From New Scientist WHY do we sometimes wrestle with moral dilemmas? A twist on a classic psychology experiment suggests that our minds have two parallel moral systems, and they don't always agree. In the trolley experiment, participants are told that a runaway tram trolley could kill five people...

By Tiffanny O'Callaghan, in The New Scientist Disgust can be a bewildering emotion. In her new book, That's Disgusting, research psychologist Rachel Herz points out that our tendency to react by pulling away is based on a combination of self-preservation and learned behaviour. When we are grossed...

By Carl Zimmer, New York Times Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve. Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you...

The Vexing Mental Tug-of-War Called Morality By Kristin Ohlson, Discover magazine Would you kill a crying baby to save yourself and others from hostile soldiers outside? Neuroscience offers new ways to approach such moral questions, allowing logic to triumph over deep-rooted instinct. You arrive at the...

By Linda Grant, Wall Street Journal An excerpt: Life and Fate , by Vassily Grossman (1959) An old Russian woman, seeing a captured German soldier, raises a brick to throw at him, but at the last moment she instead hands him a piece of bread. The woman has no idea why she does this and in the years to...

By MacGregor Campbell, New Scientist Does free will actually exist? Or are we all just biological robots? In this video, see why modern neuroscience claims free will is an illusion and why psychology experiments suggest we may be better off believing the lie. Controlling our own destiny is so ingrained...

By David Brooks, The New York Times The story of evolution, we have been told, is the story of the survival of the fittest. The strong eat the weak. The creatures that adapt to the environment pass on their selfish genes. Those that do not become extinct. In this telling, we humans are like all other...

By Wilhelm Hofmann and Malte Friese, Scientific American Mind Most of us start out with the best of intentions. Then we walk right past the fruit bowl in search of the devil's food cake. Or drink one glass of wine too many. Or, after yet another glass, kiss that co-worker at the holiday party. Unfortunately...

By Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, The New York Times It’s easy to look at big names like Warren E. Buffett, and big companies like Ernst and Young, and be judgmental. Of course they overlooked ethical lapses. Why wouldn’t they? That’s business. Regulators, prosecutors and journalists tend to...

3/11/11 By David Brooks, The New York Times We’re an overconfident species. Ninety-four percent of college professors believe they have above-average teaching skills. A survey of high school students found that 70 percent of them have above-average leadership skills and only 2 percent are below average...

Book Description: Hardcover release date 22 April 2013. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. The Language of Human Character is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Human Character Dictionary," a definitive record of the language of human character...

Book Description: Hardcover release date 12 December 2012. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. To Be Virtuous, Second Edition is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Human Virtues Dictionary," a definitive record of 4,900 definitions representing the...

Book Description: Hardcover release date: 20 December 2012. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. The Language of Human Virtue is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Building Virtue Dictionary," a definitive record of the language of human virtue with...

By Nancy Snow An excerpt: In five chapters, an introduction, and a short epilogue, Stan van Hooft conveys in highly readable and non-technical prose most of what is important about hope. He distinguishes hope from hopefulness, and uses the Aristotelian template of virtue as a mean between extremes to...

By Adam Feltz and Edward Cokely Abstract: We explore and provide an account for a recently identified judgment anomaly, i.e., an order effect that changes the strength of intentionality ascriptions for some side effects (e.g., when a chairman's pursuit of profits has the foreseen but unintended consequence...

To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They...

Portraying emotions at their unfolding: A multilayered approach for probing dynamics of neural networks By Gal Raza,Yonatan Winetrauba, Yael Jacoba, Sivan Kinreicha, Adi Maron-Katza, Galit Shahamf, Ilana Podlipskya, Gadi Gilama, Eyal Soreqa, and Talma Hendler Abstract: Dynamic functional integration...

By Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côtébo, Rodolfo Mendoza-Dentona, and Dacher Keltnera Abstract: Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals...

By P. Lawler and M. Guerra We are pleased to introduce this symposium on the moral, political, scientific, philosophical, and even theological dimensions of the thought of two contemporary American novelists and essayists: Walker Percy and Tom Wolfe. Astute and penetrating observers of modern America...

By Stan Van Hooft Abstract: This paper explores cosmopolitanism, not as a position within political philosophy or international relations, but as a virtuous stance taken by individuals who see their responsibilities as extending globally. Taking as its cue some recent writing by Kwame Anthony Appiah...

By James S. Fishkin, Stanford University What are the virtues of democratic citizenship when voters are bombarded by WMD—by which I mean “weapons of mass distraction”—stinging sound bites and campaign ads from the persuasion industry funded by a campaign finance system that seems to be broken? Our political...

By Jesse Couenhoven, Science of Virtues scholar It is hard to find anyone today who does not think of forgiving as virtuous, at least when done under the right circumstances. Yet this apparent consensus in favor of forgiveness can be misleading, because there is little accord about what it means to forgive...

By: Kathryn Coe, Ph.D., Science of Virtues scholar, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis Craig T. Palmer, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia Introduction In our study of forgiveness, one aspect that has seemed to...