Human Decisions in Moral Dilemmas are Largely Described by Utilitarianism: Virtual Car Driving Study Provides Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Vehicles

Science and Engineering Ethics - Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause...     

Habla Ingles? The Effects of Language Translation on Simulated Juror Decisions1

Two studies were conducted in which college students, acting as simulated jurors, heard the testimony of a defendant in an assault case. The testimony was presented in English or in another language (Spanish in Study 1 and Thai in Study 2) which was translated into English by an interpreter. In Study 1, non-Hispanics judged the defendant to be more guilty than did Hispanics when the defendant's testimony was presented in Spanish than when it was presented in English. This bias was offset when the judge's instructions admonished the jurors to ignore the fact that the defendant's testimony was translated. Similarly, in Study 2, subjects (all non-Thai) judged the defendent more guilty when his testimony was presented in Thai than when it was presented in English. Again, this bias was eliminated by the judge's instructions to the jurors to ignore the fact that the testimony was translated. The increased guilty verdicts for defendants who did not testify in English appeared to be due to prejudice and language ethnocentrism, the belief that defendants in U.S. courts should speak English.     

Ecstasy and agony: activation of the human amygdala in positive and negative emotion

Considerable evidence indicates that the amygdala plays a critical role in negative, aversive human emotions. Although researchers have speculated that the amygdala plays a role in positive emotion, little relevant evidence exists. We examined the neural correlates of positive and negative emotion using positron emission tomography (PET), focusing on the amygdala. Participants viewed positive and negative photographs, as well as interesting and uninteresting neutral photographs, during PET scanning. The left amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex were activated during positive emotion, and bilateral amygdala activation occurred during negative emotion. High-interest, unusual photographs also elicited left-amygdala activation, a finding consistent with suggestions that the amygdala is involved in vigilance reactions to associatively ambiguous stimuli. The current results constitute the first neuroimaging evidence for a role of the amygdala in positive emotional reactions elicited by visual stimuli. Although the amygdala appears to play a more extensive role in negative emotion, it is involved in positive emotion as well.