08.03.2010

Meta-ethics: On Emotions, Responsibility and Determinism

Christopher B. Germann

University of Plymouth

Faculty of Science and Technology

Department of Psychology Ψ

This paper will discuss the role of emotions in moral judgments. It will be

argued that emotions form the fundamental basis of morality. This distinctive

approach comes from David Hume and has been elaborated in important ways

by Peter Strawson. Recent results from cognitive, clinical, social, developemental

and neuroscience providing converging empirical support for this perspective

on morality will be presented. Moreover, both philosophers employ a kind of

emotion based defense of moral responsibility. Therefore issues concerning moral

responsibility and determinism will be adressed.

mail@christopher.germann.de

“The hypothesis which we embrace is plain.

It maintains that morality is determined by

sentiment. It deﬁnes virtue to be whatever

mental action or quality gives to a spectator

the pleasing sentiment of approbation.... If

you call this metaphysics, and ﬁnd any-

thing abstruse here, you need only conclude

that your turn of mind is not suited to the

moral sciences.”

~ David Hume, EPM, Appendix I ~

2 CHRISTOPHER B. GERMANN

The thesis of the Scottish philosopher David Hume

(1711-1776) is that our moral judgments are based on

our emotional reactions (but see Sutherland, 1976).

Contratry to Hume, many philosophers (i.e., Emanuel

Kant) followed a normative approach to ethics. Nor-

mative ethics is concerned with questions about “how

should we live” and “what are the principles we should

we live by”. Hume, on the other hand, follows an-

other branch of ethics or moral philosophy that tries

to ﬁgure out the nature of morality itself: “What

makes something right or wrong”. This approach is

focused on the fundamental nature of morality and

moral judgment and it is called meta-ethics (see Gar-

ner & Rosen, 1967). One central tradition within

meta-ethics holds that ultimately morality is based in

the emotions (Ayer, 1936; Stevenson, 1944). Hume is

probably the best known advocate of this approach

to morality which is sometimes called sentimentalism

(Slote, 2003). On his view we have the moral convic-

tions that we do because of the emotional responses

that we have. If we had really different emotional re-

sponses we would have really different moral convic-

tions. Part of Hume’s sentimentalist view of moral-

ity is that our emotions drive our judgments about

right and wrong and that emotions provide the foun-

dations for our moral capacities. Hume only offered

philosophical arguments for this, but recently there

has been a wave of research that looks like it supports

at least some parts of Hume’s view that emotions play

a critical role in moral judgment (see appendix A for

some results from neuro-imaging studies).

Emotions and moral

judgment

A famous experimental paradigm used to inves-

tigate moral decision making is the trolley dilemma

(Thomson, 1976, 1985; Greene et al., 2009). The

trolley dilemma is a thought experiment in which

participants are asked to give their judgement with

regard to two scenarios. In the ﬁrst scenario (see

Figure 1) the trolley is running out of control down a

track. Unfortunately ﬁve people are tied to the track

and the trolley is about to overrun them. However,

participants are told that they can ﬂip a switch, which

will redirect the trolley down a different track. Only

a single person is tied to that track. The question is:

Should you ﬂip the switch?

Figure 1. The question is: Should you ﬂip the switch

in order to save the ﬁve people?

In the second scenario (see Figure 2), as before,

the trolley is about to overrun ﬁve people. In this

version of the thought experiment participants have

to imagine themselves standing on a bridge under

which the trolley will pass. Moreover, a tall and heavy

man is standing on the bridge aswell and the only way

to stop the trolley in order to save the live of the ﬁve

people is to push that man over the bridge onto the

track. The question is: Should you push the man?

Figure 2. The question is: Should you push the man in

order to save the ﬁve people?

In a formal mathematical sense these are absolutly

equivalent choices (you kill one in order to save

ﬁve). However, in the ﬁrst case you do nothing more

emotionaly soiling than pull a lever. In the second

case you use your own hands to push the person onto

the track. Even though from an economic standpoint

both scenarios are absolutly equivalent people are

three times more likely to pull the lever than to

pushwith their own hands. These ﬁndings have

been cross-validated by investigating over 200000

individuals from more than 100 countries (Miller,

2008). Typically individuals ﬁnd it hard to come up

with a compelling justiﬁcation for the incongruent

decissions they make. It has been argued that this

indicates a dissociation between judgments and jus-

tiﬁcations (Cushman et al., 2006; Hauser et al., 2007;

Mikhail, 2007). The judgments people make conform

in different ways to utilitarianism and deontology.

Utilitarian’s say what you should do in both cases is

save the people. But deontologists do not agree. In

the case where you would have to push the guy you

should not do so because that’s wrong (Greene &

Haidt, 2002).

One of the really interesting things that has hap-

pened just in the last several years is that researchers

began to examine whether the emotion are involved

in these kinds of judgments. These investigations

are based on the idea of modifying the emotional re-

sponses. The undelying logic is that when people say

that it is wrong to push the guy it is because their emo-

tions are telling them that. That’s the part that ﬁts

with Hume’s view that the emotions are at the core

of morality (see also Haidt, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008).

In a recent clever fun study conducted by Valdesolo

& DeSteno (2006) the researchers induced emotions

THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 3

to investigate this hypothesis experimentally. In this

study one group of participants saw a clip from Satur-

day Night Live that was apparently very funny and an-

other group saw a clip of a Spanish ﬁshing village that

was not funny at all. What the investigators found was

that participants that saw the Saturday Night Live clip

were more likely to say that it is okay to push the guy of

the footbridge relative to those that saw the clip of the

Spanish village. So it looks like by changing the emo-

tions people have one can change the kinds of moral

judgments that they make.

There is even more compelling evidence for Hume’s

view that emotions lie at the heart of morality. Re-

searchers found that people who have diminished

emotional capacities also showed different patterns

of moral judgment. One patient population that has

been studied in this context has natural occurring

damage to an area of the brain known as the ventral-

medial-prefrontal cortex

(another population are

people diagnosed as psychopaths, but see appendix

B). We already know from previous work (A. Dama-

sio et al., 1990; Anderson et al., 1999) that damage to

that area is associated with diminished emotional re-

sponses. They gave these kinds of tasks like the foot-

bridge dilemma to patients that have damage to this

area of the brain (Koenigs et al., 2007). What the re-

searchers found was that they were more likely to say

it is okay to push the guy of the footbridge relative to

controls. So they basically gave more utilitarian judg-

ments.

What is important from a Humeian perspective is

that it looks like not having the emotions that nor-

mal people have has an effect on how they make their

moral judgments. The fact that they have damage

to emotional regions of the brain affects their judg-

ments about what the right thing to do is (see Moll

et al., 2005, 2008, for comprehensive reviews). So

this gives some evidence that suggests that Hume was

right about how moral judgment actually works. It

looks like the emotions do play an important role in

moral judgment and it is likely that we would have

radically different views about right and wrong if we

had radically different emotions. Hume also holds

that there is no further deeper justiﬁcation for moral

beliefs. In contrast to many other philosophers be-

fore and after Hume he maintains that moral beliefs

don’t have any rational basis. He argues that there

is no objective morality that stands apart from our

emotions. Our moral understanding does not come

from logic or reason. Moreover he thinks that any

attempt to ground it in logic or reason or proof is

just hopeless and that we will never have a proof of

morality. Nonetheless, Hume still thinks that it is ap-

propriate to follow our moral beliefs since that’s the

fundamental basis of morality (Nichols, 2004). There

will be nor replacement of morality that does not de-

pend on the emotions. A nicely ﬁtting analogy is aes-

thetics. If you come to think that your judgments

about beauty are guided by your emotional reactions

does that make you think “Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have

those judgments of beauty”? If somebody convinces

me that the reasons why I like classical music is be-

cause that music has an emotional effect on me I

would never say “I guess then that music must not

be any good”. I wouldn’t stop regarding something

highly aesthetically just because I found out that emo-

tions have a lot to do with it. Neither, according to

Hume, should I give up those kinds of emotion based

aesthetic judgments and the same goes for moral-

ity. Coming to appreciate that morality has an emo-

tional basis shouldn’t make you think that “Oh, then I

give up morality”, according to Hume’s view (Nichols,

2004). That naturally extends to the case of moral re-

sponsibility. Our ideas of moral responsibility, Hume

suggests, also depend on the particular emotions we

have (Nichols, 2007a). If we had different emotions

we would not have the same notions of moral respon-

sibility. So how do the emotions play in to moral re-

sponsibility? According to Hume, if a person performs

a vicious act that will naturally lead others to feel emo-

tions of blame and resentment towards him (Nichols,

2004).

Taken together, that’s a really quick picture of

Hume on the sentimental basis of morality includ-

ing the sentimental basis of moral responsibility. How

does this play in the debate over determinism and re-

sponsibility?

Moral responsibility

Hume has a defense of moral responsibility that

draws on the idea that the emotions are really im-

portant in judging responsibility. He thinks when we

recognize the role of emotions in moral responsibil-

ity we can see that questions about determinism are

just beside the point. A modiﬁed example of this

view goes like this: Imagine you get slandered by a

colleague. Will your emotions be tempered by the-

oretical reﬂections on determinism? Hume puts the

question in the following way: “A man who is robbed

of a considerable sum; does he ﬁnd his vexation for

the loss anywise diminished by these sublime reﬂec-

tions (about necessity)?” (Hume, 1743/1955, content

in brackets added). Hume doesn’t even bather to an-

swer the question because he thinks it is so obvious.

The obvious answer is “No”. The emotions are a natu-

ral response to vicious acts like slander or theft. No

sophisticated philosophical theory about determin-

ism is going to get in the way, Hume argues (Nichols,

2004). The big question is whether a victim in this case

The ventral-medial-prefrontal cortex is a frontal region

of the brain just above the eyes. Phineas Gage had damage

to this brain area (but see H. Damasio et al., 1994; Sanfey,

Hastie, et al., 2003). To put it a bit oversimpliﬁed, these pa-

tients behave like “Vulcans” they cannot bring their emo-

tions into play (but see Charland, 1998; Cohen, 2005).

4 CHRISTOPHER B. GERMANN

should ﬁnd his vexation diminished by thinking about

the necessity of all things. So that the question be-

comes: Should thinking about determinism diminish

our vexation? Hume puts the burden on his opponent.

If the victim doesn’t ﬁnd his vexation diminished why

should he stop resenting the person? Why should you

think that resentment is incompatible with necessity?

Given that reﬂecting on determinism won’t effect our

emotions of blame, Hume says, we should see that the

emotional reactions are really compatible with deter-

minism (Nichols, 2007a). From this point of view, the

doctrine of determinism is irrelevant to these emo-

tional responses. Since emotional responses are the

basis for morality there is no other authority for moral

right and wrong. That provides a strong presumptive

case for sustaining our resentment (Nichols, 2007a).

In the early 1960 the English philosopher Peter

Strawson (1919-2006) developed a similar view and

this view has been very inﬂuential over the last sev-

eral decades (Nichols, 2007a). He defends the propri-

ety of holding people morally responsible (P. Straw-

son, 1962). He focuses on cases where morality most

directly inﬂuences our lives. Every single day we in-

teract with people. We encounter our friends, neigh-

bors, colleagues, et cetera. Every single day we have

emotional reactions to people we interact with. We

feel gratitude, resentment, moral outrage, forgiveness,

love, and so forth. Strawson calls this “reactive atti-

tudes” (P. Strawson, 1962, p.18). They are natural re-

actions, as he says, to the good will or ill will or indif-

ference of others towards us (P. Strawson, 1962). We

react with resentment if we feel that a person’s action

reveals that they don’t respect us and with gratitude

if we think that they have shown a positive attitude

towards us. Strawson argues that the attitudes of re-

sentment and gratitude reﬂect the fact that we hold

the individuals morally responsible for their actions

(Nichols, 2004). For example, if another student in-

sults me I will feel resentment. Strawson argues that

this emotional reaction carries with it the implication

that I regard him as responsible for his action. The

notion of responsibility is built into this reaction of

resentment. When I feel grateful for a friend’s kind-

ness it is because I think he is morally responsible for

his kindness. In short, he says, that these kinds of at-

titudes like resentment and gratitude presuppose the

responsibility of the person toward whom we are re-

acting. Strawson says that these kinds of attitudes are

sensitive to some qualiﬁcation (McKenna & Russell,

2007). Sometimes we will excuse an individual be-

cause we think his offending action was accidental.

Suppose that someone hits you in the face with his

elbow but he didn’t mean to. You would excuse him;

you wouldn’t blame or resent him. But one feature of

excuses, Strawson declares, is that you do not give the

guy a “carte blanche”. He is still an appropriate target

for resentment but in this particular case he has a free

card. Sometimes though, Strawson argues, we will ex-

empt someone. We will think that a given person can

never be resented because they don’t have the right

faculties to be an appropriate target for resentment

(but see McKenna & Russell, 2007, p.6). Young chil-

dren are a good example for such a case. Sometimes

we see adults get indignant at very young children

and it can seem really inappropriate. Imagine a situa-

tion where a 2 year old intentionally spills his orange

juice over your laptop. it is easy to imagine the almost

reﬂective resentment you experience. But then you

would step back from the heat of the moment thinking

that the kid is not old enough to be someone you can

resent. But even with adults we might conclude that

a particular person is exempt from being held respon-

sible. Someone can be exempt because he is psycho-

logically deranged or because he has severely limited

mental capacities (McKenna & Russell, 2007). In that

case, Strawson argues, one takes an objective attitude

toward the individual (for example, he is a subject for

treatment). Under these circumstances I can fear the

person or maybe I can be disgusted by his actions but

I can’t resent him because he doesn’t meet a minimal

standard. it is not appropriate to resent him because

of his limitations. Following Strawson, these are the

kinds of things that do effect whether we resent some-

one. We either can exempt an individual because they

have severe mental limitations or we can excuse some

particular action they perform as an accident. Those

are the kinds of reasons that lead us to check our re-

sentment. By contrast, he writes, our resentment is

not sensitive whether determinism is true (P. Straw-

son, 1962). He says determinism is not the right thing

to temper resentment at all because it does not ﬁt

into either category (excuses or exemptions). Obvi-

ously it is not an excuse because excuses only apply

to particular actions and determinism is a global the-

sis. So it would be silly to say every particular bad ac-

tion gets excused like it is an accident. So then, Straw-

son argues, the only possibility is that determinism

would provide a general exemption (everybody gets a

free pass). Strawson says that this doesn’t even make

sense. The whole point of exemptions is that they are

special cases. He writes, “it cannot be a consequence

of any thesis which is not itself self-contradictory that

abnormality is the universal condition” (as cited in

McKenna & Russell, 2007, p.26). The idea is that ex-

emptions are unusual special cases. To say that deter-

minism makes every case a special case doesn’t make

any sense. Furthemore, Strawson explores the general

issue of determinism and responsibility and he con-

siders two questions. First, he says, if we came to be-

lieve in determinism would we give up the reactive at-

titudes? Second, if we came to believe in determin-

ism should we give it up? For the ﬁrst question he

says that it is “practically inconceivable” (P. Strawson,

1962, p.12). it is inconceivable that we put this into

practice. He is echoing Hume here when he argues

that the reactive attitudes are just too central to what

THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 5

we care about to be displaced by some theoretical be-

lieve like determinism. He says that the human com-

mitment to participation in ordinary interpersonal re-

lationships is too deeply rooted for us to take seri-

ously the thought that a general theoretical conviction

might change our world. So here Strawson is mak-

ing an empirical prediction that people wouldn’t give

up their emotions because of determinism (see also

Haji, 2010). Is Strawson right about that? Well, it is

hard to get clean evidence on this. In Calvinistic soci-

eties, for example, it was assumed that predestination

was true. In their view everything was predetermined

but they had no trouble blaming people. They con-

tinued to blame people even though they believed in

determinism (Nichols, 2007a). The essential question

is whether we should give up the reactive attitudes if

we believed in determinism? Strawson says, the only

way to make this decision would be “in the light of

an assessment of the gains and losses to human life”

(P. Strawson, 1962, p.14). Would it diminish or enrich

human live to give up the reactive attitudes? Would

it diminish or enrich human live to suppress them or

should we let them continue as they are? Those are the

questions that face us. Strawson doesn’t say that these

are bad questions; he says only that when we try to an-

swer these questions the status of determinism is irrel-

evant (Nichols, 2007a). This gives a very different way

to defend compatibilism. He is saying is that deter-

minism is irrelevant to whether a person is responsi-

ble. If the action was an accident that’s relevant. If the

person is very young, that’s also relevant to whether

they are responsible. Determinism, on the other hand,

doesn’t matter. That means that determinism would

be no obstacle to a person being morally responsible.

That is of course the central element of compatibilism

(McKenna, 2009).

Perhaps the best know response to Peter Straw-

son comes from his son Galen Strawson (G. Straw-

son, 1994). He agrees that the reactive attitudes like

resentment are central to our lives (Nichols, 2007a).

He also agrees that they presuppose moral respon-

sibility. So, Galen Strawson thinks that feelings like

resentment and gratitude are core to our emotional

lives and that when we feel resentment that feeling

of resentment presupposes that the person we resent

is morally responsible (Nichols, 2004). On all that he

is in agreement with Strawson the elderly. But Galen

Strawson claims that when I resent someone under

the presumption that he is morally responsible I also

presume that he is not determined. He says that the

idea that responsibility is incompatible with deter-

minism is enshrined in the reactive attitudes them-

selves (Nichols, 2007a). So just as Peter Strawson says

that reactive attitudes like resentment have the no-

tion of responsibility built in Galen Strawson says that

the reactive attitudes have incompatibilism built in

(Nichols, 2004). He writes “What is more, the roots of

the incompatibilist intuition lie deep in the very reac-

tive attitudes that are invoked in order to undercut it.

The reactive attitudes enshrine the incompatibilist in-

tuition. .. ” (G. Strawson, 1986, p.89). His view is that

these emotions really are sensitive to whether deter-

minism is true. Our resentment is affected when we

start to think that people’s actions are determined.

One example that suggest that our emotions are

sensitive to concerns about determinism comes from

the live of a ruthless murderer named Robert Al-

ton Harris (Nichols, 2007a) who was executed in San

Quentin’s gas chamber in 1992 (California Depart-

ment of Corrections and Rehabilitations, 2007). In

1978 Harris abducted two sixteen year old boys from

a fast food restaurant and he made them drive to

a secluded area where he killed them. After killing

them Robert Harris ate the rest of the boys’ half-eaten

cheeseburgers. He bragged about how he had killed

them and laughed at what it would be like for the po-

lice telling the families of the victims that the boys are

dead. This story triggers a feeling of moral disgust and

outrage. At ﬁrst glance “Harris is an architypal can-

didate for blame” (McKenna & Russell, 2007, p.128).

One subsequently discovers some details about Harris

bad childhood and that he had been neglected by his

mother and regularly beaten by his father.

Harris sister reported that his mother hated him

and that Robert never experienced any affection from

his mother: “He wanted love so bad he would beg for

any kind of physical contact . . . he would come up to

my mother and just try to rub his little hands on her leg

or her arm. He just never got touched at all. She‘d just

push him away or kick him. One time she bloodied his

nose when he was trying to get closer to her” (as cited

in Watson, 1987, p.273).

Despite the efforts of psychologists to prevent the

execution the California governor Pete Wilson con-

cluded, "As great as is my compassion for Robert Har-

ris the child, I cannot excuse or forgive the choice

made by Robert Harris the man .. . we must in-

sist on the exercise of personal responsibility and re-

straint by those capable of exercising it. If we excuse

those whose traumatic life experiences have injured

them–but not deprived them of the capacity to exer-

cise responsibility and restraint–we leave society dan-

gerously at risk” (as cited in Golden, 1999, p.270).

Some claim that after hearing about the terrible

childhood of Robert Harris the resentment diminishes

(Nichols, 2007a). This, they claim, occurs because

we lose conﬁdence that Harris really deserves to be

blamed. Once we have some idea about what let him

to be the way he is we start to regard him as being

less responsible. Before we learned about his upbring-

ing we suppose that he really deserved the resentment

that we felt towards him (Nichols, 2007a). But once

we get the picture about how he ended up that way it

changes our sense that he really deserves our reactive

attitude. This sensitivity to the causal history might

just be a particular vivid example that illustrates a

6 CHRISTOPHER B. GERMANN

more general point. Namely, once we get a glimpse of

a deterministic story it undercuts our resentment (but

see Pereboom, 2007). So if we came to think about

every person they were always inevitably let to their

actions we would likely feel less resentment towards

everyone. That is the view that is promoted by Galen

Strawson. It is plausible that our anger and resent-

ment would be muted if we came to view someone’s

criminal behavior as entirely a product of their genes

and environment. But it is possible that this emo-

tional muting is a sophisticated response. Peter Straw-

son might still be correct that we have a strong gut re-

action to wrongful behavior and that this gut reaction

itself doesn’t care about determinism. That is, it might

be that we feel moral outrage and resentment at a base

level and this base level is entirely insensitive to lofty

thoughts about determinism. This is actually a com-

mon feature of emotions. An emotion like fear can be

triggered by simple stimuli like a big picture of a hairy

spider. The fear system naturally produces a response.

But then the smart reﬂective system can say to the

fear system “it is just a picture dummy”. That mod-

ulates the emotional reaction by dampening the fear

response. Similarly it might be that reﬂections on de-

terminism dampen the natural automatic outrage we

feel when we hear about Harris (for further considera-

tions on dual-process approaches see for example Za-

jonc, 1980; Greene et al., 2004, 2008; Saunders, 2009;

Evans, 2009). We still get the initial feeling of outrage

but then we convince ourselves that this gut-level feel-

ing is inappropriate. If this is the right story about how

determinism deﬂates our moral anger towards Harris

there remain very interesting questions about which

emotional reactions should be embraced. Is our gut

reaction of anger better or is our reﬂective muting of

that emotion better? According to Strawson the elder,

to answer this we might ones again have to answer the

question: What would the gains and losses be for hu-

man live if we favor our immediate reaction over the

reﬂective one? What would the gains and losses be if

we favor the reﬂective reaction? To me it is not ob-

vious that the gains and losses would favor the more

reﬂective one.

Conclusion

To sum up, this paper discussed the big question

where our sense of moral right and wrong ultimately

comes from. A multitude of ﬁndings from different re-

search areas give credit to the notion that morality is

based on the emotions. In addition, this paper pre-

sented a philosophical perspective on moral respon-

sibility that comes from Hume and Peter Strawson. It

is an ambitious approach to defend moral responsi-

bility and it is far from established. I would like to

end by remarking on something particularly interest-

ing and important about this kind of emotion based

defense of moral responsibility. Hume and Strawson

are not arguing that we should redeﬁne our notion of

free will. They argue that we should retain our notion

of responsibility. We should keep blaming people the

way we do because it is so deeply infused to our emo-

tional live and our attitudes that are central to our ev-

eryday lives. That is why we should keep them around

and why determinism provides no basis for undercut-

ting them.

THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 7

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Appendix A

Empirical evidence from neuro imaging studies

supports the notion that emotions are involved in

moral judgements. For instance, in a study by

Singer et al. (2006) participants observed how people

who had either played fair or unfair in a prisoner‘s

dilemma game got punished with electric shocks.

The researchers found that brain regions associated

with negative emotion were highly activated when

fair players were punished and less active when un-

fair player were punished. Another study by San-

fey, Rilling, et al. (2003) investigated the emotional

responses of participants in an ultimatum game.

The investigators reported an increase in neuronal

metabolism in brain areas associated with emotions

when unfair behaviour was perceived. In an interesst-

ing study by Heekeren et al. (2003) participants had to

evaluate wether sentences were sematically or morally

correct. When participants judged the moral content

the emotional structures of the brain (i.c., ventrome-

dial prefrontal cortex, posterior superior temporal sul-

cus) showed an increase in activity. Moreover, Moll,

Oliveira-Souza, Bramati, & Grafman (2002) found in-

creased metabolic activity in brain areas associated

with emotions when participants heared emotional

offensive sentences relative to neutral sentences. In

a related study using fMRI Moll, Oliveira-Souza, Es-

linger, et al. (2002) scanned participants while they

were viewing pictures of emotionally charged scenes

with and without moral content as well as emotion-

ally neutral pictures. The reseachers reported that

the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the supe-

rior temporal sulcus are recruited by viewing scenes

evocative of moral emotions. In another interesting

study, Moll et al. (2003) instructed participants to indi-

cate wether a moral sentence or factual sentence was

right. An example of a incorrect moral sentence would

be “They electrocuted an innocent person”, whereas

an example of an factual incorrect sentence would be

“Trees are made of plastic”. The data conﬁrmded the

predictions of the researchers. Emotional areas were

more active when participants had to make moral

judgements relative to non-moral judgements.

Recently, Prehn et al. (2008) investigated individ-

ual differences in moral judgment competence. They

found that participants moral judgment competence

The shocked persons were of course confederates of the

experimenter and no real electric shocks were delivered to

them.

The ultimatum game (Güth & Yaari, 1992) is often used

in economic experiments. Two players have to decide how

to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The ﬁrst

player proposes how to divide the sum between the two

players, and the second player can either accept or reject

this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player re-

ceives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is

split according to the proposal.

THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 11

was related to the left ventromedial prefrontal cor-

tex and the left posterior superior temporal sulcus

when participants had to judge social norm viola-

tions. A conceptually related study by Berthoz et al.

(2006) examined whether the amygdala is activated

when participants are judging their own moral viola-

tion of social norms. The researchers asked partici-

pants to evaluate the inappropriateness of social be-

haviours. Particpants had to judge situations in which

they themselves, or someone else, transgressed so-

cial norms either intentionally or accidentally. In-

creased amygdala activity was found when partici-

pants judged their own intentional transgression of

social norms. The investigators concluded that the

amygdala is associated with affective responses to

moral transgressions.

Bechara et al., 2000 focus on the role of the or-

bitofrontal cortex in decision making and emotional

processing. After reviewing the literature the re-

searchers concluded that the orbitofrontal cortex

plays an essential role in a neural networks respon-

sible for decision making and emotional processing.

Using meta-analytic methods Phan et al. (2002) con-

cluded that there are certain structures which are reg-

ularly associated with emotions. These structures in-

clude the orbitofrontal cortex, the temporal pole, the

insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. In other

words, emotions coincide with moral judgments.

Recently Harenski et al. (2010) hypothesized a dif-

ferential activation in medial prefrontal areas for im-

plicit and explicit moral tasks. In their study partic-

ipants viewed unpleasant pictures, half of which de-

picted moral violations. Half of the participants were

instructed to judge moral violation severity (explicit

task) while the other half had to indicate whether

the picture was taken indoors or outdoors (implicit

task). The results conﬁrmed the hypothesis of the

researchers. Increased ventromedial prefrontal ac-

tivity was observed when participants performed the

explicit task compared to the implicit task. How-

ever, both groups showed an increase in temporo-

parietal junction activity when presented with pic-

tures of moral violations.

However, it has been remarked that the data is

inconclusive and that the conclusion that emotion

is necessary for making moral judgments is not

justyﬁed due to the correlational nature of the data

(i.e., Huebner et al., 2009).

Appendix B

Another line of evidence comes from psychopathic

individuals. The emerging evidence suggests that psy-

chopaths have an emotional deﬁcit.

In order to cat-

egorize a person as psychopathic clinicians often use

the 20-item psychopathy checklist (Hare, 1980, 2003;

Hare & Neumann, 2008). Examples from the check-

list are, for example, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of

empathy, failure to accept responsibility for your own

actions (Harpur et al., 1988; Salekin et al., 1996; Hob-

son & Shine, 1998; Neumann et al., 2007). People

who score high on these traits are categorized as psy-

chopaths (see also Schroeder et al., 1983).

Psychopathy is not equivalent with diagnoses of

antisocial personality disorder (American Psychiatric

Association, 1994) but it represents subset of this

disorders. In addition to diagnostic criteria for

antisocial behaviour psychopathy is marked by emo-

tional impairments (i.e., lack of guilt). The American

Psychological Association (1994) gives the following

description in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

of Mental Disorders (DSM IV):

“Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder

frequently lack empathy and tend to be callous,

cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights,

and sufferings of others. They may have an inﬂated

and arrogant self-appraisal (e.g., feel that ordinary

work is beneath them or lack a realistic concern about

their current problems or their future) and may be

excessively opinionated, self-assured, or cocky. They

may display a glib, superﬁcial charm and can be

quite voluble and verbally facile (e.g., using technical

terms or jargon that might impress someone who is

unfamiliar with the topic). Lack of empathy, inﬂated

self-appraisal, and superﬁcial charm are features

that have been commonly included in traditional

conceptions of psychopathy that may be particularly

distinguishing of the disorder and more predictive

of recidivism in prison or forensic settings where

criminal, delinquent, or aggressive acts are likely to be

nonspeciﬁc” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994,

p.703).

In some groundbreaking work in the 1990s James

Blair (see Blair et al., 2005) showed that psychopaths

respond atypically to standard kinds of questions

about morality. There is a large body of work in devel-

opmental psychology (Piaget, 1932; Kohlberg, 1971;

Turiel, 1983) that shows that children can distinguish

between classic moral violations (i.e., hitting some-

one) and classic conventional violations (i.e., talking

in class) (see Nichols, 2007b). In general children rate

conventional violations as less serious than moral vio-

lations (Blair, 1997a). When children are asked why is

Psychopaths have no deﬁcit in their reasoning abilities.

Their IQ scores are normal and their cognitive architecture

is mainly intact (but see Cleckley, 1941; Salekin et al., 2004)

12 CHRISTOPHER B. GERMANN

it not okay to talks during class they would normally

say something like because it is against the rules.

Whereas, if kids are asked why is it wrong to hit some-

one they would say because someone gets hurt (Nun-

nerwinkler & Sodian, 1988; Nichols, 2002; Nichols &

Folds-Bennett, 2003). Blair (1997b) found when he

did experiments with children who had psychopathic

tendencies that these children responded differently

relative to normal children when asked some of these

questions. In particulars, children with psychopathic

tendencies were more likely to say well, if there is no

rule against hitting than its okay to hit.

Moreover,

Blair (1995) found that adult psychopathic criminals

also responded different to these kinds of questions

compared to non-psychopathic criminals. In a par-

ticular study which was conducted in England, Blair

conducted experiments with psychopaths and non-

psychopath murderers and he asked them the stan-

dard moral conventional kinds of questions. When he

asked “why is it wrong to hurt other people” the non-

psychopathic individuals gave the normal response

“because you shouldn’t hurt other people”. In con-

trast, when he asked psychopaths the typical response

was “it is not the done thing” which is the British

equivalent to “you’re not supposed to”. What Blairs

studies show is that psychopaths fail to appreciate the

deep feeling of wrongness that we all have to certain

violent actions (Spiecker, 1988). We all take these feel-

ings as very serious and important and they are not

dependent on any external rules (Nichols, 2007b).

This lack of appreciation of the difference between

moral violations and conventional violations is cap-

tured in a remark by the psychopathic serial killer Ted

Bundy who was sentenced to death and executed in

1989 (Federal Burau of Investigation, 2005). In inter-

views from prison he listed a number of things that he

said are wrong.

He said: “It is wrong for me to jaywalk. It is wrong

to rob a bank. It is wrong to break into other people’s

houses. It is wrong for me to drive without a driver’s

license. It is wrong not to pay your parking tickets. It is

wrong not to vote in elections. It is wrong to intention-

ally embarrass people” (Michaud & Aynesworth, 1989,

p.119).

Ted Bundy, presumable inadvertently, is revealing

something deep about his psychology. Normal people

would never equate jaywalking and bank robbery . By

fusing all this together he illustrates exactly the point

made by Blair’s studies. Psychopaths have serious de-

ﬁcient understanding of moral violations. They do not

appreciate the gravity of moral violations. However,

it seems as if they are able to differentiate right from

wrong. All the things in Bundys list are wrong but it

seems as if “Bundy does not distinguish between the

radiacally different kinds of wrongs” (Nichols, 2004,

p.76). He does not differentiate between conventional

and moral violations. Psychopaths fail to appreciate

the distinctive character of moral wrongness and this

is something that normal people do from a very young

age (approximately 3 or 4 years) (Blair, 1997b; Knafo

et al., 2008). Blair et al. (2005) offer an emotion based

explanation for why psychopaths show this pattern of

response. He maintains that it results from a lack of

emotional responsiveness and he investigated this by

showing emotionally distressing pictures (i.e., a cry-

ing child) to psychopaths and normal adults (Blair et

al., 1997). Physiological measures show that normal

adults react with heightened physiological responses

when shown these pictures. However, psychopaths

show signiﬁcantly less physical responses than non-

psychopaths. That suggests that they are less sensitive

to cues of suffering than the rest of us (Nichols & Var-

gas, 2008). Using brain monitoring instruments Blair

and his collegues found that psychopaths have abnor-

mally low activity in the amygdale which is associated

with emotional responses (Stevens et al., 2001). Blair’s

theory is that the problem with psychopaths moral

understanding is due to their deﬁcient emotional re-

action (Blair, Sellars, et al., 1995). This gives the basis

for a scientiﬁc characterization of psychopaths hav-

ing a mental disease or defect which is perhaps genet-

ically determined (Viding et al., 2005). Recent ﬁnd-

ing suggest that there is some genetic abnormality

in these individuals that leads them to have abnor-

mal development of the amygdale (Patrick et al., 1997;

Hariri et al., 2005). Consequently, these individuals

show a defect in emotion processing and in particu-

lar emotion processing of suffering in other people.

Following Blair’s theory, our emotional responses to

others suffering plays a critical role in developing a

normal appreciation of the wrongfulness of violent of-

fences (Blair et al., 2005). it is because we have these

feelings that we assign such signiﬁcance to hitting

and killing other people. Because psychopaths have

a diminished capacity for emotional processing they

fail to develop a normal sense of the wrongfulness of

harming and killing others (Nichols & Vargas, 2008).

Recently it has been noted that it is questionable if

psychopaths should be held morally and legally re-

sponsible (Shoemaker, 2007, 2009). It is agueable that

they do not meet the criteria for legal sanity at all (Her-

pertz & Sass, 2000; Nichols & Vargas, 2008). Indeed,

one term that has been used to describe psychopaths

it that they are moral-insane (Ellis, 1902; Blair, Jones,

et al., 1995).

To sum up, psychopaths criminally hurt people be-

cause they have a deﬁciency in their emotional sensi-

tivity to others pain. But perhaps this deﬁciency was

never under their control because it was largely the re-

sult of genetics. Thus, it is thinkable they shouldn’t

be held morally or legally responsible for their crimi-

Children with psychopathic tendencies were compared

to children with other behavioral and developmental prob-

lems and the difference was still signiﬁcant (see also Fisher

& Blair, 1998).

THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 13

nal acts of violence. One argument against this is that

psychopaths only have a diminished understanding of

morality. it is not completely absent. The data (i.e.,

Blair, 1997b) shows that children with psychopathic

tendencies do distinguish the moral violations from

the conventional ones. It is just diminished when

compared to other children. It could be argued that

having some minimal understanding of morality is

sufﬁcient to meet the test of sanity.

Another question is if psychopathy is a mental ill-

ness at all because psychopaths often view themselves

as totally normal (Nichols, 2004). The psychologist

Linda Mealey (1955-2002) is not a mental illness. It is

not the product of brain damage or anything like that.

She proposed that psychopathy should be seen as bi-

ological trait which can be advantageous (for the psy-

chopath not for us). She draws on the idea of what

is termed an “evolutionary stable strategy” (Mealey,

1995). In game theory, for example, what’s best for

a given individual will depend on the other members

of the population (for further considerations see Book

& Quinsey, 2004). This can also be said for geneti-

cally ﬁxed traits (Mealey, 1997). Mealy argues that if

everyone is sympathetic to other people than that is

an opportunity for a new group to evolve. This group

can exploit the sympathetic behavior of others. This

is comparable to a biological niche that is available.

It might have been a natural evolutionary develop-

ment for psychopaths to emerge and, if that is right,

that psychopathy is not a neuropsychological disor-

der or a developmental disorder. It is a trait that basi-

cally works to take advantage of the rest of us (Glenn &

Raine, 2009). Of course this is really speculative but it

makes clear that it remains an open question whether

psychopathy is a mental disease or defect or simply a

different way of being.