Just Babies (30 page)

  
31
  
“third-degree incest”:
W. Saletan, “Incest Is Cancer,”
Slate
, December 14, 2010.

  
32
  
viewing disgusting images led to more negative implicit attitudes toward homosexuality:
N. Dasgupta, D. A. DeSteno, L. Williams, and M. Hunsinger, “Fanning the Flames of Prejudice: The Influence of Specific Incidental Emotions on Implicit Prejudice,”
Emotion
9 (2009): 585–91.

  
33
  
exposing people to a bad smell—a fart spray—made them report less warmth toward gay men:
Y. Inbar, D. A. Pizarro, and P. Bloom, “Disgusting Smells Cause Decreased Liking of Gay Men,”
Emotion
12 (2009): 23–27.

  
34
  
greater sensitivity was associated with more conservative attitudes:
Y. Inbar, D. A. Pizarro, and P. Bloom, “Conservatives Are More Easily Disgusted Than Liberals,”
Cognition and Emotion
23 (2009): 714–25.

  
35
  
students’ disgust sensitivity scores correlated with their implicit attitudes about homosexuals:
Y. Inbar, D. A. Pizarro, J. Knobe, and P. Bloom, “Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Intuitive Disapproval of Gays,”
Emotion
9 (2009): 435–39.

  
36
  
We are now disgusted by anything that threatens our self-image … and reminds us that we are animals:
P. Rozin, J. Haidt, and C. McCauley, “Disgust,” in
Handbook of Emotions
, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 642.

  
37
  
“a stratagem adopted to cordon off the dominant group”:
Martha C. Nussbaum,
Hiding from Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 16.

  
38
  
Physical cleansing is part of the rituals of many religions:
For a review, see S. W. S. Lee and N. Schwarz, “Wiping the Slate Clean:
Psychological Consequences of Physical Cleansing,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
20 (2011): 307–11.

  
39
  
We see this connection as well in language:
Bloom,
Descartes’ Baby.
For discussion of how children use the language of disgust, see J. Danovitch and P. Bloom, “Children’s Extension of Disgust to Physical and Moral Events,”
Emotion
9 (2009): 107–12.

  
40
  
the Macbeth effect:
C.-B. Zhong and K. Liljenquist, “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing,”
Science
5792 (2006): 1451–52.

  
41
  
a follow-up study:
S. W. S. Lee and N. Schwarz, “Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths: Embodiment of the Moral-Purity Metaphor Is Specific to the Motor Modality Involved in Moral Transgression,”
Psychological Science
21 (2010): 1423–25.

  
42
  
And this cleaning actually did help to alleviate guilt and shame:
Lee and Schwarz, “Wiping the Slate Clean.”

  
43
  
reminders of cleanliness make subjects more disapproving toward acts like watching pornography:
C.-B. Zhong, B. Strejcek, and N. Sivanathan, “A Clean Self Can Render Harsh Moral Judgment,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
46 (2010): 859–62.

  
44
  
In comparison to those who didn’t get purity reminders, these subjects rated themselves as more politically conservative:
E. Helzer and D. A. Pizarro, “Dirty Liberals: Reminders of Cleanliness Promote Conservative Political and Moral Attitudes,”
Psychological Science
22 (2011): 517–22.

  
45
  
an ethics of divinity:
R. A. Shweder, N. C. Much, M. Mahapatra, and L. Park, “The ‘Big Three’ of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity), and the ‘Big Three’ Explanations of Suffering,” in
Morality and Health
, ed. Allan M. Brandt and Paul Rozin (New York: Routledge, 1997), 138.

  
46
  
Elliot Turiel defines morality:
Elliot Turiel,
The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 3.

  
47
  
Jonathan Haidt defines it:
Haidt,
Righteous Mind
, 270.

  
48
  
a poetic plea for kindness to the handicapped:
Lev. 19:14 (King James Version).

  
49
  
“the wisdom of repugnance”:
Leon Kass, “The Wisdom of Repugnance,”
New Republic
, June 2, 1977, 20.

  
50
  
My own view is different:
See also Bloom,
Descartes’ Baby;
Nussbaum,
Hiding from Humanity.

6. FAMILY MATTERS

    
1
  
Family Matters:
A very preliminary version of this chapter was published as P. Bloom, “Family, Community, Trolley Problems, and the Crisis in Moral Psychology,”
Yale Review
99 (2011): 26–43.

    
2
  
mother and son:
Alison Gopnik,
The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

    
3
  
Our best theories of adult moral psychology have little to say:
John Doris and the Moral Psychology Research Group, eds.,
The Moral Psychology Handbook
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

    
4
  
Philosophers in this area are split into two main camps:
For an accessible summary, see Michael Sandel,
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

    
5
  
“reflective equilibrium”:
John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

    
6
  
The philosopher Peter Unger offers a scenario:
Peter K. Unger,
Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), cited in Peter Singer, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,”
New York Times Magazine
, September 5, 1999.

    
7
  
a runaway trolley case:
P. Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” [1967], in
Virtues and Vices
, ed. Philippa Foot (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978); J. J. Thompson, “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem,”
Monist
59 (1976): 204–17.

    
8
  
most people intuitively feel that these cases are different:
For review, see G. Miller, “The Roots of Morality,”
Science
320 (2008): 734–37.

    
9
  
the Doctrine of Double Effect:
A. McIntyre, “Doctrine of Double Effect,” in
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Fall 2011 Edition), ed. E. N. Zalta,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/double-effect
.

  
10
  
the work of the psychologist Lewis Petrinovich and his colleagues:
P. O’Neill and L. Petrinovich, “A Preliminary Cross-Cultural Study of Moral Intuitions,”
Evolution and Human Behavior
19, no. 6 (1998): 349–67.

  
11
  
John Mikhail did a series of studies:
The dissertation was published as John Mikhail,
Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  
12
  
a paper in
Science
that used brain-imaging techniques:
J. D. Greene, R. B. Sommerville, L. E. Nystrom, J. M. Darley, and J. D. Cohen, “An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment,”
Science
293 (2001): 2105–8.

  
13
  
a wave of trolley-problem research:
For review, see G. Miller, “The Roots of Morality,”
Science
320 (2008): 734–37.

  
14
  
all neurologically normal people … between the switch case and the bridge case:
F. Cushman, L. Young, and M. Hauser, “The Role of Conscious Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgments: Testing Three Principles of Harm,”
Psychological Science
17 (2006): 1082–89; Mikhail,
Elements of Moral Cognition.

  
15
  
Even three-year-olds … will tend to say that throwing the switch is the right thing to do:
S. Pellizzoni, M. Siegal, and L. Surian, “The Contact Principle and Utilitarian Moral Judgments in Young Children,”
Developmental Science
13 (2010): 265–70.

  
16
  
a universal moral faculty analogous to the universal grammar:
Mikhail,
Elements of Moral Cognition;
Marc Hauser,
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006).

  
17
  
language and morality differ quite sharply:
P. Bloom and I. Jarudi, “The Chomsky of Morality?,” review of
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
, by Marc Hauser,
Nature
443 (2006): 909–10.

  
18
  
Greene and his colleagues:
J. D. Greene, F. A. Cushman, L. E. Stewart, K. Lowenberg, L. E. Nystrom, and J. D. Cohen, “Pushing Moral Buttons: The Interaction Between Personal Force and Intention in Moral Judgment,”
Cognition
111 (2009): 364–71.

  
19
  
One clever study looked at effects of cues as to the race of the characters:
E. L. Uhlmann, D. A. Pizarro, D. Tannenbaum, and
P. H. Ditto, “The Motivated Use of Moral Principles,”
Judgment and Decision Making
4 (2009): 476–91.

  
20
  
In another study, people were given trolley problems after seeing a humorous clip:
P. Valdesolo and D. DeSteno, “Manipulations of Emotional Context Shape Moral Judgment,”
Psychological Science
17 (2006): 476–77.

  
21
  
the dense trolley literature “makes the Talmud look like Cliff Notes”:
Kwame Anthony Appiah,
Experiments in Ethics
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 91.

  
22
  
fruit flies of the moral mind:
J. D. Greene, “Fruit Flies of the Moral Mind,” in
What’s Next: Dispatches from the Future of Science
, ed. Max Brockman (New York: Vintage, 2009).

  
23
  
Adam Smith makes this point well:
Adam Smith,
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1759; repr., Lawrence, KS:
Digireads.com
, 2011), 61.

  
24
  
The natural history of morality began with small groups of people in families and tribes:
W. D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior, Parts 1 and 2,”
Journal of Theoretical Biology
7 (1964): 1–52; R. L. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,”
Quarterly Review of Biology
46 (1971): 35–57; R. L. Trivers, “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection,” In
Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man
, ed. B. Campbell (Chicago: Aldine, 1972).

  
25
  
Others argue for a two-stage account:
Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd,
Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

  
26
  
debates over whether group selection … plays a role in the origin of morality:
For a recent defense, see E. O. Wilson,
The Social Conquest of Earth
(New York: Liveright, 2012).

  
27
  
Darwin’s own speculation about the origin of our moral capacities:
Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man
(1871; repr., London: Penguin, 2004), 121 (emphasis added).

  
28
  
altruism as emerging from the care we give to our helpless offspring:
C. Daniel Batson,
Altruism in Humans
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paul Zak,
The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity
(New York: Dutton, 2012); Patricia Churchland,
Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

  
29
  
people dosed with the hormone become more trusting and more generous:
M. Kosfeld, M. Heinrichs, P. J. Zak, U. Fischbacher, and E. Fehr, “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans,”
Nature
435 (2005): 673–76; T. Baumgartner, M. Heinrichs, A. Vonlanthen, U. Fischbacher, and E. Fehr, “Oxytocin Shapes the Neural Circuitry of Trust and Trust Adaptation in Humans,”
Neuron
58 (2008): 639–50; P. J. Zak, A. A. Stanton, S. Ahmadi, and S. Brosnan, “Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans,”
PLoS ONE
2 (2007): e1128.