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In the last lecture we talked about

disgust
and the power of disgust to demonize
people.
The power of disgust to take something and
turn it into an immoral act.
The power of disgust to take a person
and turn them into something you're
repelled by.
But emotions can also be positive.
Our gut feelings can be positive towards
somebody.
And they also show interesting effects.
Some of this I think is fairly obvious.
If you go to Google images and type in
cute
baby, this is one of the first images that
comes out.
And it's a sort of creature many of us
would find very difficult to harm.
Very easy to feel fondly towards, that
will elicit a desire to protect.
And, it's not because of any deep
principles
or deep facts we know about the creature.
It's because it's adorable, because,
because of the big
eyes and the round cheeks and these sort
of
cues that we've been wired up to respond
to.
And, and, and our, the effects of these
cues and how we
feel towards people and how we feel
towards creatures has, has real effects.
Here are two animals.
Now, I actually don't have a strong
opinion as to
which animal is smarter, which animal has
a richer emotional life.
Which animal feels more pain.
I think it's a sort of very hard question.
But, what's not a hard question is I know
which animal people care about more.
One animal we bring into our houses, and
we we, we
give treats to, and we hold birthday
parties for, and we love.
And, the other kind of animal we eat.
And this does not have to do with the
features of the animal.
It has to do with,
with how they look.
Kittens are cute.
Pigs are not.
There are other distinctions one could
make, more subtle
distinctions one could make, concerning
sort of positive responses.
And their effects on moral reasoning.
So, one research program I've been
interested in is,
concerns the effects of looking at
people's bodies, and
to what extent does looking at people's
bodies affect
how you judge them and think about them
morally.
So in one experiment I did with several
collaborators, this work.
That was led by the psychologist Kirk
Grey,
we showed people pictures and either of
the
pictures were of faces or the pictures
included
the depiction of the bodies;
representation of the bodies.
And it turns out that when you see
somebody's
body, it has two effects on your reasoning
about them.
One is,
you actually, in some way, care more about
them.
You think that they're more vulnerable to
pain.
You think they're more sensitive to, to,
to, to being hurt.
You worry a little bit more about them.
But you also tend to deny them moral
agency.
What I mean by this is that, for most of
us, when you look at somebody,
you say, well, there's a person that could
be blamed, they could be praised, they're
responsible
for their own actions, they make their own
decisions.
But when you see somebody's body, that
tendency to
think of them as an agent goes down a bit.
Now this, these pictures, the difference
I'm showing you here is fairly subtle.
And we thought in our experiments we'd be
stuck with
those sort of subtle distinctions until we
found this wonderful book.
And this book has photographs, side by
side,
of the very same men and women.
But, in one picture, they're fully
dressed.
And in the other pictures, they're
entirely naked.
And so, we used those pictures in our
experiments.
And by doing so, we, we again, we found
that when people
are naked, you tend, in some way, to be
more concerned about them.
But also, you tend to deny them moral
agency.
It really matters.
There's something, there's some real
psycological truth.
To the claim made by feminist scholars,
that the objectification of women,
thinking of women as sexual beings, as
physical beings, has an effect, perhaps
a pernicious effect on how you think about
them and what we
find in this work is, it applies to men as
well as women.
I'll also just add parenthetically, this
is a wonderful book, I'm
hoping people got my book, just babies,
supplemental reading for the course.
If you did, you should put these two books
together on your shelves separately and
then people will look at them and they
will wonder what kind of person you are.
so, why do naked people, why do bodies,
have this sort of effect on us?
And there are different explanations.
One explanation is, that, they inspire
lust.
And lust somehow blocks certain morals.
Sentiment makes you think about a person a
different way.
Another possibility, that is sort of
separate from
lust, is that if you see somebody without
clothes.
They're more like an animal, they lose
their dignity.
They lose their status.
And it's that which is driving the effect.
And we actually, in our research, we don't
know the answer to that.
But we do know, from other work, that the
feeling of lust, the feeling of
sexual arousal can have an affect on your
moral decision making.
And we know this from to some extent, from
common sense.
But to a large extent from a lovely
and troubling study by Dan Ariely and
George Lowenstein.
So, they use, in this study they tested a
bunch of subjects, all of whom were
heterosexual males.
And it would be interesting to do
this more broadly, but they studied
heterosexual males.
And what they did in the study was, they
asked these
heterosexual males about there's a list of
questions about their sexual desires.
Would you have sex with this, would you
have
sex with that, would you have sex with
this?
As well as other questions, including
questions
about what sort of sexual behaviors they
would do, including behaviors that were
forms
of sexual coercion, or so-called date
rape.
And then they got the data.
But what was interesting about the study
was that
they collected the data when subjects were
either not aroused,
just answering questions, or when they're
aroused.
So the way they did it was, they asked
subjects to bring home a laptop computer.
The laptop computer, for reasons that will
become apparent, was wrapped in plastic
Saran wrap.
And then, in the privacy of their own
room, they were given a series of
questions.
And, and to answer the questions, they
were asked
to use a one-handed keyboard using their
non-dominant hand.
Now half of the subjects were just said,
okay, answer a bunch of questions.
The questions appeared on a screen.
That's the non-aroused group.
The other half was shown erotic imagery on
the laptop
screen and were asked to masturbate until
they became quite aroused.
They're not supposed to get too aroused
but until they get quite aroused.
Then they get to answer the questions.
And what, what Ariely and Lowenstein found
was
significant differences in how they
answered the questions.
So I'll put the data up.
This is like, like a lot of stuff to look
at, but to me it's fascinating and well
worth studying carefully.
But I'll just take a couple of examples.
So you could ask people whether or not
they could imagine being attracted to a
12-year-old girl.
And it turns out if people were
non-aroused, like, you know, a quarter say
yeah.
But when they're aroused, it doubles.
Or or becoming sexually excited, by an
animal.
Very few people, say yes when they're not
aroused.
But when they are aroused it about
triples.
But those aren't the most disturbing
findings.
The most disturbing findings involved a
sort of date rapey, questions.
And they have a host
of questions.
Here and he could see the answers that
people give when they aren't aroused.
And now compare it to the answers they
give when they're aroused.
So look in fact the last one, which is,
would
you slip a woman a drug to increase the
chances that she would have sex with you?
When men were not aroused, 5% said yes.
If, a, a ra, a number indistinguishable
from sort of pressing the wrong button.
But this number got much, much bigger when
they were aroused.
Now, I think this implic, this, this work
has practical implications.
I, it tells people, that your psychology
changes when you're aroused.
You're no longer the same person in an
important sense.
Your sense of what turns you on when
you're aroused is different from when
you're not aroused.
And what you would do is different from
when you're aroused and not aroused.
But from a more theoretical standpoint, it
nicely
illustrates the sort of theme we've been
working
on that, not just emotions like disgust,
but
emotions such as lust can change your
moral psychology.
And it's yet another argument that our
morality can be
influenced by not just by reason, but by
the emotions.
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