The term ‘morally objectionable’ could have a variety of definitions for different individuals, say psychologists. By Team Viva
Who decides whether our actions or decisions are morally acceptable or objectionable? A new study reveals that it is the brain activity which is responsible for the differences in our moral behaviour.
The study showed that when it comes to moral behaviour, people may not always stick to the “golden rule.” While some people would have genuine concern for others, some others might not and rather demonstrate, what is called in psychological terminology, ‘moral opportunism.’ Here, humans want to appear morally justified but are also seeking to maximise their own benefits.
For the study, which was published in Nature Communications journal by the lead author Jeroen Van Baar, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University, US, a computational strategy model was developed to examine the brain activity patterns and how they are linked to moral aspects and strategies.
Talking about how moral behaviour varies from person to person, Dr Sandeep Vohra, senior consultant, Psychiatry, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi, said, “Whatever we do, all our actions are powered through certain chemical signalling through the brain. And morality as a concept could be based on subjective variations, there could be different definitions of morality for different individuals.”
The researchers of the study also tried to determine which type of moral strategy the participant was using under certain circumstances — inequity aversion, where people reciprocate because they want to seek fairness in their outcomes) and secondly, guilt aversion, where people reciprocate because they want to avoid feeling guilty. The third would be greed or moral opportunism, where people switch between inequity aversion and guilt aversion depending on what serves their interests best.
Dr Samir Parikh, director, Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare, believed that the first and foremost things that the society needs to do is to take the “psychosocial” aspects out of morality. “A lot of morality is also something that we learn from observing. One such is being honest and following transperancy. When we talk to children, we encourage them to be honest and as they start growing, they only realise through our interactions that we are ourselves sometimes use personal discretion in the fear of transperancy and truth. We start accepting it as a norm and an acceptable thing. This results in a lot of dilution. And morality cannot be seen in a generic way because at various levels, we use our morality compass to define certain aspects of wisdom.”
He explained giving examples, “crossing the traffic lights; somebody teasing someone in a public transport and you decide to stay quiet; witnessing a road accident and walking past it; a friend doing something wrong and you letting them do it. It could even be something financially unjustified.”
The study showed that people used different moral principles to make their decisions and also changed their moral behaviour depending on the situation. “In everyday life, we may not notice that our morals are context-dependent since our contexts tend to stay the same daily. However, under new circumstances, we may find that the moral rules we thought we’d always follow are actually quite malleable,” said study co-author Luke J. Chang, assistant professor at Dartmouth College, US.
The study revealed that “unique patterns” of brain activity underlie the inequity aversion and guilt aversion strategies. “Our results demonstrate that people may use different moral principles to make their decisions, and that some people are much more flexible and will apply different principles depending on the situation,” said Chang.
Dr Vohra explained that while some people may follow very rigid morality principles, it would be flexible for some others due to the given circumstances. “For an instance, when someone says that ‘I’ll never bribe, it’s morally incorrect,’ there could be two cases. Case 1: When s/he breaks a traffic signal, the person bribes the policeman and gets away with it at the time of the situation — flexible morality. Case 2: When s/he actually pays the penalty for disobeying the traffic law — rigid morality,” he explained. Such behaviours are completely dependent on how the person is morally nurtured and brought up. “This is based on personal thought processes as well as circumstances,” he added.
While flexible morality and moral opportunism would look like two overlapping concepts, he differentiated, “Moral opportunism is when the person is always seeking for or trying to create an opportunity for himself/herself while being morally justified. It’s again subjective to people’s personal experiences and thoughts.”
The aspect of various principles explain why people that we like and respect, occasionally do things that we may find morally objectionable. However, Dr Vohra argued that it is because we tend to “idealise” people and put them on a higher pedestal. “We start searching in them some God-like characteristics, however forget that they have the usual human tendencies. They are bound to make certain decisions as per their comfort zones. Also, it varies from person to person on how they would morally react to certain situations,” said he.
Making a similar point, Dr Parikh added that “morally objectionable is a term subjective to people’s interpretations and understanding. It could be their upbringing, the societal narrative, their schooling and observations, personal feedbacks and background that shifts its definition.”
