One Day University

We struggle with moral issues every day of our lives, as we decide how to treat our friends and family, what foods to eat, how much to give to charity, and which political party to support. Some intuitions about right and wrong are universal and automatic—everyone, for instance, believes that it is wrong to murder an innocent child. But others vary dramatically—Americans strongly disagree about whether abortion is immoral, whether gay people should be permitted to marry, and whether torture is ever acceptable. This course reviews the latest psychological research that explores what occurs in our brains when we make these moral judgments. We will examine the interplay between emotions and rationality, gut feelings and careful deliberation. And we will discuss certain lessons from unusual groups of subjects—young babies, chimpanzees, and psychopathic killers. The goal of the course is to better understand the psychological foundations of our moral sense.