Moral judgments often have less to do with outcome and more to do with intention. Take murder, for instance: The U.S. legal system makes distinctions between a crime committed in the heat of the moment and one that is planned ahead of time. But moral judgments may not be as sacrosanct as we believe: MIT scientists have shown that they can alter our moral judgments simply by magnetically interfering with a certain part of the brain.
Studies have shown that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) lights up with activity when we engage in moral judgments like evaluating the intentions of another person, indicating the region is important to making moral decisions. But while we like to think we're very consistent in our morality, the MIT team showed that an electromagnetic field applied to the scalp impairs our ability to evaluate the intentions of others, leaving us with little by which to hand down a moral judgment.
The study relied on non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to interfere with the right TPJ, temporarily impeding the normal firing of neurons in that region. In one experiment participants were exposed to TMS for nearly half an hour then asked to complete a quiz in which they had to judge characters' actions based on their intentions. In a second test, subjects were hit with a 500-millisecond burst of TMS just as they were evaluating a moral problem.In both cases, control subjects were able to evaluate the harmfulness and morality of characters' intentions, whereas those exposed to TMS made judgments based purely on outcome. For example, one common question asked whether or not it was morally permissible for a man to allow his girlfriend to cross a bridge he knows is unsafe, even if in the end she makes it across safely. Control subjects found the intention to do harm morally impermissible, but those exposed to TMS largely based their judgment solely on the outcome; no harm, no foul.
The study not only shows that our morals aren't exactly incorruptible, but also sheds light on the way the brain organizes and compartmentalizes moral decision making. It also reinforces something we all know intuitively to be true: finding the difference between right and wrong is rarely as simple as it sounds.
[MIT News]
The incredible innovations, like drone swarms and perpetual flight, bringing aviation into the world of tomorrow. Plus: today's greatest sci-fi writers predict the future, the science behind the summer's biggest blockbusters, a Doctor Who-themed DIY 'bot, the organs you can do without, and much more.


Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Time to buy myself a dorky shielded helmet before the mind-control beams turn me into a psychotic zombie!
I am not sure if this experiment really changes people's sense of morality, it just robs their brain of information about the character's intentions. If you cannot tell what a character intends, then you have nothing but the outcomes with which to form a moral judgment.
Perhaps the EMF from our cell phones is clouding our judgment and making us mash our feet down on our accelerator pedals. Thus letting that rising sun auto maker off the hook...~~~>)))">
I could never get involved in an experiment involving a moral questionnaire. They'd get too pissed with my asking about different variables involved.
"Well how unsafe is it?" "Have I already crossed it first?" etc.
We are bio chemically made. Sending shock wave to disrupt the biochemistry process is like using strong RF to a CPU processor and its platform.
It does not change the CPU thinking process but rather corrupts the integrity of the whole process.
Almost like the analogy of when u want to make a judgement (moral or not) someone gives u a high voltage shock to whole body!
This opens the door to our current technology interfering with judgement.
It seems murder suicides and sexual predators are on the rise.
Next we need a study to see how electromagnetic fields of transformers, RF signals, etc. affect the brains ability to not only determine right and wrong, but to control urges.
In the past I wondered what the effect of antidepressants and shrinks had on this rising trend. Now there is more to think about.
Sweden is the only country to accept hypersensitivity to such signals as a legitimate medical condition.
Very interesting indeed.
I'm pretty sure I know a few people who have that portion of their brain damaged or atrophied from lack of use.
Are these the questions they asked for this test?
"It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
"You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?"
"You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm."
"You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?"
"Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother."
How would the bridge be unsafe if she made it across safely?
Anything and everything is dangerous to an extent. Every time you walk out of your house, it's a gamble. You could be struck by a drunk driver on your way to work, attacked by a sexual predator on your morning run, bitten to death by a pack of rabid dogs coming home from the supermarket, or get hit by a single engine plane (this is true and just happened recently) while walking down the beach.
Everyone knows the dangers of living. Yet, do we lock ourselves up in the house to keep safe? Most do not. Doing anything is a calculated risk...
However, allowing someone to do something in which you know they will be gravely injured or killed is different.
For example, you tell your girlfriend to cross the bridge. But you don't tell her that while she's crossing it, it's scheduled to be demolished by tons of TNT. You hope she makes it across before it's blown up, but you know she's not that fast. Now THAT is morally impermissible. But kinda funny.
In the MIT article they imply that an fMRI doesn't do the trick, so I have to assume it's a fairly powerful, concentrated field, many times what a cellphone or other background EM radiation would produce. Also, this is purely a magnetic field. Most background radiation is EM, of which only a tiny portion (E/c) is magnetic.
That's both fascinating and scary at the same time. That was a good question. The boyfriend didn't know she would make it safely, and if anything, he knew the likelihood that it would not be safe was substantially higher then the probability of it being safe. Hence, a clear cut moral question that indicates the boyfriend pit his girlfriend in danger needlessly being morally reprehensible.
Sounds like this thing may be good for interrogation. If they could zap the part of the brain that controls self preservation and decision making they could probably get some honest answers out of terrorists without having to torture them.
That works because we have iron everywhere, displacing that "mass" could impact on some chemical reactions. Also magnetic fields could be used to extract a bullet.
Fe16N2 made me do it...
This really explains a lot. Have you ever noticed how so many trailer parks are under high power lines?
It would be just like MIT to release an April Fool's joke a couple of days early.
Well may I be the first to say... Well Duh. Something that impedes impulses from running in their natural coarse would cause the brain to have a separate outcome? No WAY!!!
It would affect the brain in more then one way as well... More then likely this is simply one of the symptoms of a larger cause/effect relationship.
LSD will alter the moral compass as well! btw.
Remember what the date is... April 1st?
"This opens the door to our current technology interfering with judgement."
No it doesn't.
"Next we need a study to see how electromagnetic fields of transformers, RF signals, etc. affect the brains ability to not only determine right and wrong, but to control urges."
Neither your cellphone nor any other consumer electronics generates a magnetic field of several teslas capable of inducing large eddy currents in a targeted region of your brain.
We need to make these to make immoral people moral. Then we can disguise them as aluminum hats.
I have duplicated the effect using a beck magnetic pulser set up with two induction coils on both temples. A 10K gauss, 500 ms pulse disables higher logic and reasoning functions just like a drug.
Is the magnet safe to use on people's brains?
Does this mean my foil hat no longer works?
Again, PopSci has proven to be ignorant of Intelligent Design.
The human brain is only one part of humanity that determines character and morality.
But, since silly ungodly scientists can only believe in what they can see they completely ignore the fact that there is an invisible and spiritual, yet tangible, human MIND!
If the mind is desperately wicked, then no amount of brain damage or electrical influence can change that brain into being morally correct.
Neither can brain damage or electrical influence make a Godly Mind morally corrupt.
When the antichrist is set as the world's dictator, and the antichrist and his terrorists programs antichristian programming into mankind's AI, there will still never be anything they will be able to do that can make a Spiritually Born Again Christian into an antichristian, because Jesus changes Spiritual Aspects that human tinkering will NEVER be able to change!
...
SaintlyMic.com
JESUSisGOD.com
The greatest inventor of all time is Jesus Christ!
He created everything first!
Here is an example of somebody who is using this TMS in France :
www.traitement-rtms.com/protocole-de-soin.php
It seems to me quite efficient !
Well, now we see Machiavelli thought in concrete terms.
Is not how the situation ends the important facet of the Prince? Velikovsky shows convincingly in Earth in Chaos that pottery from early Greece shows a magnetic reversal.
Nothing in our science validates this. Perhaps this is the reason!
http://bariumblues.com/persinger.htm