The Myth of Selfishness

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There's some really beautiful work by my colleagues, Julia Marshall and Paul Bloom. And this goes back to the sort of universalism versus more parochial morality. If you look at how people show favoritism in terms of thinking there's an obligation to help family and friends more than strangers, that's something that develops with age. Very, very, very young children think you are equally obligated to help a stranger versus a friend or family member in need. But it's you know, this favoritism towards people who are more close to us isn't something we're born with, it's something that we learn from our culture.

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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