By Ferris Jabr, Scientific American An excerpt: The English language is not especially kind to rats. We say we "smell a rat" when something doesn't feel right, refer to stressful competition as the "rat race," and scorn traitors who "rat on" friends. But rats don't...

Moral Disgust Carries Foul Flavour, Researchers Say By Misty Harris in The Montreal Gazette Moral revulsion literally leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that some people of Christian faith were more likely to describe a lemon-water drink as disgusting...

By Daisy Grewal, Scientific American Mind 4/5/11 An excerpt: Psychologists have long known that many people are prejudiced towards others based on group affiliations, be they racial, ethnic, religious, or even political. However, we know far less about why people are prone to prejudice in the first place...

By Laurie Santos from TED Talks Science of Virtues Scholar Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too. See...

From The Economist To create life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine...

By William Saletan | Slate "Is it OK to impregnate a 60-year-old woman? Should old women have babies? Until recently, this wasn't an issue. Nature exhausted your egg supply, and that was it. But technology has surmounted that problem. Now you can get in vitro fertilization, donor eggs, and womb...

The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. By Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht, Teresa Torralva, Maria Roca, Mariángeles Pose, and Facundo Manes. Abstract: The role of social cognition in moral judgment in frontotemporal dementia. Abstract: Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal...

By John D. Yoon, M.D.; Kenneth A. Rasinski, M.D.; and Farr A. Curlin, M.D. "...Providing nondirective counsel to their patients appears to have become the norm among certain obstetrician–gynecologists in the United States, particularly when dealing with morally controversial medical decisions. These...

Friends-they are generous and cooperative with each other in ways that appear to defy standard evolutionary expectations, frequently sacrificing for one another without concern for past behaviors or future consequences. In this fascinating multidisciplinary study, Daniel J. Hruschka synthesizes an array...