The CEL is exploring the nature of our moral sense, tackling this massively complex problem by studying different populations with a wide diversity of methods, integrating the theories of philosophy, law, economics, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Some of our core questions are:

• What are the evolutionarily ancient building blocks to the human moral sense?
• What is the relative contribution of controlled conscious processes and fast automatic intuitions?
• Are there universal properties to our moral computations, such that it makes sense to speak of a universal moral grammar?
• What are the causes of cross-cultural variation?
• To what extent does our moral sense rely upon domain-specific computations?
• What constraints operate on the young child in acquiring a moral capacity?
• Does the psychopath have a deficit in moral competence or in integrating moral knowledge with morally appropriate behavior?

This large-scale project is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Human Social Dynamics), and involves a collaboration with:

Antonio Damasio (USC), who heads the work on patients with focal brain damage

Professor Alan Leslie (Rutgers), who heads the work on normally developing young children, as well as studies of individuals with Asperger's/autism.

The main components of the project involve the following topics and collaborators:

• Comparative studies of non-human animals, including experiments on fairness, cooperation, and spite. The following species are tested:
  • Captive gorillas at the Franklin Park Zoo (Katherine McAuliffe and Brian Russ)

  

  • Dogs at Harvard's Canine Cognition Lab

  

  • Rhesus monkeys on Cayo Santiago

  

• Studies of small-scale societies presented with moral dilemmas. We are currently exploring the following populations:
• Mayans in Mexico (Linda Abarbanell)



• Hadza in Tanzania (Frank Marlowe)



 

• Studies of cooperation, fairness, and spite in young children (Peter Blake, Katherine McAuliffe)

• Studies of moral judgments in healthy adults using the Moral Sense Test, with focus on extracting the core elements of our moral grammar, exploring the causal role of emotion in mediating judgments and actions, the interfaces between morality and other domains (e.g. number, causality, theory of mind); Bryce Huebner

• Studies of economic and moral decision-making in healthy adults and patient populations (Coren Apicella, Harvard; Antoine Bechara, USC)

• Studies of moral dilemmas in a virtual reality space (Carlos Navarette, Michigan State)

• Studies of autistics to explore the relative contribution of mental states in moral judgments (D. Skuse, UCL; Alan Leslie, Rutgers)

• Studies of psychopaths, designed to explore the role of emotional deficits in moral judgments and moral behavior (M. Cima, U. Maastricht)

• The use of hypnosis to selectively suppress or enhance emotional experience in the context of judging moral scenarios (A. Raz, McGill)

• The use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to explore the causal role of different cortical circuits in moral judgments (A. Pascual-Leone, Harvard Medical School)