Is This Illegitimate or Legitimate?

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I think there is a backlash that comes from the speed because we are used to, you know, social or moral progress or change happening over a course of decades. And what we are seeing now is a much, much faster time scale. Some people who are just responding to this as if this is illegitimate. I identify more as a moral constructivist. So even though the wellspring of our morality is something built into us or learned at such a young age that we can't think about it, that doesn't stop us from being rational about it as we mature and hopefully think more wisely.

Most of us strive to be good, moral people. When we are doing that striving, what is happening in our brains? Some of our moral inclinations seem pretty automatic and subconscious. Other times we have to sit down and deploy our full cognitive faculties to reason through a tricky moral dilemma. I talk with psychologist Molly Crockett about where our moral intuitions come from, how they can sometimes serve as cover for bad behaviors, and how morality shapes our self-image.

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Molly J. Crockett received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge. She is currently Associate Professor of Psychology and University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

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