lastlecture on happiness. And then you're just done. You know a lot ofpsychology and a lot of stuff and you're well prepared for yourultimate major in psychology, ultimately graduate training at a goodschool.
How many people here are either psych majors or expect to becomepsych majors or cognitive science as though you could raise your handto? Okay. Good. It's nowhere near enough [laughter] and so I'll ask thequestion again. Once you deal with happiness and then mysteries, you'rereally not going to want to--What is there? Chemistry? Anthropology?[laughter] Pre-med? Give me a break. [laughter]心理学空间]dma:Jb9F
{6qW+d8GAE2V0Okay. We're going to deal with three facets of morality. I'm goingto talk about moral feelings, moral judgments, and then moral actionwith particular focus on why good people do bad things, which will leadus to review and discuss the Milgram study, which was presented in themovie on Monday. Now, moral feeling is what we'll start off with andwe've already discussed this in a different context. The question is,'How could moral feelings evolve?" So, moral feelings we could view asfeelings of condemnation, shame, emotions like that--shame,condemnation, pride, righteous anger, but also simple affection, caringfor other people, wanting to do well by them, being upset if aninjustice is to be done by them. And you might think that the existenceof these feelings is a mystery from an evolutionary point of view. Ifevolution is survival of the fittest, nature red in tooth and claw, howcould animals evolve moral feelings? But in fact, we know the answer tothis. And there are two answers to this.心理学空间QV#|;UX7VT
#o7zD{U0One answer is kin selection. So, evolution works at a level of thegenes and because of that it could give rise to animals that arethemselves altruistic. And they're altruistic because they act topreserve other animals that share the same genes. And so, I'm not goingto spend any time on this because we've discussed it in detail, but weknow from previous lectures that people will be generous to others. Andthere's an evolutionary explanation for your generosity towards kin. Itcould be mathematically worked out. Your caring, your moral feelingstowards other creatures to the extent of the proportion of genes thatyou share with them. The most altruistic behavior of all, giving yourlife to help another, can be explained in cold-blooded evolutionaryterms. Animals that are altruistic even to the point of dying to helpanother, those genes will, under some circumstances, be preserved overthe genes of people who are less caring. And that is one force towardskindness.
.L6uaVvT!^.}$w/n0A second force towards kindness is cooperation. Even if animals areunrelated, they are nice to one another. Animals will give warningcries, they will groom one another, they will exchange food, and thereason for this is that animals have evolved, our minds have evolved,to enter into sort of cooperative situations with other people and tosurmount prisoner's dilemmas, to surmount deception and cheating. Thisgives rise to some emotion including emotions that could be viewed asmoral emotions, like guilt and anger, and again, grounds altruisticbehavior in an evolutionary perspective.
;N9X|5p%@(l0This is all by means of review but the question you can now ask is,"Fine. That's why moral feelings might evolve, but what do we know aspsychologists about the emergence in nature of moral feelings inindividuals? What's the psychology of moral feeling?" And this is anissue I'm going to talk about now but I'm going to return to next weekwhen we deal with issues such as liking and disliking, racial prejudiceand other things. But I want to deal now with a couple of interestingcase studies about moral feelings from a psychological point ofview.心理学空间W6SK$pm `QB4Qz
0U+i1_Wc0The first one I want to deal with is empathy. And empathy hasdifferent definitions but we can simply view it as the feeling thatyour pain matters to me. If you are hurt, that is, in some sense,painful for me. If you are sad, that affects my own mood. I am not aselfish creature. I am built, I am hard wired, to be attuned to yourpain. This is an old observation. Adam Smith, who is often falselyviewed as a proponent of selfishness and hardheadedness, was quiteexplicit about the pull this has. He notes:心理学空间RFrlHf3]TO1w)AQ
When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon theleg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our ownleg or arm and when it does fall we feel it in some measure and arehurt by it as well as the sufferer. If you see somebody being kicked inthe groin in a movie, you might yourself tense up. If you see somebodybang their thumb with a hammer, you might cringe.
Here is a good illustration of somebody in anticipatory pain.[laughter] Now--It's a very British face actually. [laughter] Now, weknow certain things about this empathy, some which might be surprising.The pain of others is aversive even for babies. We know this because ifbabies hear other babies crying they will get upset. The crying ofbabies is aversive to babies.心理学空间 \ q8i y|Xv'`%g
Now, some of you may be sufficiently cynical to say, "That could beexplained in other ways. For one thing, one theory is that babies hearother babies cry, because babies are so stupid they think theythemselves are crying; if they're crying they must be in some sort ofpain so they cry some more." But clever psychologists have ruled thisout. What they did was a study where they exposed babies totape-recorded sounds of other babies crying and tape recorded sounds ofthemselves crying. Babies cry more to this pain of other babies thanthey do to their own pain, suggesting that their response is to someextent a response to the "otherness" of the characters.
We know pain is--of others is aversive for chimpanzees and we knowthis in certain ways. But we know this, in particular, from a series ofstudies that would be unethical if they were to be done today. In thesestudies, they put a chimpanzee in a room and there's a lever. And whenthe chimpanzee slaps the lever, it gets some food. Trivial, smartanimal, piece of cake. But the room has a window leading to anotherroom. And in the other room another chimpanzee is placed. This secondchimpanzee is not a relative of the first chimpanzee and they've neverseen each other before. Now, when the first chimpanzee hits the leverthe second chimpanzee gets a painful electric shock, putting the firstchimpanzee in a horrible dilemma. In order to feed himself, he has totorture another animal. Chimpanzees do not starve themselves to death.It's very unlikely any of you would either but they go a long timewithout food, suggesting they do not want to cause this otherchimpanzee pain. It only works within species. So, in anotherexperiment they put a rabbit in the other room and the chimpanzee wouldslap the lever repeatedly to make the rabbit scream in pain [laughter]and jump.
[*dpDN5zr {J$c9k0Now, we've known for a long time that empathetic feeling is notlogically linked to morality. This is a point made by Aristotle. Icould see you writhing in pain. That could cause me pain but it doesn'tmean I'm going to be nice to you. I could run away from you. I couldturn my head or I could blame you for causing me this misery. But itdoes happen that emotional--that this sort of empathy does lead tomoral concern and action. If we do an experiment and we induce you tofeel empathetic to somebody, we get you to feel what they're feeling,you're more likely to be nice to them. And people differ in the extentto which they feel empathy. People differ to the extent it will hurtthem to watch me slam my thumb with a hammer. If you are high empathy,you're more likely to be a nice person than if you're low empathy,suggesting there is some connection between empathetic feeling andliking.
'z7Vq%{-sD6X0Now, empathetic feeling, like any other human capacity, differsacross people. Some of us have a lot of it. Some of us don't have muchof it. There is some reason to believe that in the population known as"psychopaths," a population we'll return to later on when we discussmental illness, this sort of instinctive empathy is broken and the painof others just doesn't bother them very much. I have some illustrativequotes here. In Damon's book, a wonderful book on psychopathy, he talksabout a thirteen-year-old mugger who specialized in mugging blindpeople. And when asked about the pain he caused his victims heresponded, "What do I care? I'm not her," which is logically correctbut, in a sense, inhuman. The fact that it's another person should makeyou care.
9`EBZ/RmC }$?0The serial killer Gary Gilmore basically said the pain of othersgratified him and caused him no unhappiness at all. "I was alwayscapable of murder. I can become totally devoid of feelings of others,unemotional. I know I'm doing something grossly--" and here is a verybad word "--wrong. I can still go ahead and do it." And Ted Bundy, wheninterviewed at one point, said he was astonished that people made sucha fuss about all of his murders because he said, "I mean, there are somany people." And if any of you here are nodding in agreement at thesesentiments, [laughter] that's not such a good sign. These areparticularly callous and cold-blooded statements suggesting that thisinstinctive empathy, this aspect of moral thought, is not--is presentin most of us but not in all of us.
The second case study of moral feeling is "in-group" and"out-group." In our affections, in our caring, who we like, who we feelclose to, whose pain bothers us, we are not indiscriminate. I care alot more about my children than I do about my friends and I care moreabout my friends than I care about strangers. We're all like that. Wealso favor our group over others in every possible way. You are amember of many groups. You are men. You are women. You're Yalestudents. You're young. You're white, you're black, you're Asian.You're a member of these groups and, as we will discuss repeatedly whenwe talk about social cognition and social behavior, this membershipmatters a lot to you. What's particularly interesting is even groupsthat are formed, that you were not born with, that are formed on thefly, exert a huge amount of control over your moral feelings and moralattitudes. And the best example of this is discussed in detail in thetextbook. And this is the Robber's Cave study. And this Robber's Cavestudy serves as a nice illustration of morality in everyday life.心理学空间+@%R:CN$]X-a#q!h
$a bh&B~_y0The study was, eleven- and 12-year-old boys at a camping program.These were well-adjusted, pretty rich kids, racially homogeneous, andthey were put into separate cabins. And the cabins were given leadersand they gave themselves names. Being unimaginative boys, they calledthemselves "The Eagles" and "The Rattlers" but as--what happened was,being separated they developed distinctive cultures. And when thesegroups were set in competition against each other, the Eagles versusthe Rattlers, the within-group intensity grew. The Eaglersbegan--Eagles began to care a lot more about other Eagles than aboutanybody else.心理学空间WJz qH8[3E
So, there's within-group solidarity. And then there were negativestereotypes. So, these groups developed different cultures. It was arandomly cut apart--kind of like Yale College is actually, where youget a random assortment of people. But despite the fact that theassortment is random, the division is random, cultures begin to emerge.The Eagles prided themselves on being clean living, not using cusswords and treating each other with respect. They viewed the Rattlers asdirty and tough and kind of slovenly slobs. The Rattlers viewed theEagles as goody-goody kids. It's cruel.
$Tg(u%M:wdn0Finally, [laughter] it all evolved into hostilities, raids andviolence. The Eagles burnt a Rattlers banner, cuss words wereoccasionally used, and so Sherif, the psychologist designing all ofthis, went, "Excellent," [laughter] and then the problem--He then says,"Now we've created two different warring cultures. That was fun.[laughter] What do we do to make them friends again? And then we figureout how to--now we've done that and this'll solve all sorts ofproblems." So they started off. They wanted to have--They set up peacetalks where a representative of the Eagle and a representative of theRattler were set to meet and plan ways so that they could disarm andstop using cuss words and everything like that. This failed. The kidswho engaged in the peace talks were ostracized by their own groups astreasonists. That failed. They decided to set up individualcompetitions like the Olympics where they--where people wouldn'tcompete as Eagles or Rattlers but rather they would compete asindividuals. That failed too. Like the Olympics, people--the teams tooktheir--they took their individual accomplishments as reflecting on thegroup and it evolved into Eagles versus The Rattlers.
They shared meals, they turned--which turned into food fights andmore cuss words. They shared movies, more fights, more cuss words. Theyshared fun with firecrackers, [laughter] which was a disastrous thingwhich nearly brought the experiment to an end. [laughter] They broughtin a religious figure to give them sermons on brotherly love.[laughter] The sermons were entirely unsuccessful. What's interestingis they--the Eagle--they took them to heart. These were good kids. Theywere respectful of religious authority but the lessons they took fromthem is "I should learn to love my neighbor." If I'm a Rattler, Ishould learn to love my fellow Rattler and appreciate him as a fellow,as a person. "I love him. It's love, not like those scummy Eagles."[laughter] They all failed.
8|5lsPD0uA0Here's what worked. Sherif told the kids--all of the kids--that thewater line to the camp was cut and they all had to defend the camp.What this did was it established a super ordinate goal, that is a goalthat everybody shared, and perhaps more important a common enemy. Thisis where the solution, by the way, to bringing together--and you couldwrite this down--to bringing together all the warring countries andreligions of this planet is an alien attack. [laughter] By the logic ofthe Sherif it will bring us all together as a group.心理学空间bfgtb#h
A different question is, there in that experiment the "groupiness"was established in a very powerful way. They lived separately, theyinteracted with each other, they had their own names. The psychologistTajfel after World War II was interested in the question of what couldmake a group. In other words, what do I have to do to you to put you ina different group from him? What do I have to do to this class--thisside of the class to put you in a different group from this side anddifferent from that side? And what would I have to do for those groupsto matter such that, for instance, if I separate you in one group andyou're in another group and I give you a hundred dollars will you givethe money more to him or to him, will you give it more to your owngroup or to another group? And what he found was you don't needmuch.心理学空间'cv&\;?I'e^
j%s$COmay0In one experiment he showed people pictures of modern art and basedon their responses he described them as Klee lovers or Kandinskylovers. Now, this is all made up. They were just random assignments butthe Klee lovers viewed themselves as more similar to other Klee lovers.They thought the Klee lovers tended to be smarter than the Kandinskylovers and the Klee lovers would devote more resources to themselvesthan to others. This is why it's called "minimal groups." You don'tneed much to make you into a group.
And in fact, later experiments just flipped a coin. So the lot--theexperiment goes like this. I ask everybody in this class to take out acoin. You all flip it. Everyone who has heads, you're one group.Everyone who has tails, you're the other group. Then I ask people inthe heads group, "Which group do you--Putting yourself aside, whichgroup on average do you think is smarter?" You'd say, "Well, you know,it kind of works out that the heads group is kind of really--heads,smart." Which group--"Here is some money. You have to distribute it."You're more likely--It's a subtle effect when you make the groups sominimal but you're more likely to give it to your own group than toothers and this suggests that moral feelings are exquisitely attunednot necessarily only to individuals but also to the psychology ofgroups.心理学空间QA:D"G u/T(v
Any questions at this point about moral feelings? Yes.心理学空间&vb5a'R-yl5o Vea
Student: How you formed the groups--How is that morality?心理学空间P"JHg.Y9m
Professor Paul Bloom: It's morality--It bears on moralitybecause it bears on--So, the question is, "How does group membership,how does that relate to the topic of morality?" And the answer is themoral feelings we're talking about are feelings like empathy andcaring. For me to have a moral feeling towards you means you matter tome. If you were to be harmed, I would view it as wrong. And the groupexperiment suggests that the extent to which these moral feelingsoperate are partially determined by the groups to which we belong to.If I'm American and you're from another country, I will viewmyself--this is a very--kind of obvious finding--my obligations to youwill be seen as less than if you were another American. If I'm a Kleelover and you're a Kandinsky lover, I don't think you quite deserve asmuch as me.心理学空间Ga3hvXyL
!uBKV?JX0Moral judgment is an area that is tremendously exciting and there'sa lot of recent research on this. By moral judgment I mean notempathetic feelings, not feelings of caring and love or approval anddisapproval, so they're not feelings of caring and love and empathy,but notions like something is good or bad, something--like something isfair or unfair. So, there are three hallmarks for moral judgments. So,suppose I say I don't like strawberry ice cream. That's an evaluation.That's a judgment but it's not a moral judgment. Why not? Because Idon't think it carries a sense of obligation. I don't think anybody'sobliged to eat or not to eat strawberry ice cream. And it doesn't carrya notion of sanctions, meaning I don't think anybody should be punishedfor eating strawberry ice cream. On the other hand, if I say I don'tlike baby killers, that actually is a moral judgment in my case. So[inaudible] I say, "Well, I don't like baby killers. You like to killbabies. I actually think we are obliged not to kill babies." If youdisagree with me, you're wrong and you should stop killing thosebabies. [laughter] Should you fail to stop killing those babies, Ithink you should be punished for killing babies." And that's what myjudgment about "no killing babies" makes it a moral judgment.
Now, some people attempted to look at this the wrong way and say,"Look. What a weird topic, morality. I don't believe in morality. Ibelieve in Nietzsche. I don't believe in ethics," but I don't believeyou if you were to say that because morality isn't--morality as we talkabout it in this context isn't just regarding your position on bigquestions like political issues or big moral questions like abortion orcapital punishment. Rather, some sort of moral judgment happens all thetime, often unconsciously. So, as you live your life you have to answerquestions like what should you eat? Any moral vegetarians here? I'mjust raising my hand to encourage people. [laughter] Okay. Anybody giveto charity? Anybody not give to charity? Good. [laughter] Differentfrom the moral vegetarians I noticed. Who do you socialize with?There's homeless people around Yale and New Haven. What do you give tothem? Do you avoid their eyes? Do you--What do you want to do with yourlife? Who do you have sex with? Under what context or conditions? Theseare moral questions.心理学空间HP;m#Yr,n4E
9E z4m Fizo+z0My favorite moral dilemma is as I'm walking down the street and Isee somebody I sort of know, do I avoid eye so we don't have aconversation [laughter] or do I say, "Hey. How are you doing?" or do Ikind of do the nod hoping that there won't be more than this nod?[laughter] And then after I leave and I say, "Oh, I should have madeeye contact with that person. I'm such a jerk. [laughter] There is ahomeless person [simulating making great eye-contact with them]"[laughter] and--but these are day-to-day moral questions we strugglewith all the time and so there's a centrality in the study of how we domoral reasoning.心理学空间_O$j/C:W'TF)X?
7` Z@Fu0So, what do we know about moral reasoning? Well, we know that thereare some universals. There are some aspects of moral reasoning thatshow up everywhere on earth. And there is some evidence, though it'snot particularly strong at this point, that these same intuitions showup in young children and in nonhuman primates like chimpanzees,capuchins, macaques and so on. And these are things like anger atcheaters, gratitude toward sharers, the sort of things you'd expect tocome out in a prisoner's dilemma, feelings that some things are rightand some things are wrong. These are foundational.