Is There a Dark Side of Morality?

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A lot of the questions that we focus on disproportionately in moral psychology and in ethics are like a red herring. A lot of this is not about individuals, it's about systems. And I think over time, this creates narratives that can be self-serving. We do have a taste for revenge. It is something that I think evolved in order to, you know, at the group level, like keep the social norm machine grinding along.

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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