Haidt

moral intuition comes before moral reasoning - provides an explanation of why certain groups may have a great vulnerability to commit crimes and, more broadly, to have have social deficits.

how valid these dimensions are - i.e., why is "purity" a foundation of morality exactly (or respect for authority or differential loyalty to ingroup for that matter)? Reply: morality is more about learning to live with others in groups than it is about treating people the right way.

antisocial personality disorder - imaging studies with this population on morality. Also, children who do not understand social norms

I don’t think that reputation or culture are motivating factors at such an early age. I’m not taking the nature stance here, but I would like to begin there. … How do environmental factors shape human moral intuition and reasoning? I am always impressed when people from vastly different parts of the world have the same beliefs.

people’s ability to override their intuitive reactions. It seems like for morally loaded issues in politics, this second part of the process often tends not to occur.

overriding that initial gut response in the moral dilemma questions, I wonder if there are measurable physiological changes, too

"Human group selection was essentially declared off-limits in 1966"? Why? and by whom?

If morality is as contingent on cultural evolution as it is on genetic evolution and the former could occur within a couple generations, shouldn't we be seeing much more variation in moral standards across the globe, as cultural and ecological constraints vary. I guess Haidt's point is that they vary along the five dimensions he put forward.

Development in morality does not seem to follow a linear tread of progression (that is, our morality isn't only getting more and more "advanced" with time). Instead, the trends in moral ethos oscillate, without much break through or true advancement.

the gossipy-est population I know of... adolescent girls

if it's really the moral issues that are in play or the decision making... I liked the distinction between moral intuition and moral reasoning.

Despite noting that moral reasoning can override affective influences, I felt that throughout this piece he was really arguing that it couldn’t. as Kant suggests, acting against ones instincts and emotional impulses is what often defines something as moral or virtuous in the first place.

The author noted that ethical behaviorism faded with behaviorism. I didn’t think behaviorism had faded.

what defines morality? In its extreme, one could take this to mean that morality is pretty much defined by the group at large.

"confabulations," - behavior of children

Ames et al

Other methods for tapping into the neurological basis of empathy… It just seems like writing about someone in the 1st person is very different from the actual experience of empathy.

We may think that we are being sympathetic to the client, but maybe we are really feeling sorry for ourselves vicariously?

lesions the VMPFC affect an person's ability in inhibit responses and are vital in decision-making processes. I wonder how this relates to perspective taking.

interesting to do this study with different subgroups of people, - like psychopaths. If such research showed neurological deficits in this area among psychopaths, it might help change society's perceptions of them.

this would probably look different if participants were looking at, reading about, and rating people that they know more than just on paper. There must be sort of a gradual gradient. interesting to study this in psychologists vs. non-psychologists.

Why did the researchers use the fake people from the 1st and 3rd perspective taking activity for the everyday day attitudes examination, but not for the trait adjective examination?

I thought their methodology was very thoughtful. For example, I appreciated how they changed the order of perspective taking in the writing activity (I assume they did this during the scan too), how considered the number of words, and how they tested the effectiveness of the manipulation.

If the participants were all psych 101 Harvard students, then I would make the leap of judgment that they may well have a lot in common in how they view the world

we feel for the other person by imagining what it would be like for ourselves. I think, this is different from actually thinking that we are alike

one might have a stronger reaction in the vMPFC to an individual that is racial similar to oneself than to an individual that is not.