The Biology of Ethics

1. The Biology of Ethics • David Mays, MD, PhD • dvmays@wisc.edu

2. Outline • Do we live by a “system” of values? If so, where did these values come from? • Fairness, empathy, logic, reciprocity, moral emotions, and genes • Do the genders differ in moral capacity? • Do the genders differ at all? • What does social science research tell us about making ethical decisions?

3. Probably Not • Many of our moral principles predate religion. • Many atheists are quite moral. • Most religions rely on simple deontological rules. (Every morally relevant act is right or wrong, regardless of the consequences vs. utilitarianism) • These rules do not explain the patterns of moral judgments that people make in test cases.

4. Preliminary Observations: • We know that women tend to be more altruistic than men, older people more altruistic than younger, students less than nonstudents, people with higher IQ’s tend to be more altruistic. But there is no relationship between any standard personality traits and altruism. • Poor people tend to be more generous with panhandlers than rich people. • Consumer capitalism makes people feel like they don’t have enough to give away.

5. The Train Problem #1 • An out-of-control train is racing toward five hikers, who are unaware that it is coming. Adam is standing by a switch and can send the train down a side track, where one hiker is hiking. • Is it morally permissible for Adam to switch the train?

6. The Train Problem #2 • An out-of-control train is racing toward five hikers, who are unaware that it is coming. Hitting a large object will cause the train to stop automatically. Beth is standing on a bridge over the track, beside a large man. • Is it morally permissible to push the man onto the track, stopping the train?

7. Moral Dilemmas: Other Examples • You are a surgeon in an ER. Five people arrive in critical condition, needing - 2 needing kidneys, one a heart, one a liver, one a lung. A healthy young person is waiting to give blood. Should you take the organs from him? • You are driving a car in the fog. Suddenly there are 5 people standing in your lane. There is one person standing in the other lane. Should you swerve and hit the one person?

8. Moral Dilemmas: Final Case • The Federal Government can either spend $2,000,000 a year on continued life support for a patient in a vegetative state, or spend $2,000,000 on famine relief, saving the lives of 50,000 people. • The child in the pond example: We are more willing to help a single individual than many. • Diffusion of responsibility and futility thinking.

9. Moral Dilemmas - Research • There is no evidence that straightforward deontological, utilitarian, or other rules account for the differences we see in the train problems. • People are confident in their judgments but are largely clueless and incoherent in trying to explain why they decide the way they do. • There is strong emotional input accompanying the decision. This emotional contribution is probably shaped by an individual’s culture, and may serve to reinforce action.

10. Human Capacities for Moral Behavior • Fairness • Reciprocity • Intuition for Social Contracts • Empathy • Moral Emotions

11. Can Other Animals Be Altruistic? • Are primates capable of altruism? In one experiment, if a rhesus monkey pulled a chain in his cage, he got food (their only food!), but also delivered an electric shock to a second monkey. One monkey stopped pulling the chain for 5 days, one for 12. • The closer a monkey was related to the other, the longer it would go without food. • One researcher saw a monkey pick up an injured starling, climb the highest tree in the enclosure, carefully unfold the bird’s wings, and loft it toward the fence to get it airborne.

12. The Dictator Game • Player 1 is given $10. • Player 1 offers some amount of money to Player 2.

13. The Dictator Game - Results • Many players offer nothing, but some offer $5. • People who play repeated games with identified people develop a reputation and generally give around $5.

14. The Ultimatum Game • Player 1 is given $10. • Player 1 then offers some amount to Player 2. • If Player 2 rejects the offer, nobody gets anything.

15. The Ultimatum Game - Results • Players punish unfair offers even at personal cost. • Responders universally reject offers at $2 or less.

16. Brain Studies of Fairness • When reciprocity fails, or the offer is unfair, imaging studies reveal significant activation of the anterior insula, which plays a role in negative emotions such as pain, distress, anger, and disgust. • When players engage in punishment, the caudate nucleus is activated, a key center for pleasurable experiences.

17. Fairness • Notions of fairness permeate almost all aspects of life. It is universal among all cultures. Human beings have the innate capacity to monitor fairness: • Some ability to keep tabs • To place values on different things • To judge when an inequity has occurred • To distinguish accidental from intentional giving and reneging • To determine if an unfair act is worthy of retribution

18. How is the Notion of Reciprocity Possible? • Innate sense of fairness • Strong sensitivity to and memory for “cheating” • Intuitions about trustworthy people • Commitment to revenge • Moral emotions: • Warmth toward kindness, giving • Guilt

19. Observations on Biological Reciprocity • Animals don’t reciprocate, or when it happens, every case involves a single commodity, in a single context, over a very short time period. • Animals don’t punish. • Unlike animals, humans can wait for days or weeks for a larger reward versus a smaller immediate reward.

20. Logic and Social Specialization • Most people find the first problem is harder than the second. • Social contracts tap a specialization that is present in all human beings. Our minds have evolved a unique specialization to understand social contracts and to detect violations. • This kind of thought operates unconsciously and automatically. The ability to detect cheaters is found even in young children.

21. Empathy • A newborn baby, barely able to see, can imitate the facial expressions of adults within 1 hour of birth. • Empathy is a kind of contagious emotional expression. As adults we speak and gesture in the same way as the person speaking to us.

22. Mirror Neurons • Neurons in the pre-motor cortex show the same level of activity when an individual reaches for an object as when he watches someone else do the same. • This also occurs when subjects imagine an action. • Recent research indicates that this system activates when we see others experiencing a disgusting event, or pain. It may underlie the experience of empathy.

23. The Moral Emotions • Pleasant emotions: • Awe • Gratitude • Love • Compassion • Acceptance • Uncomfortable emotions: • Guilt • Shame • Regret • Remorse

24. Moral Emotions • Moral emotions make it very difficult for us to separate out logic from our feelings in discussing moral dilemmas with other people. • Moral emotions are probably culturally specific in their associations with certain behaviors and reinforce behavior.

25. Problems With Morality • The family: us vs. them • Moral Disengagement

26. Moral Intuition: The Family • Genetic relatives are more likely to: • Live together • Work in each other’s gardens • Protect each other • Adopt each other’s orphaned children • Genetic relatives are less likely to: • Attack and kill each other • Those outside the “family circle” are less likely to be incorporated in the culture’s “moral thinking” - i.e. morality does not apply.

27. Moral Disengagement • People make unethical decisions when the self-regulatory processes that are normally in place are deactivated. • Eight mechanisms are typically used: • 1) Moral justification (hiring young children for work overseas is better than what might happen if they couldn’t work) • 2) Euphemistic labeling (collateral damage)

28. Mechanisms of Disengagement • 3) Advantageous comparison (I just took a little money. Some people stole a lot.) • 4) Displacement of responsibility (My boss told me to do it.) • 5) Diffusion of responsibility (Everybody does it.) • 6) Distorting consequences (The insurance company won’t miss the money.)

29. Mechanisms of Disengagement • 7) Dehumanization (us vs. them) • 8) Attribution of blame (It’s OK to torture terrorists because they brought it upon themselves.)

30. How Likely Are We to Disengage? • Empathy inhibits moral disengagement. • Cynicism makes disengagement easier. • Those who believe strongly in fate are more likely to disengage. • Those who think of themselves as moral people are less likely to disengage.

31. Gender • Are there real differences in the way men and women think about the world? • Probably. It’s just that we don’t know what they are.

32. Gender Differences • The Brain • Men have bigger brains, even adjusted for body size, than women. • Average IQ scores are equal but more males score at the very top and very bottom. • Men have more myelinated fibers (more inhibitory neurons) with enhanced localized processing. Thinking is more lateralized, focused(?) • At rest, the brain is more attuned to the outside world.

33. Gender Differences • The Brain • Women have more densely packed, unmyelinated neurons than men, more interconnections are used when problem solving, bilateral thinking. • The superior temporal cortex (important language center) is 29% larger. • Blood flow is 15% higher. • At rest, brain is more attuned to the internal world.

34. Gender Differences • The Brain • Inhibitory areas for aggression and impulsivity are larger in women (orbital frontal cortex.) • In solving a 3-dimensional maze, men use the left hippocampus (memory and spatial mapping) while women use the prefrontal cortex (landmarks and geometric cues.) Men are better are mentally rotating maps, but women are better at remembering positions and landmarks.

35. Math Differences: A Cultural Caveat • Women do better on 3-dimensional rotation tests when they are told they are naturally good at it. • Boys younger than 13 scored 700 on the math part of the SAT’s more often than girls at a ratio of 13:1 in 1983. In 2005, the ratio fell to 2.8:1. This is not “hard-wired.” • At the International Mathematical Olympiad, top rated teams from Bulgaria, Russia, and Germany have 15-20 girls. The US typically has ~3.

36. Gender Differences • Performance • Verbal abilities mature earlier in girls, mechanical/spatial thinking in boys. • Boys don’t see or hear as well as girls. In kindergarten girls are more articulate, have better handwriting, and answer questions faster. • Girls outperform boys throughout the entire educational process. (133 girls graduate from college for every 100 men.) • Women are better at reading faces and body language.

37. Gender Differences • Performance • Men are more likely to compete, especially violently, and risk their lives for status. • Men are better throwers, but women are more dextrous. • Men are better at word problems, but women are better at calculation.

38. Gender Differences • Performance • Women are more sensitive to sound and smell • Women have more intimate social relationships, are more concerned about them, and feel more empathy toward friends. They smile and laugh more. (But they are a tough audience for comedians.) In social situations, women utter twice as many words as men do. • Women are more attentive to infants’ everyday cries and are more solicitous to children.

39. Gender Differences • Pathology • In child mental health services, the patients are predominantly male, suffering from autism, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, conduct disorders, and depressive and anxiety syndromes, especially phobias, including school phobia. • Parents have more difficulties with their sons. Teachers more difficulties with boys in their classes. Boys have more problems with stuttering, dyslexia, stress headaches, stomachaches, asthma, tics, and spasms.

40. Gender Differences • Pathology • This all changes at puberty. After adolescence, virtually all the major psychiatric disorders (except substance abuse, schizophrenia, and impulse control disorders) become substantially more common in females. • Depression and anxiety are twice as common in adult women than men.

41. Gender Differences • Pathology • Friendship networks are larger in women, which acts as a buffer and a stress. • Marriage shields men against psychiatric illness, but puts women’s mental health at risk. • Women, in general, act as caretakers of spouses, children, and aging parents, and may “pay the price of caring.”

42. Gender Differences • Response to stress • When humans are stressed, oxytocin is released in the brain causing increased bonding to others, nurturing of children, and increased calming. Testosterone reduces this effect, estrogen increases it. • Men often withdraw to cope with stress - watch TV, work on a project. • Women often process stress by wanting to talk about it. (Men often don’t understand that.)

43. Gender Differences • Response to stress • Men typically interrupt and give solutions when a woman is talking about stress, and say “You shouldn’t be upset.” (This is a mistake.) • Women tend to offer advice to a man when he is not upset and may be quite happy with what he is doing. This can cause a man to “tune out.”

44. Gender Differences: Cultural vs. Biological • Men and women do not differ in moral reasoning, level of intelligence, or basic emotional traits. They share virtually all the same genes. • Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. • Men and women are from Africa.

45. Summary: The Moral Faculty • Human beings are born with the parts of a universal moral “grammar” that constrains the range of possible moral behavior. • Human capacities that allow us to care about morality include: • Fairness • Reciprocity • Intuition about social contracts • Empathy • Moral emotions

46. Summary: The Moral Faculty • Each principle generates an automatic and rapid opinion about whether an act is morally permissible or forbidden. • These principles are inaccessible to conscious awareness. • Acquiring the moral system is fast and effortless, requiring little or no instruction. • Cultures “wire” these universal capacities in specific ways, associating different behaviors with our moral emotions. They become our cultural values: e.g. autonomy, spiritual purity, etc.

47. Summary: The Moral Faculty • It is the unconscious nature of the ethical decision making process, combined with the power of the emotional content, that makes moral conflicts so intractable.

48. Morality • What works - making the most people happy in a pragmatic way? • The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. • The Silver Rule: Don’t hurt others if you don’t want to be hurt. • The Bronze Rule: An eye for an eye. • The Iron Rule: Might makes right. • The Tin Rule: Kiss up to those above you. Kick those below you.

49. The Prisoner’s Dilemma • If you will confess that you both committed the crime, and your cohort denies it, we will let you go free and punish him with 5 years. (sucker’s payoff) • If you both deny the crime, we have enough evidence to send you both to prison for 2 years. (mutual cooperation) • If you both confess, you’ll both get 4 years. (mutual treachery)

50. The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Winning Strategies • Tend to be generous, i.e. not trying to get more than your opponent • Tend to be hopeful, i.e. cooperating on the first move or in the absence of information • Tend to be forgiving, i.e. attempt to re-establish cooperation after an (accidental) defection • Don’t be a tyrant or a patsy