Moral psychology isn't always an easy thing to study. Experiments that actually puts people in what feels like a real scenario may get realistic results, but researchers must always balance the benefits of what we could learn with the safety and well-being of the people they study. Often what we learn from moral psychology experiments doesn't make humans look good. We are imperfect creatures. But the more we learn about why and how we make the moral choices that we do, the better we'll be able to tackle difficult questions in the future.
A single microscopic brain cell cannot think, is not conscious, but if you bring in a few more brain cells, and a few more, and connect them all, at a certain point, the group itself will be able to think and experience emotions and have opinions and a personality and know that it exists. How can such astonishing things be made from such simple ingredients? Well, answering that question means learning not only who we are but, more importantly, how we are. Today, using what neuroscientists know so far, we are going to make a town function like a brain, using people as neurons.
It all begins as a study on the psychology of prison life led by Stanford psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo. 24 volunteers - 12 guards and 12 prisoners - have agreed to spend the next two weeks recreating life in a correctional facility. Normal people can become monsters, given the right situation, that's the standard narrative of the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous psychological experiments of all time. But what if the cause of its participants' cruel behavior wasn't what we've always been told?
Human society is incredibly complex, and the duelling forces pushing us to conform and also to express our individuality are both necessary. Other people can influence us in good ways and in not-so-good ways. Michael Stevens takes a look into the human urge to conform and just how strong it is against our own beliefs and sense of selves.
Everywhere you go, you generate a cloud of data. You're trailing data, everything that you do is producing data. And then there are computers looking at that data that are learning, and these computers are essentially trying to serve you better. They're trying to personalize things to you. They're trying to adapt the world to you. So on the one hand, this is great, because the world will get adapted to you without you even having to explicitly adapt it. There's also a danger, because the entities in the companies that are in control of those algorithms don't necessarily have the same goals as you, and this is where I think people need to be aware that, what's going on, so they can have more control over it. We came into this new world thinking that we were users of social media and search engines. It didn't occur to us that social media and search engines were actually using us.
We're going to see if forcing your facial expression can change the way you feel. If you remove the ability to make facial expressions with botox, will it affect how the people perceive emotions in them? How do facial expressions affect emotion, and how does emotion affect facial expressions? Michael Stevens finds out when he explores the face.
We are imperfect creatures. But the more we learn about why and how we make the moral choices that we do, the better we'll be able to tackle difficult questions in the future.