Study on Brain Damage Reveals Truths About Morality

Would you kill one infected person to prevent many others from catching a deadly disease?

For most, this decision is difficult, clouded by conflicting emotions. However, for rare individuals with injuries to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a region of the brain generating social emotions, the answer to this hypothetical question requires little more than utilitarian logic--even when the infected person is a child.

In a recent study of 30 individuals, six with VMPC damage, 12 with other types of brain damage and 12 with no brain damage, those with VMPC damage were three times as likely to scold, challenge or even kill one person in the interest of the greater good.

The absence of an emotional component to their decision-making confirms a suspected link between this region of the brain and an instinctual aversion to harming others, researchers say. They suspect that even as the human brain developed to allow us to make logical, cost-benefit analyses of moral dilemnas, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex kept us from turning into total Vulcans by anchoring those choices to social emotions.

The findings open up--and may even close--some philosophical debates about human nature and could throw out philosophies that advocate black-and-white morality codes (so long, Objectivism!). It will also give lawyers quite a bit more room to argue for mitigated sentences for clients who commit crimes following brain damage.

Read more: Brain Injury Said to Affect Moral Choices
ABSTRACT: Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements