The Neuroscience of Moral Decision Making

By Molly Crockett
Edge Video Series
Originally published November 18, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

The neurochemistry adds an interesting layer to this bigger question of whether punishment is prosocially motivated, because in some ways it's a more objective way to look at it. Serotonin doesn't have a research agenda; it's just a chemical. We had all this data and we started thinking differently about the motivations of so-called altruistic punishment. That inspired a purely behavioral study where we give people the opportunity to punish those who behave unfairly towards them, but we do it in two conditions. One is a standard case where someone behaves unfairly to someone else and then that person can punish them. Everyone has full information, and the guy who's unfair knows that he's being punished.

Then we added another condition, where we give people the opportunity to punish in secret— hidden punishment. You can punish someone without them knowing that they've been punished. They still suffer a loss financially, but because we obscure the size of the stake, the guy who's being punished doesn't know he's being punished. The punisher gets the satisfaction of knowing that the bad guy is getting less money, but there's no social norm being enforced.

The entire video and transcript is here.

Creating a 'morality pill' more a question of ethics than science

By Katie Collins
Wired
Originally posted May 16, 2014

Is there any way that we could create a drug that would make us moral? This is the question Molly Crockett, neuroscientist at Oxford University, posed to the crowd at a Brain Boosters event organised as part of the NERRI Project in London this week.

Crockett was tackling the subject of neuro-enhancement -- the idea that we could potentially use science to make our brains in some way better. Much of the discussion at the event revolved around intelligence, but Crockett instead chose to tackle the subject of personality -- and more specifically, morality.

The entire article is here.

Social brains on drugs: tools for neuromodulation in social neuroscience

Molly J. Crockett & Ernst Fehr
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci (2013)
doi: 10.1093/scan/nst113
First published online: July 24, 2013

Abstract

Neuromodulators such as serotonin, oxytocin, and testosterone play an important role in social behavior. Studies examining the effects of these neuromodulators and others on social cognition and behavior, and their neural underpinnings, are becoming increasingly common. Here, we provide an
overview of methodological considerations for those wishing to evaluate or conduct empirical studies of neuromodulation in social neuroscience.

The entire research article is here.

Thanks to Molly Crockett for making this available.