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"What Makes us Moral" By Jeffrey Kluger TIME Magazine

Jeffrey Kluger's 2007 article focuses on the neurological functions that affect human being behavior. From childhood, humans are taught right from wrong, but they exemplify good and bad behavior to both extremities. There are some who will remove their own organs and donate them to others and some who spend almost all their lives working to slaughter an entire population. Kluger explains that a person's decision to do something good or bad is based on empathy, that humans tend not to do bad to those they sympathize or care about and that someone's culture and community can also influence their decision to do something wrong because humans do not want to be shunned from their commonwealth. Humans do not feel as obligated to act morally correct to those they may not feel a connection to or do not care about.

Morality researchers did a study asking people what they would do if put in a situation where they were able to save multiple people's lives at the expense of one person's life and watched the person's brain as they were asked the question. They found that activity increased in the brain between the areas associated with emotion and the part associated with making sensible decisions. This caused the people to make irrational decisions. They also observed that damage to the brain also caused humans to have bad behavior. Researchers are now working to figure out, by observing the brain, how and why we make the decision to do what is morally incorrect.

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How might understanding the neurological functions that make us moral impact our ability to create a better world?