Neuroscience on Moral Judgement and Behavior

Neuroscience on Moral Judgment and Behavior

Moral judgment and behavior are utilized throughout our everyday lives whether we realize ourselves making these decisions consciously or unconsciously. We as human beings base our actions on our judgments which play a crucial role in how we live our lives. There are many factors that affect our moral judgment and behavior such as gender, personality, habits and many more. There are also neurochemical systems and pathways that play a huge role in our moral decision making that explain the happenings on a neuronal level. 

Dr. Joe Vukov in his talk discusses the importance of examining morality through different mechanisms in our brain and how moral ethics and neuroscience are much more interconnected than people assume. He discusses research done by Molly J. Crockett, “Neurochemical Modulation of Moral Judgement and Behavior.” Crockett's research takes a more critical look into the mechanisms behind everyday moral judgment and behavior by taking a look into what really happens in our brains in our neurochemical pathways. Crockett manipulated the serotonin system to showcase how that had an influence on moral judgment and behavior. Crockett and researchers utilized serotonin for this experiment because as Crockett puts it, “prosocial and antisocial behaviors are likely precursors for human morality.” (Crockett, 237) Crockett brings up the point that serotonin is an easily modifiable neurotransmitter which is why it is a neurotransmitter to manipulate for the purpose of this study. Crockett concluded that moral judgment is not “fixed” rather “malleable” and can be altered based on neurotransmitter levels of stress and other factors. This point is rational because of how different each person is. Crockett says that most people would like to think it is easy to just believe that there is a neurochemical way all functions work but in reality that's just not the case based on her research. She concludes through her results that there really, in fact, is not an accurate way to determine a“normal” level of serotonin in a person to base them as morally ethical or morally unethical due to the extreme fluctuation of neurochemical factors that are present in each person. There is no concrete answer to conclude that question. 

Research done by Terry Hill at the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco also looked at moral judgment behavior and how it applies to clinicians making moral judgments on patients in the hospital setting. In her article, “How clinicians make (or avoid) moral judgments of patients: implications of the evidence for relationships and research,” Hill mentions that clinicians have readily encountered with their patients on a day to day basis concerning moral judgment and behavior. She goes into discussing a variety of examples of nurse and physician cases where moral judgment was utilized in critical situations concerning a patient's life and how different people display that through different behaviors. An example in particular she uses is the variation in clinicians based on habits, personality, and behavior. This crucial aspect Hill says is one way that determines how moral judgment can vary from person to person. This connects to Crockett’s point of different people having different levels of serotonin and neurochemical factors that are constantly fluctuating thus making it hard to create a baseline for a “neutral” or “normal” level of morality. Hill mentions gender to be one key factor in how moral judgment and behavior fluctuate from clinician to clinician and in her article, she states, “female physicians said they liked their patients more than male physicians did. Patients agreed that female physicians liked them better and also said that they liked female physicians more than they liked male physicians.” (Hill, 1) This is just one of many factors that are showcased unconsciously when making moral judgments in a real-life setting. 

To conclude, Crockett’s findings applied to the example in the hospital setting in some ways where her findings were displayed through real behaviors and decision making. It showcased that different people have different serotonin and dopamine levels and their neuromodulator levels are constantly fluctuating therefore there really isn’t one way of determining if a person is at a neutral or normal level of morality other than the predetermined factors made by society such as the pro-social and anti-social factors mentioned in Crockett's reading earlier. Both of these studies showcased how different neurochemical manipulations can vary from person to person and how levels of serotonin can affect each person differently based on other factors. Crockett took her approach in the neurochemical route explaining deeper the reasons behind how these manipulations cause people to act in such ways and why we make the decisions while Hill applied this concept to the real world. These studies overall contributed to new expansive research that is being done to explain philosophical and ethical issues on a more neurochemical level which are very crucial in understanding more on moral judgment and behavior. 

Work Cited: 

Hill, T. E. (2010, July 9). How clinicians make (or avoid) moral judgments of patients: implications of the evidence for relationships and research. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2914676/.

Liao, S. M. (2016). Moral brains: the neuroscience of morality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.