What lies at the heart of moral decision-making?

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If there were an Olympics of university teaching, I’d expect Michael Sandel to place highly. Sandel is a professor at Harvard University and teaches an extraordinarily popular course on ethics (you can watch it on YouTube – look for “What’s the right thing to do?”). He opens it with the following scenario: You’re driving a tram, and the brakes fail. Ahead, you see five people working on the tram line who will certainly be killed if you hit them. You can’t stop the tram, but there is a sidetrack coming up, and although there’s still a single worker on that line, you can divert your tram. So … is it okay to cause the death of one person but save five others? This scenario has been around since the 1960s and is routinely used by moral philosophers. Typically, the answer to the question above is “yes”. But what if you’re not the driver of the tram, but a spectator on a bridge overlooking the track, and can see the tram is going to kill five people. You’re not on the tram so there’s nothing you can do … until you notice someone standing next to you, leaning out to look directly over the track. If someone were to fall from the bridge onto the track, the tram would be stopped …

In contrast with the first case, most people say “no” to this version. But why? How is it different? These questions are interesting not just for philosophers but also for psychological researchers. For example, Joshua Greene, also at Harvard, argues the two scenarios activate different neural paths involving different levels of emotional activation – we’re able to be more dispassionate as the tram driver than as the bystander. Princeton’s Susan Fiske has also asked these questions in the coffin-like confines of a functional MRI machine, finding unsurprisingly that although we’re willing to sacrifice someone to save the lives of five people, the decision isn’t an easy one. Scans show greater-than-usual activation of the parts of the brain associated with complex trade-off decision-making (the prefrontal and occipital frontal cortices, for those interested). Looking at pictures of homeless people (as potential victims) was associated with less activation of relevant brain regions, however.

The trolley-car scenario originates outside psychology, but consider this one, originally proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg, author of one of the most influential theories of how we develop our moral decision-making gear: Heinz’s wife is sick. The prognosis is bleak, but Heinz hears someone has developed a cure. However, the developer is charging ridiculous amounts for the cure, far more than it costs to produce, and Heinz can only pull together half the money he needs. Does he have an obligation to break in and steal the drug? Should he steal the drug even if he doesn’t love his wife, or the ill person is someone he doesn’t know?

Kohlberg used the answers to this (and other questions) to argue there are stages to the development of moral decision-making:

• naive moral realism: following rules, avoiding punishment;
• pragmatic morality: maximising benefits while minimising negative consequences for oneself;
• social shared perspectives: consideration of what other people will think, and how you’ll feel;
• social system morality: anticipation of dishonour, rather than simply disapproval, and culpability;
• human rights and social welfare morality: reference to societal values and rights; anticipating self-respect and respect of the community; and
• universal ethical principles: consideration of interrelatedness of social agents; actions are consistent with one’s own moral principles.

We move through these as we get older, though not everyone reaches the highest stage. The theory was not without criticism, but has been very influential in thinking about moral development. Sadly, it’s likely Kohlberg took his own life after years battling the effects of a chronic parasitic infection. Perhaps, the ultimate moral dilemma.