Morality

### Cold Open

The truth about how you form your ideas about good and evil and where you land on the morality spectrum is complicated. Nearly every day you encounter moral decisions. Like whether to lie about being late to work, or whether to cut someone off in traffic. Now, as humans we're in constant flux on how to handle moral dilemmas. But a lot of our morality is based on how it effects you personally. Your brain is constantly making calls about what's right, and what's wrong.

### Questions

Is there a case where you choose not to help someone because they seem just like you?

Is your morality always situational?

Are there situations which allow yourself to bend the rules a little? And what would it take to bend them back?

## Games

### Game #1: The Trolley Problem

Will you pull a level to save four and kill one? Or will you not?

Result: You probably, like our volunteers, chose to pull the switch.

What happens if one person on the other track is a relative?

Result: While a family member beats the four strangers, it may depend on the relative to you.

So: This game reveals that while your decision to pull the lever to save your relative is emotional, it may be biological because of the fact that you want your genes to get passed down. You want those genes to stay, which is a process known as kin selection.

### Game #2: Double Word

Do you see the word good or evil?

Result: It doesn't matter, but you may have saw one or the other.

So: Morality can't be determined by this game.

### Game #3: Lend a Hand

Will people lend a hand to someone falling down?

Result: Every time, people responded in less than 10 seconds.

But what if we make our actress more... down and out?

Result: No one has come help, and people continue to ignore the woman and can't make the connection.

Why: Empathy is important in determining whether to help someone? But what triggers it? We seem to automatically categorize people as part of our group, or not. It makes evolutionary sense to help those in our groups that we bond with and seem most like us since the survival of ourselves depends on others. However, it's not all about that.

Let's bring in an elderly man.

Result: People help him, because he needs to survive for the group, and he did nothing wrong? Why not help?

What will be changed to make people not help the elderly man?

Result: Adding a bag, and whether they noticed it or not, made people not help the not because the elderly man did something wrong.

So: The "you get what you deserve" pulls hard at humans and our brains because we want fairness and correct revenge.

### Game #4: Return the Favor

You need to help three people. But you can only help one? What will you do?

Result: You may have leaned one way or another, but you probably wanted to help all three people.

So: You will most likely end up helping the person who's most like you, but your brain is always making complex and tough moral calculations.

### Game #5: Lend a Hand(Round 2)

A man asks for donations at the park.

Result: People choose to help, since he's in need.

Let's give him a makeover.

Result: People don't choose to help.

So and Why: These simple changes and contradictions and situational influences reveal whether we will help someone in need. The shocking discovery is however is that we don't let the simple things like fashion influence our behavior. We sometimes decide that someone is in more need than another person. But we won't admit it to ourselves. However, surprisingly, people chose to give a down and out person a helping hand, but not a hand up.

### Game #6: The Trolley Problem(Again)

You must now push a man to save four people.

Result: Volunteers choose not to push the man. But they also said they'd pull the switch at the beginning of the show!

Why: At the beginning, it was an easy decision. However, the way you sacrifice that person can affect that decision. However, if you need to harm the person, it's harder to do it.

### Game #7: Coffee Change

Will customers give back money when they get too much change or will they be unmoral and pocket it?

Result: Customers choose to give back the money, since their morals tell them it's the right thing.

But what happens when we turn the cashier into a rude, distracted, barista?

Result: Most people still choose to give back the money because of the fact that even despite her attitude, their moral compasses and wrangling told them it was the right thing to do. Although some chose to keep some or all of it.