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WHY ATHEISTS WON’T SELL THEIR SOULS
In 1995 I moved to the University of Virginia (UVA) to begin my
rst job as a professor. Moral psychology was still devoted to the
study of moral reasoning. But if you looked beyond developmental
psychology, Wilson’s new synthesis was beginning. A few
economists, philosophers, and neuroscientists were quietly
constructing an alternative approach to morality, one whose
foundation was the emotions, and the emotions were assumed to
have been shaped by evolution.
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These synthesizers were assisted
by the rebirth of sociobiology in 1992 under a new name—
evolutionary psychology.
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I read Je erson’s letter to Cosway during my rst month in
Charlottesville, as part of my initiation into his cult. (Je erson
founded UVA in 1819, and here at “Mr. Je erson’s University” we
regard him as a deity.) But I had already arrived at a Je ersonian
view in which moral emotions and moral reasoning were separate
processes.
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Each process could make moral judgments on its own,
and they sometimes fought it out for the right to do so (
gure 2.1
).
In my rst few years at UVA I conducted several experiments to
test this dual-process model by asking people to make judgments
under conditions that strengthened or weakened one of the
processes. For example, social psychologists often ask people to
perform tasks while carrying a heavy cognitive load, such as holding
the number 7250475 in mind, or while carrying a light cognitive
load, such as remembering just the number 7. If performance su ers
while people are carrying the heavy load, then we can conclude that
“controlled” thinking (such as conscious reasoning) is necessary for
that particular task. But if people do ne on the task regardless of
the load, then we can conclude that “automatic” processes (such as
intuition and emotion) are su cient for performing that task.
FIGURE
2.1. My early Je ersonian dual-process model. Emotion and
reasoning are separate paths to moral judgment, although moral
judgment can sometimes lead to post hoc reasoning as well.
My question was simple: Can people make moral judgments just
as well when carrying a heavy cognitive load as when carrying a
light one? The answer turned out to be yes. I found no di erence
between conditions, no e ect of cognitive load. I tried it again with
di erent stories and got the same outcome. I tried another
manipulation: I used a computer program to force some people to
answer quickly, before they had time to think, and I forced other
people to wait ten seconds before o ering their judgment. Surely
that manipulation would weaken or strengthen moral reasoning and
shift the balance of power, I thought. But it didn’t.
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When I came to UVA I was certain that a Je ersonian dual-
process model was right, but I kept failing in my e orts to prove it.
My tenure clock was ticking, and I was getting nervous. I had to
produce a string of publications in top journals within ve years or
I’d be turned down for tenure and forced to leave UVA.
In the meantime, I started running studies to follow up on the moral
dumbfounding I had observed a few years earlier in my dissertation
interviews. I worked with a talented undergraduate, Scott Murphy.
Our plan was to increase the amount of dumbfounding by having
Scott play devil’s advocate rather than gentle interviewer. When
Scott succeeded in stripping away arguments, would people change
their judgments? Or would they become morally dumbfounded,
clinging to their initial judgments while stammering and grasping
for reasons?
Scott brought thirty UVA students into the lab, one at a time, for
an extended interview. He explained that his job was to challenge
their reasoning, no matter what they said. He then took them
through ve scenarios. One was Kohlberg’s Heinz dilemma: Should
Heinz steal a drug to save his wife’s life? We predicted that this
story would produce little dumbfounding. It pitted concerns about
harm and life against concerns about law and property rights, and
the story was well constructed to elicit cool, rational moral
reasoning. Sure enough, Scott couldn’t whip up any dumbfounding
with the Heinz story. People o ered good reasons for their answers,
and Scott was not able to get them to abandon principles such as
“Life is more important than property.”
We also chose two scenarios that played more directly on gut
feelings. In the “roach juice” scenario, Scott opened a small can of
apple juice, poured it into a new plastic cup, and asked the subject
to take a sip. Everyone did. Then Scott brought out a white plastic
box and said:
I have here in this container a sterilized cockroach. We
bought some cockroaches from a laboratory supply
company. The roaches were raised in a clean
environment. But just to be certain, we sterilized the
roaches again in an autoclave, which heats everything so
hot that no germs can survive. I’m going to dip this
cockroach into the juice, like this [using a tea strainer].
Now, would you take a sip?
In the second scenario, Scott o ered subjects $2 if they would
sign a piece of paper that said: I, ________, hereby sell my soul, after my
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