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Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

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Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

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Understanding the Adaptive
Functions of Morality from a
Cognitive Psychological Perspective
JAMES DUNGAN and LIANE YOUNG

Abstract
What are the possible functions of moral cognition? Addressing this question has
proved difficult, leading to disagreement among moral psychologist. Researchers
claiming that morality is composed of many distinct domains have posited multiple functions, whereas researchers focusing on the features that are unique to and
common across all moral judgments have suggested a unified evolutionary function. In this review, we suggest that the limitations of these accounts can be overcome
by systematically investigating the cognitive mechanisms that support moral judgments across descriptively distinct domains. As a case study, we focus on the contrast
between harm and purity morals, and we argue for a novel functional difference on
the basis of differences in the underlying psychological processes. Understanding the
psychology behind distinct morals will pave the way for understanding the distinct
functions of moral cognition.

INTRODUCTION
Is it not reasonable to anticipate that our understanding of the human mind
would be greatly aided by knowing the purpose for which it was designed?
George C. Williams (1966, p. 16)

What is the purpose of moral cognition? Moral psychologists have become
increasingly interested in exploring the function of moral cognition (i.e., how
we think about moral right and wrong) using the tools of evolutionary and
developmental psychology. Given the complexity of moral cognition, this
has proved to be a difficult task. On the one hand, “morality” could mean
many things at once—an umbrella term referring to diverse judgments of
diverse behaviors, from assault to incest. Accordingly, researchers supporting this view have posited multiple distinct functions for distinct “domains”
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
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of morality. On the other hand, morality may be unified and defined by features that are unique to morality (vs other domains of cognition) or at least
features that are common across descriptively different kinds of moral norms.
Researchers proposing such a unified account of morality also typically propose a unified adaptive function for morality.
In this review, we discuss the strengths and limitations of these two
accounts. We then highlight new research on the cognitive mechanisms
supporting moral judgment and how this research constrains and informs
inferences about the adaptive functions of morality. Using the contrast
between harm and purity morals as a case study, we illustrate how understanding the cognitive mechanisms for moral judgments allows researchers
to build novel functional accounts that capture real psychological differences.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
MORALITY IS MANY THINGS
Historically, morality has been thought to be a unified ethic of justice
and fairness (Kohlberg, 1969, 1981; cf. Baumard, Andre, & Sperber, in
press) or a related ethic of concern for people’s welfare and happiness
(Harris, 2010). However, views of morality as a single ethic or value have
attracted many critics. These critics have argued that our moral concerns
are many—providing care and prohibiting harm (Gilligan, 1982), showing
respect and loyalty (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997), preserving
one’s purity (Appiah, 2006; Haidt & Joseph, 2007), to name a few. In order
to account for these diverse descriptions of common moral concerns, Moral
Foundations Theory (MFT) has posited that morality is composed of five
distinct moral domains (Harm, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity),
each of which evolved in response to a specific adaptive need (Graham
et al., 2011, 2013; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). On this view, each moral
domain is a functionally specialized mechanism, or module (Graham et al.,
2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2007). For example, the Harm domain addresses
the challenge of caring for vulnerable offspring, the Authority domain
helps people navigate social dominance hierarchies, and the Purity domain
prevents exposure to pathogens and parasites.
While MFT has broadened the scope of research in moral psychology and
uncovered meaningful differences in the moral concerns endorsed within
and across cultures (e.g., liberals/conservatives; Graham et al., 2009), MFT
may be limited in its empirical focus on the descriptive content of moral
norms. The ways in which moral content can be carved up into different
categories are numerous and possibly arbitrary. Indeed, MFT originally
featured four domains, such that loyalty was covered by a combination

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

of reciprocity and hierarchy (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). MFT in its present
form accommodates five domains, featuring loyalty as its own distinct
domain (Graham et al., 2011; Haidt, & Joseph, 2007). More recently, theorists
have tentatively proposed six domains, splitting Fairness into two separate
domains: Equality and Liberty/Oppression (Graham et al., 2013). Given the
sheer breadth of possible moral concerns, the number of domains could
be ratcheted up to include domains concerning industriousness, modesty,
and wastefulness (Graham et al., 2013; Suhler & Churchland, 2011). The
number of moral domains that researchers could potentially identify seems
limitless: Morality may, in fact, be composed of hundreds or even thousands
of distinct functional modules, each addressing a unique adaptive problem
(Cosmides & Tooby, 1994).
The concern here is not one of parsimony—an acceptable taxonomy of
morality should strive for explanatory adequacy without limiting itself
for the sake of neatness. Instead, the concern is with the general approach
of carving up moral cognition based on descriptive differences, that is,
differences in the content of moral actions, rather than differences in the
psychological mechanisms that support the processing of different actions.
This concern deserves more consideration as more domains are identified.
Notably, the addition of Liberty as a sixth domain was motivated by the
observation of moral attitudes among Libertarians that were not easily
described by the current moral domains (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, &
Haidt, 2012), rather than by novel evolutionary theorizing or novel observations of cognitive mechanism. If moral domains represent functionally
distinct modules, then judgments associated with distinct domains might be
expected to behave differently—they might follow different cognitive rules
because of the contribution of different cognitive processes. To the extent
that evidence for such differences is lacking among the five domains posited
by MFT (see section titled “Key Issues for Future Research”), amendments
to current moral taxonomies may be needed.
MORALITY IS ONE THING
Despite its diverse content, morality may nonetheless be unified by features
that are unique to moral judgments and also common to moral judgments
across all domains (Young & Dungan, 2012). Developmental psychologists
made an early attempt at distinguishing moral norms from norms of social
convention (Turiel, 1983). Work on the moral–conventional distinction was
aimed at identifying the features that separate conventional judgments
(e.g., wearing pajamas to class is wrong) from uniquely moral judgments
(e.g., murder is wrong). For instance, while conventional judgments are
culture-specific, moral judgments might apply universally across all cultures

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as well as across time (e.g., murder is always wrong, no matter the place
or time).
While the moral–conventional distinction has faced criticism (Kelly, Stich,
Haley, Eng, & Fessler, 2007), researchers have proposed other features that
may be common across, and unique to, moral judgments. Moral violations
evoke stronger emotional and behavioral reactions than conventional violations. For example, when previously nonmoral norms become moralized
(as in the case of an omnivore who converts to vegetarianism for moral reasons), these newly moralized norms elicit a common suite of reactions such as
prohibition, internalization, overjustification, and increased parent-to-child
transmission (Rozin, 1997, 1999).
More importantly, while descriptive theories of diverse moral domains
offer few specific predictions about the psychological mechanisms underlying distinct domains, researchers focusing on morality as a unified
concept suggest common cognitive components that cut across all moral
judgments—in spite of their apparent differences. On one such account,
“moral cognition has an ‘insert here’ parameter, processing diverse moral
rules with the same computational architecture” (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009,
p. 3). Researchers have proposed a number of candidate components of
uniquely moral cognition, such as the perception of an agent who inflicts
harm on a patient (Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), or the integration of causal
and intentional attributions (Mikhail, 2007).
If cognitive mechanisms operate similarly across descriptively different
moral domains, and if these domains share a common cognitive structure
that is distinct from nonmoral judgments, then morality may be better
understood as serving a single purpose. One possibility is that morality
functions to limit selfishness and foster cooperation (Tomasello & Vaish,
2013). Similarly, morality could function as a means of navigating social
alliances (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Graham et al., 2009; Sosis & Bressler, 2003).
In competitive terms, morality could function as a dynamic coordination
strategy for choosing sides in interpersonal and intergroup conflict (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009, 2013). In all cases, the functional explanations are not
tied down to the specific content of moral actions and instead focus on a
broader adaptive problem that might be unique to morality and common
across all kinds of moral judgments.
The strength of these unified accounts is their attention to the psychological mechanisms supporting moral judgment. However, unified accounts run
the risk of overgeneralization (Parkinson et al., 2011). By focusing on common features across moral domains, researchers may fail to detect meaningful differences in the psychological mechanisms underlying different moral
judgments.

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

A NEW APPROACH FOR DEFINING MORALITY
We have reviewed the strengths and limitations of current taxonomies of
morality. How then should moral psychologists approach the task of carving
up (or not carving up) moral cognition? We suggest that moral psychologists
might first identify cognitive rules that apply to moral judgment in one context and then test whether those rules apply equivalently across descriptively
distinct domains. In the next section, we use the well-studied domains of
harm and purity to illustrate how the cognitive processes underlying different norms dictate where psychologically meaningful boundaries exist within
moral cognition.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
THE CASE OF HARM AND PURITY
Descriptive accounts of morality provide clear evidence that people moralize not simply concerns of harm (e.g., murder is wrong) but also concerns
of purity—for example, avoiding impure objects or acts that could lead to
defilement or contamination (Shweder et al., 1997). Purity morals are typically characterized as part of an adaptive disease-avoidance mechanism that
has been co-opted to signal socially and morally offense behavior as well
(e.g., drug abuse, sexual deviance; Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson,
2009). Purity norms may thus function to protect the body from desecration
or defilement. By contrast, moral norms against harm are thought to address
the evolutionary need to care for vulnerable offspring, leading us to express
compassion and empathy for the suffering (Haidt & Joseph, 2007).
While this functional distinction may be intuitively appealing, empirical
evidence for distinct psychological signatures of harm and purity morals has
been mixed. On the one hand, researchers supporting the view that “morality is many things” suggest that harm and purity are associated with distinct
emotions: typically, harm violations elicit anger, whereas purity violations
elicit disgust (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999; Russell & Giner-Sorolla,
2013). However, researchers supporting the view that “morality is one thing”
point out that feelings of anger and disgust are highly correlated and frequently co-occur (Gray et al., 2012). Furthermore, observations of whether
specific emotions are linked to specific moral judgments have been variable
across studies. Disgust, for instance, has been shown to increase the severity
of purity-related judgments specifically (Seidel & Prinz, 2013), moral judgment more generally (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006), and even judgments of
nonmoral actions (e.g., giving a class presentation; Wheatley & Haidt, 2005).
Some researchers have argued that purity violations do not belong to
a separate domain; instead, they can be construed as a form of harm

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(Gray et al., 2012). If harm and purity morals do not form distinct domains,
then we might expect similar psychological processing underlying harm and
purity morals. Yet, new studies reveal important differences. For example,
while anger, elicited by harmful actions, is modulated by contextual factors,
including whether the violation was committed intentionally or accidentally, disgust, elicited by purity violations, is insensitive to factors such as
intent—disgust is elicited simply if purity rules have been broken, regardless
of the circumstances (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2010, 2011). Furthermore,
participants perceive a greater moral difference between intentional and
accidental harms, compared to the difference between intentional and
accidental purity violations (Young & Saxe, 2011).
The behavioral difference in people’s moral judgments of harm and purity
violations is supported by recent neural evidence. Brain regions involved in
reasoning about mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions) are more active when
participants judge harmful compared to impure actions (Young, Chakroff,
Dungan, Koster-Hale, & Saxe, in prep.). In addition, information about intent
is encoded in the spatial pattern of neural activity in brain regions for mental
state reasoning when participants consider harm violations but not purity
violations. The evidence thus reveals important differences in the cognitive
mechanisms for harm and purity judgments.
DISTINCT FUNCTIONS FOR SELF VERSUS OTHER
How can the pattern of cognitive differences observed inform our functional
accounts of harm versus purity norms? One explanation is that harm norms
function to limit our negative impact on others. Harm norms appear to
operate primarily in interpersonal contexts, where one person’s harmful
actions affect another. Recent work suggests that the presence of at least two
parties—a violator who acts on a victim—is necessary to establish an act as
harmful in the first place (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009; Gray & Wegner, 2011).
If harm norms dictate how we ought (and ought not) to treat each other,
information about intent would be expected to play a significant role: We
need to know what others are thinking of to evaluate their actions and to
understand their intentions toward us.
Conversely, purity norms may function to limit our negative impact on ourselves. We may pay particular attention to preserving the purity of our own
bodies (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2013). Indeed, we may be concerned with
the impurities of other people only to the extent that they are perceived as a
possible threat to our own purity (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2000). Impure
actions are therefore prohibited even when no one, except for possibly one’s
own self, is rendered a “victim” (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993). If purity norms
function to protect our own selves from possible contamination, we may care

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

less about our own intent, that is, whether we acted accidentally or intentionally in defiling ourselves. As Appiah (2006) states in an account of Akran
society in Ghana: “With taboo breaking … it doesn’t matter what you meant
to do. You’re polluted. You need to get clean” (p. 51). In other words, because
purity violations affect the self, we care mostly about avoiding the outcome
or else making sure we “get clean” afterwards.
Thus, our key prediction is that purity norms function to protect one’s
self, whereas harm norms function to protect others. Two recent lines of
investigation in our laboratory support this prediction. First, regardless of
whether the content of actions was harmful or impure, participants judged
self-directed actions (e.g., cutting or splashing urine on yourself) as impure
and other-directed actions (e.g., cutting or splashing urine on someone else)
as harmful. Importantly, the perceived moral difference between intentional
versus accidental violations was also smaller for self-directed actions,
compared to other-directed actions, consistent with the differential role of
intent across moral domains (Chakroff, Dungan, & Young, 2013).
Second, although moral judgments of negative actions directed at others
versus one’s self show the cognitive signatures of moral judgments of
harm versus purity violations, respectively, an outstanding question is
whether participants are especially averse to impure outcomes that affect
themselves and harmful outcomes that affect others. Consistent with this
prediction, participants judged harmful actions as morally worse (and
less preferred) than impure actions when directed at others; however,
the opposite pattern emerged when participants judged actions directed
at themselves—impure actions were judged as morally worse (and less
preferred; Dungan, Chakroff, & Young, submitted). Thus, purity norms are
tied specifically to concerns about defiling one’s self, whereas harm norms
are tied to concerns about harming others.
BEYOND SELF VERSUS OTHER
A potential limitation of the proposed functional distinction between norms
governing how we treat ourselves and norms governing how we treat others
is that we have focused only on judgments of interactions between individuals when much of morality occurs at the level of groups. Purity morals may
not only govern how people treat their own bodies but also more generally define proper behavior within a group, as well as boundaries between
groups (cf. Atran & Henrich, 2010; Sosis & Bressler, 2003). As such, close
adherence to purity norms may be a strong signal of group membership. We
argue, however, that purity morals operating at the group level may nonetheless function to protect the self for two reasons: (i) purity violations undermine the cohesion of the social group, making each individual potentially

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vulnerable to threat, and (ii) purity violations committed by other group
members may contaminate one’s self either by association with the group,
or directly through physical contagion (cf. van Leeuwen, Park, Koenig, &
Graham, 2012).
A unique prediction follows from this account. While studies in social psychology routinely demonstrate a robust in-group bias whereby people judge
their own group’s violations as less wrong than the same violations committed by an out-group member (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007), this account
predicts that people should be harsher on purity violations occurring within
versus outside of their own group—again, because of the potential threat
of impurity for the self. To test this prediction, we presented participants
with vignettes (adapted from Leidner & Castano, 2012) depicting in-group
and out-group members committing harm and purity violations (Dungan
et al., submitted). Consistent with our prediction, participants displayed the
typical in-group bias for harm violations, judging out-group harm as worse
than in-group harm; however, the opposite pattern emerged for purity
violations—purity violations committed by in-group members were judged
as morally worse than the same purity violations committed by out-group
members. In an extension of our previous findings, these results suggest that
some morals function for protecting the group and the self, whereas other
morals may be focused more on how our actions affect others, across group
boundaries.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
A NEW TAXONOMY FOR ALL MORAL JUDGMENT
While we have focused on the distinction between harm and purity, a
primary question for future research is whether the functional distinction
between morals that protect the self and morals that protect others applies
to other moral norms described by MFT and other theories, including
loyalty, hierarchy, and fairness. Although empirical work on the cognitive
components of loyalty, hierarchy, and fairness judgments is sparse, several
studies indicate a possible cognitive boundary between “individualizing”
norms such as harm and fairness, and “binding norms” such as purity,
loyalty, and hierarchy (Graham et al., 2009). For example, while harmful
omissions are generally judged less harshly than harmful commissions
(e.g., it is worse to kill than to fail to rescue), this omission bias is reduced
when the violator and victim are bound by a close relationship, necessitating loyalty, or a hierarchical relationship (e.g., the violator and victim
are boss and employee; Haidt & Baron, 1996). Similarly, omission bias
is enhanced for individualizing violations compared to purity violations

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

(DeScioli, Asao, & Kurzban, 2012; DeScioli, Christner, & Kurzban, 2011).
These findings fit nicely with the given observations on the differential role
of intent—revealing an overall emphasis on outcomes when considering
binding norms compared to individualizing norms.
Other research on the cognitive and neural processes supporting different
moral judgments corroborates the difference between individualizing and
binding norms. Judgments of individualizing and binding norms are differentially affected by abstract versus concrete thinking (Napier & Luguri, 2013)
as well as cognitive load (Wright & Baril, 2011). Endorsement of these norms
is also associated with volumetric differences in specific brain regions (Lewis,
Kanai, Bates, & Rees, 2012). Finally, while psychopathy is marked by a willingness to violate individualizing norms of harm and fairness, endorsement
of binding norms is relatively preserved (Glenn, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, &
Haidt, 2009). Notably, these findings do not reveal differences among all five
domains of morality—suggesting that a two-factor model may better capture psychological differences in moral cognition (Dungan & Young, 2012; cf.
the exploratory factor analysis in Graham et al., 2011). These lines of research
reveal empirical approaches for testing whether descriptively different moral
domains are psychologically distinct and important avenues for building taxonomies of moral psychology.
MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIOR
As psychological and functional differences are uncovered within moral
cognition, moral psychologists should also address the factors that influence judgments across domains. In a recent example, we described two
people—one loyal person and one fair person—and asked participants
which person they would rather befriend and which person they deemed
more moral (Dungan, Waytz, & Young, in prep.). Overall, participants
reported a preference for loyal (vs fair) friends but endorsed fairness (over
loyalty) as an abstract moral virtue. Future research should investigate
how different motivations, such as the need for social inclusion versus the
need to feel moral (moral self-concept), influence judgments across moral
domains.
Another key aim for moral psychologists will be to connect theories
describing the adaptive functions of morality to actual behavior, both within
and beyond the laboratory. For instance, if some moral norms function to
protect the self, while other moral norms function to protect others, we
might expect a tension between competing moral demands (cf. Cohen,
Montoya, & Insko, 2006). This tension has behavioral implications, as in
the case of whistleblowing. One hypothesis is that the valuation of fairness
over loyalty predicts decisions to report unethical deeds; emphasizing one

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value over another may consequently shift attitudes toward whistleblowing
(Waytz, Dungan, & Young, submitted).
NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS
Understanding moral norms from a cognitive psychological perspective
may even, in some sense, constrain claims as to what morality is or ought
to be. If moral norms ought to apply equally to everyone, regardless of
culture or standing in society, then moral norms, such as purity, which
govern self-interest or in-group interest, may be less legitimately moral than
norms governing interpersonal interactions across group boundaries, such
as harm (Bloom, 2011). Furthermore, if moral judgments of an agent should
be based at least in part on the agent’s mental states (e.g., whether the agent
intended to do wrong or not), then our reactions to purity violations might
be less legitimately moral, to the extent that they are largely insensitive to
intent information and driven instead by the inflexible emotion of disgust,
(Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2013). Illuminating the cognitive mechanisms
underlying different moral norms may indeed constrain key normative and
meta-ethical claims.
CONCLUSION
Morality is complex. Researchers have disagreed over the function or functions of morality. Moving forward, moral psychologists would do well to
focus their empirical efforts on the underlying cognitive processes for moral
judgment to identify which descriptive differences are psychologically meaningful. Understanding these psychological differences will pave the way for
understanding the key functions of moral cognition.
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Napier, J. L., & Luguri, J. B. (2013). Moral mind-sets: Abstract thinking increases a
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Parkinson, C., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Koralus, P. E., Mendelovici, A., McGeer, V.,
& Wheatley, T. (2011). Is morality unified? Evidence that distinct neural systems
underlie moral judgments of harm, dishonesty, and disgust. Journal of Cognitive
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Rozin, P. (1997). Moralization. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and Health (pp.
379–401). New York, NY: Routledge.
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(Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 637–653). New York, NY: Guilford.

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Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A
mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three
moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 76(4), 574–586Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/
query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=10234846.
Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2010). Moral anger is more flexible than moral
disgust. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(4), 360–364. doi:10.1177/
1948550610391678
Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011). Moral anger, but not moral disgust, responds
to intentionality. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11(2), 233–240. doi:10.1037/a0022598
Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2013). Bodily moral disgust: What it is, how it is
different from anger, and why it is an unreasoned emotion. Psychological Bulletin,
139(2), 328–351. doi:10.1037/a0029319
Seidel, A., & Prinz, J. (2013). Sound morality: Irritating and icky noises amplify
judgments in divergent moral domains. Cognition, 127(1), 1–5. doi:10.1016/
j.cognition.2012.11.004
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of
morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the “big three” explanations
of suffering. In A. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119–169). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the
costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37, 211–239.
Suhler, C. L., & Churchland, P. (2011). Can innate, modular “foundations” explain
morality? Challenges for Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 23(9), 2103–2116; discussion 2117–22. doi:10.1162/jocn.2011.21637
Tomasello, M., & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of human cooperation and morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–255. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-113011143812
Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Valdesolo, P., & DeSteno, D. (2007). Moral hypocrisy social groups and the flexibility
of virtue. Psychological Science, 18(8), 689–690.
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Wheatley, T., & Haidt, J. (2005). Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more
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Williams, G. C. (1966). Adaptation and natural selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wright, J., & Baril, G. (2011). The role of cognitive resources in determining our moral
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Young, L., Chakroff, A., Dungan, J., Koster-Hale, J., & Saxe, R. (in prep). Theory of
mind for evaluating assault not incest: Selective neural encoding of acts as intentional versus accidental.

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Young, L., & Dungan, J. (2012). Where in the brain is morality? Everywhere and
maybe nowhere. Social Neuroscience, 7(1), 1–10.
Young, L., & Saxe, R. (2011). When ignorance is no excuse: Different roles for intent
across moral domains. Cognition, 120(2), 202–214. doi:S0010-0277(11)00110-7[pii]
10.1016/j.cognition.2011.04.005
Zhong, C. B., & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science, 313(5792), 1451–1452. doi:313/5792/1451[pii]
10.1126/science.1130726

FURTHER READING
Amit, E., & Greene, J. D. (2012). You see, the ends don’t justify the means: Visual
imagery and moral judgment. Psychological Science, 23(8), 861–868.
Cushman, F., Murray, D., Gordon-McKeon, S., Wharton, S., & Greene, J. D. (2012).
Judgment before principle: Engagement of the frontoparietal control network in
condemning harms of omission. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(8),
888–895.
Janoff-Bulman, R., & Carnes, N. C. (2013). Surveying the moral landscape: Moral
motives and group-based moralities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17(3),
219–236.
Shaw, A., DeScioli, P., & Olson, K. R. (2012). Fairness versus favoritism in children.
Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 736–745.
Young, L., & Tsoi, L. (2013). When mental states matter, when they don’t, and what
that means for morality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(8), 585–604.
doi:10.1111/spc3.12044

JAMES DUNGAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
James Dungan received his undergraduate degree in Brain and Cognitive
Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now a graduate student in the Boston College Psychology Department. He is a member
of the Morality Lab, under the direction of Liane Young. His research investigates the cognitive and neural processes underlying moral judgment using
methods from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He is supported
by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
LIANE YOUNG SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Liane Young is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at
Boston College, where she directs the Morality Lab. Her research focuses on
the cognitive and neural bases of human moral judgment, including the roles
of mental state reasoning and emotional processing. Her research relies on

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

the tools of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and
the study of patients with cognitive and neural deficits. Young received her
BA in philosophy (2004) and her PhD in cognitive psychology (2008) from
Harvard University, after which she did postdoctoral work in Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department.
Personal webpage: https://www2.bc.edu/liane-young/
Curriculum vitae: https://www2.bc.edu/liane-young/CV.html
Morality Lab at Boston College: http://moralitylab.bc.edu/
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15



Understanding the Adaptive
Functions of Morality from a
Cognitive Psychological Perspective
JAMES DUNGAN and LIANE YOUNG

Abstract
What are the possible functions of moral cognition? Addressing this question has
proved difficult, leading to disagreement among moral psychologist. Researchers
claiming that morality is composed of many distinct domains have posited multiple functions, whereas researchers focusing on the features that are unique to and
common across all moral judgments have suggested a unified evolutionary function. In this review, we suggest that the limitations of these accounts can be overcome
by systematically investigating the cognitive mechanisms that support moral judgments across descriptively distinct domains. As a case study, we focus on the contrast
between harm and purity morals, and we argue for a novel functional difference on
the basis of differences in the underlying psychological processes. Understanding the
psychology behind distinct morals will pave the way for understanding the distinct
functions of moral cognition.

INTRODUCTION
Is it not reasonable to anticipate that our understanding of the human mind
would be greatly aided by knowing the purpose for which it was designed?
George C. Williams (1966, p. 16)

What is the purpose of moral cognition? Moral psychologists have become
increasingly interested in exploring the function of moral cognition (i.e., how
we think about moral right and wrong) using the tools of evolutionary and
developmental psychology. Given the complexity of moral cognition, this
has proved to be a difficult task. On the one hand, “morality” could mean
many things at once—an umbrella term referring to diverse judgments of
diverse behaviors, from assault to incest. Accordingly, researchers supporting this view have posited multiple distinct functions for distinct “domains”
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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of morality. On the other hand, morality may be unified and defined by features that are unique to morality (vs other domains of cognition) or at least
features that are common across descriptively different kinds of moral norms.
Researchers proposing such a unified account of morality also typically propose a unified adaptive function for morality.
In this review, we discuss the strengths and limitations of these two
accounts. We then highlight new research on the cognitive mechanisms
supporting moral judgment and how this research constrains and informs
inferences about the adaptive functions of morality. Using the contrast
between harm and purity morals as a case study, we illustrate how understanding the cognitive mechanisms for moral judgments allows researchers
to build novel functional accounts that capture real psychological differences.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
MORALITY IS MANY THINGS
Historically, morality has been thought to be a unified ethic of justice
and fairness (Kohlberg, 1969, 1981; cf. Baumard, Andre, & Sperber, in
press) or a related ethic of concern for people’s welfare and happiness
(Harris, 2010). However, views of morality as a single ethic or value have
attracted many critics. These critics have argued that our moral concerns
are many—providing care and prohibiting harm (Gilligan, 1982), showing
respect and loyalty (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997), preserving
one’s purity (Appiah, 2006; Haidt & Joseph, 2007), to name a few. In order
to account for these diverse descriptions of common moral concerns, Moral
Foundations Theory (MFT) has posited that morality is composed of five
distinct moral domains (Harm, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity),
each of which evolved in response to a specific adaptive need (Graham
et al., 2011, 2013; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). On this view, each moral
domain is a functionally specialized mechanism, or module (Graham et al.,
2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2007). For example, the Harm domain addresses
the challenge of caring for vulnerable offspring, the Authority domain
helps people navigate social dominance hierarchies, and the Purity domain
prevents exposure to pathogens and parasites.
While MFT has broadened the scope of research in moral psychology and
uncovered meaningful differences in the moral concerns endorsed within
and across cultures (e.g., liberals/conservatives; Graham et al., 2009), MFT
may be limited in its empirical focus on the descriptive content of moral
norms. The ways in which moral content can be carved up into different
categories are numerous and possibly arbitrary. Indeed, MFT originally
featured four domains, such that loyalty was covered by a combination

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

of reciprocity and hierarchy (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). MFT in its present
form accommodates five domains, featuring loyalty as its own distinct
domain (Graham et al., 2011; Haidt, & Joseph, 2007). More recently, theorists
have tentatively proposed six domains, splitting Fairness into two separate
domains: Equality and Liberty/Oppression (Graham et al., 2013). Given the
sheer breadth of possible moral concerns, the number of domains could
be ratcheted up to include domains concerning industriousness, modesty,
and wastefulness (Graham et al., 2013; Suhler & Churchland, 2011). The
number of moral domains that researchers could potentially identify seems
limitless: Morality may, in fact, be composed of hundreds or even thousands
of distinct functional modules, each addressing a unique adaptive problem
(Cosmides & Tooby, 1994).
The concern here is not one of parsimony—an acceptable taxonomy of
morality should strive for explanatory adequacy without limiting itself
for the sake of neatness. Instead, the concern is with the general approach
of carving up moral cognition based on descriptive differences, that is,
differences in the content of moral actions, rather than differences in the
psychological mechanisms that support the processing of different actions.
This concern deserves more consideration as more domains are identified.
Notably, the addition of Liberty as a sixth domain was motivated by the
observation of moral attitudes among Libertarians that were not easily
described by the current moral domains (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, &
Haidt, 2012), rather than by novel evolutionary theorizing or novel observations of cognitive mechanism. If moral domains represent functionally
distinct modules, then judgments associated with distinct domains might be
expected to behave differently—they might follow different cognitive rules
because of the contribution of different cognitive processes. To the extent
that evidence for such differences is lacking among the five domains posited
by MFT (see section titled “Key Issues for Future Research”), amendments
to current moral taxonomies may be needed.
MORALITY IS ONE THING
Despite its diverse content, morality may nonetheless be unified by features
that are unique to moral judgments and also common to moral judgments
across all domains (Young & Dungan, 2012). Developmental psychologists
made an early attempt at distinguishing moral norms from norms of social
convention (Turiel, 1983). Work on the moral–conventional distinction was
aimed at identifying the features that separate conventional judgments
(e.g., wearing pajamas to class is wrong) from uniquely moral judgments
(e.g., murder is wrong). For instance, while conventional judgments are
culture-specific, moral judgments might apply universally across all cultures

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as well as across time (e.g., murder is always wrong, no matter the place
or time).
While the moral–conventional distinction has faced criticism (Kelly, Stich,
Haley, Eng, & Fessler, 2007), researchers have proposed other features that
may be common across, and unique to, moral judgments. Moral violations
evoke stronger emotional and behavioral reactions than conventional violations. For example, when previously nonmoral norms become moralized
(as in the case of an omnivore who converts to vegetarianism for moral reasons), these newly moralized norms elicit a common suite of reactions such as
prohibition, internalization, overjustification, and increased parent-to-child
transmission (Rozin, 1997, 1999).
More importantly, while descriptive theories of diverse moral domains
offer few specific predictions about the psychological mechanisms underlying distinct domains, researchers focusing on morality as a unified
concept suggest common cognitive components that cut across all moral
judgments—in spite of their apparent differences. On one such account,
“moral cognition has an ‘insert here’ parameter, processing diverse moral
rules with the same computational architecture” (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009,
p. 3). Researchers have proposed a number of candidate components of
uniquely moral cognition, such as the perception of an agent who inflicts
harm on a patient (Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), or the integration of causal
and intentional attributions (Mikhail, 2007).
If cognitive mechanisms operate similarly across descriptively different
moral domains, and if these domains share a common cognitive structure
that is distinct from nonmoral judgments, then morality may be better
understood as serving a single purpose. One possibility is that morality
functions to limit selfishness and foster cooperation (Tomasello & Vaish,
2013). Similarly, morality could function as a means of navigating social
alliances (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Graham et al., 2009; Sosis & Bressler, 2003).
In competitive terms, morality could function as a dynamic coordination
strategy for choosing sides in interpersonal and intergroup conflict (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009, 2013). In all cases, the functional explanations are not
tied down to the specific content of moral actions and instead focus on a
broader adaptive problem that might be unique to morality and common
across all kinds of moral judgments.
The strength of these unified accounts is their attention to the psychological mechanisms supporting moral judgment. However, unified accounts run
the risk of overgeneralization (Parkinson et al., 2011). By focusing on common features across moral domains, researchers may fail to detect meaningful differences in the psychological mechanisms underlying different moral
judgments.

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

A NEW APPROACH FOR DEFINING MORALITY
We have reviewed the strengths and limitations of current taxonomies of
morality. How then should moral psychologists approach the task of carving
up (or not carving up) moral cognition? We suggest that moral psychologists
might first identify cognitive rules that apply to moral judgment in one context and then test whether those rules apply equivalently across descriptively
distinct domains. In the next section, we use the well-studied domains of
harm and purity to illustrate how the cognitive processes underlying different norms dictate where psychologically meaningful boundaries exist within
moral cognition.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
THE CASE OF HARM AND PURITY
Descriptive accounts of morality provide clear evidence that people moralize not simply concerns of harm (e.g., murder is wrong) but also concerns
of purity—for example, avoiding impure objects or acts that could lead to
defilement or contamination (Shweder et al., 1997). Purity morals are typically characterized as part of an adaptive disease-avoidance mechanism that
has been co-opted to signal socially and morally offense behavior as well
(e.g., drug abuse, sexual deviance; Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson,
2009). Purity norms may thus function to protect the body from desecration
or defilement. By contrast, moral norms against harm are thought to address
the evolutionary need to care for vulnerable offspring, leading us to express
compassion and empathy for the suffering (Haidt & Joseph, 2007).
While this functional distinction may be intuitively appealing, empirical
evidence for distinct psychological signatures of harm and purity morals has
been mixed. On the one hand, researchers supporting the view that “morality is many things” suggest that harm and purity are associated with distinct
emotions: typically, harm violations elicit anger, whereas purity violations
elicit disgust (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999; Russell & Giner-Sorolla,
2013). However, researchers supporting the view that “morality is one thing”
point out that feelings of anger and disgust are highly correlated and frequently co-occur (Gray et al., 2012). Furthermore, observations of whether
specific emotions are linked to specific moral judgments have been variable
across studies. Disgust, for instance, has been shown to increase the severity
of purity-related judgments specifically (Seidel & Prinz, 2013), moral judgment more generally (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006), and even judgments of
nonmoral actions (e.g., giving a class presentation; Wheatley & Haidt, 2005).
Some researchers have argued that purity violations do not belong to
a separate domain; instead, they can be construed as a form of harm

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(Gray et al., 2012). If harm and purity morals do not form distinct domains,
then we might expect similar psychological processing underlying harm and
purity morals. Yet, new studies reveal important differences. For example,
while anger, elicited by harmful actions, is modulated by contextual factors,
including whether the violation was committed intentionally or accidentally, disgust, elicited by purity violations, is insensitive to factors such as
intent—disgust is elicited simply if purity rules have been broken, regardless
of the circumstances (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2010, 2011). Furthermore,
participants perceive a greater moral difference between intentional and
accidental harms, compared to the difference between intentional and
accidental purity violations (Young & Saxe, 2011).
The behavioral difference in people’s moral judgments of harm and purity
violations is supported by recent neural evidence. Brain regions involved in
reasoning about mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions) are more active when
participants judge harmful compared to impure actions (Young, Chakroff,
Dungan, Koster-Hale, & Saxe, in prep.). In addition, information about intent
is encoded in the spatial pattern of neural activity in brain regions for mental
state reasoning when participants consider harm violations but not purity
violations. The evidence thus reveals important differences in the cognitive
mechanisms for harm and purity judgments.
DISTINCT FUNCTIONS FOR SELF VERSUS OTHER
How can the pattern of cognitive differences observed inform our functional
accounts of harm versus purity norms? One explanation is that harm norms
function to limit our negative impact on others. Harm norms appear to
operate primarily in interpersonal contexts, where one person’s harmful
actions affect another. Recent work suggests that the presence of at least two
parties—a violator who acts on a victim—is necessary to establish an act as
harmful in the first place (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009; Gray & Wegner, 2011).
If harm norms dictate how we ought (and ought not) to treat each other,
information about intent would be expected to play a significant role: We
need to know what others are thinking of to evaluate their actions and to
understand their intentions toward us.
Conversely, purity norms may function to limit our negative impact on ourselves. We may pay particular attention to preserving the purity of our own
bodies (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2013). Indeed, we may be concerned with
the impurities of other people only to the extent that they are perceived as a
possible threat to our own purity (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2000). Impure
actions are therefore prohibited even when no one, except for possibly one’s
own self, is rendered a “victim” (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993). If purity norms
function to protect our own selves from possible contamination, we may care

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

less about our own intent, that is, whether we acted accidentally or intentionally in defiling ourselves. As Appiah (2006) states in an account of Akran
society in Ghana: “With taboo breaking … it doesn’t matter what you meant
to do. You’re polluted. You need to get clean” (p. 51). In other words, because
purity violations affect the self, we care mostly about avoiding the outcome
or else making sure we “get clean” afterwards.
Thus, our key prediction is that purity norms function to protect one’s
self, whereas harm norms function to protect others. Two recent lines of
investigation in our laboratory support this prediction. First, regardless of
whether the content of actions was harmful or impure, participants judged
self-directed actions (e.g., cutting or splashing urine on yourself) as impure
and other-directed actions (e.g., cutting or splashing urine on someone else)
as harmful. Importantly, the perceived moral difference between intentional
versus accidental violations was also smaller for self-directed actions,
compared to other-directed actions, consistent with the differential role of
intent across moral domains (Chakroff, Dungan, & Young, 2013).
Second, although moral judgments of negative actions directed at others
versus one’s self show the cognitive signatures of moral judgments of
harm versus purity violations, respectively, an outstanding question is
whether participants are especially averse to impure outcomes that affect
themselves and harmful outcomes that affect others. Consistent with this
prediction, participants judged harmful actions as morally worse (and
less preferred) than impure actions when directed at others; however,
the opposite pattern emerged when participants judged actions directed
at themselves—impure actions were judged as morally worse (and less
preferred; Dungan, Chakroff, & Young, submitted). Thus, purity norms are
tied specifically to concerns about defiling one’s self, whereas harm norms
are tied to concerns about harming others.
BEYOND SELF VERSUS OTHER
A potential limitation of the proposed functional distinction between norms
governing how we treat ourselves and norms governing how we treat others
is that we have focused only on judgments of interactions between individuals when much of morality occurs at the level of groups. Purity morals may
not only govern how people treat their own bodies but also more generally define proper behavior within a group, as well as boundaries between
groups (cf. Atran & Henrich, 2010; Sosis & Bressler, 2003). As such, close
adherence to purity norms may be a strong signal of group membership. We
argue, however, that purity morals operating at the group level may nonetheless function to protect the self for two reasons: (i) purity violations undermine the cohesion of the social group, making each individual potentially

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vulnerable to threat, and (ii) purity violations committed by other group
members may contaminate one’s self either by association with the group,
or directly through physical contagion (cf. van Leeuwen, Park, Koenig, &
Graham, 2012).
A unique prediction follows from this account. While studies in social psychology routinely demonstrate a robust in-group bias whereby people judge
their own group’s violations as less wrong than the same violations committed by an out-group member (Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007), this account
predicts that people should be harsher on purity violations occurring within
versus outside of their own group—again, because of the potential threat
of impurity for the self. To test this prediction, we presented participants
with vignettes (adapted from Leidner & Castano, 2012) depicting in-group
and out-group members committing harm and purity violations (Dungan
et al., submitted). Consistent with our prediction, participants displayed the
typical in-group bias for harm violations, judging out-group harm as worse
than in-group harm; however, the opposite pattern emerged for purity
violations—purity violations committed by in-group members were judged
as morally worse than the same purity violations committed by out-group
members. In an extension of our previous findings, these results suggest that
some morals function for protecting the group and the self, whereas other
morals may be focused more on how our actions affect others, across group
boundaries.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
A NEW TAXONOMY FOR ALL MORAL JUDGMENT
While we have focused on the distinction between harm and purity, a
primary question for future research is whether the functional distinction
between morals that protect the self and morals that protect others applies
to other moral norms described by MFT and other theories, including
loyalty, hierarchy, and fairness. Although empirical work on the cognitive
components of loyalty, hierarchy, and fairness judgments is sparse, several
studies indicate a possible cognitive boundary between “individualizing”
norms such as harm and fairness, and “binding norms” such as purity,
loyalty, and hierarchy (Graham et al., 2009). For example, while harmful
omissions are generally judged less harshly than harmful commissions
(e.g., it is worse to kill than to fail to rescue), this omission bias is reduced
when the violator and victim are bound by a close relationship, necessitating loyalty, or a hierarchical relationship (e.g., the violator and victim
are boss and employee; Haidt & Baron, 1996). Similarly, omission bias
is enhanced for individualizing violations compared to purity violations

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

(DeScioli, Asao, & Kurzban, 2012; DeScioli, Christner, & Kurzban, 2011).
These findings fit nicely with the given observations on the differential role
of intent—revealing an overall emphasis on outcomes when considering
binding norms compared to individualizing norms.
Other research on the cognitive and neural processes supporting different
moral judgments corroborates the difference between individualizing and
binding norms. Judgments of individualizing and binding norms are differentially affected by abstract versus concrete thinking (Napier & Luguri, 2013)
as well as cognitive load (Wright & Baril, 2011). Endorsement of these norms
is also associated with volumetric differences in specific brain regions (Lewis,
Kanai, Bates, & Rees, 2012). Finally, while psychopathy is marked by a willingness to violate individualizing norms of harm and fairness, endorsement
of binding norms is relatively preserved (Glenn, Iyer, Graham, Koleva, &
Haidt, 2009). Notably, these findings do not reveal differences among all five
domains of morality—suggesting that a two-factor model may better capture psychological differences in moral cognition (Dungan & Young, 2012; cf.
the exploratory factor analysis in Graham et al., 2011). These lines of research
reveal empirical approaches for testing whether descriptively different moral
domains are psychologically distinct and important avenues for building taxonomies of moral psychology.
MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIOR
As psychological and functional differences are uncovered within moral
cognition, moral psychologists should also address the factors that influence judgments across domains. In a recent example, we described two
people—one loyal person and one fair person—and asked participants
which person they would rather befriend and which person they deemed
more moral (Dungan, Waytz, & Young, in prep.). Overall, participants
reported a preference for loyal (vs fair) friends but endorsed fairness (over
loyalty) as an abstract moral virtue. Future research should investigate
how different motivations, such as the need for social inclusion versus the
need to feel moral (moral self-concept), influence judgments across moral
domains.
Another key aim for moral psychologists will be to connect theories
describing the adaptive functions of morality to actual behavior, both within
and beyond the laboratory. For instance, if some moral norms function to
protect the self, while other moral norms function to protect others, we
might expect a tension between competing moral demands (cf. Cohen,
Montoya, & Insko, 2006). This tension has behavioral implications, as in
the case of whistleblowing. One hypothesis is that the valuation of fairness
over loyalty predicts decisions to report unethical deeds; emphasizing one

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value over another may consequently shift attitudes toward whistleblowing
(Waytz, Dungan, & Young, submitted).
NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS
Understanding moral norms from a cognitive psychological perspective
may even, in some sense, constrain claims as to what morality is or ought
to be. If moral norms ought to apply equally to everyone, regardless of
culture or standing in society, then moral norms, such as purity, which
govern self-interest or in-group interest, may be less legitimately moral than
norms governing interpersonal interactions across group boundaries, such
as harm (Bloom, 2011). Furthermore, if moral judgments of an agent should
be based at least in part on the agent’s mental states (e.g., whether the agent
intended to do wrong or not), then our reactions to purity violations might
be less legitimately moral, to the extent that they are largely insensitive to
intent information and driven instead by the inflexible emotion of disgust,
(Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2013). Illuminating the cognitive mechanisms
underlying different moral norms may indeed constrain key normative and
meta-ethical claims.
CONCLUSION
Morality is complex. Researchers have disagreed over the function or functions of morality. Moving forward, moral psychologists would do well to
focus their empirical efforts on the underlying cognitive processes for moral
judgment to identify which descriptive differences are psychologically meaningful. Understanding these psychological differences will pave the way for
understanding the key functions of moral cognition.
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FURTHER READING
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imagery and moral judgment. Psychological Science, 23(8), 861–868.
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Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 736–745.
Young, L., & Tsoi, L. (2013). When mental states matter, when they don’t, and what
that means for morality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(8), 585–604.
doi:10.1111/spc3.12044

JAMES DUNGAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
James Dungan received his undergraduate degree in Brain and Cognitive
Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now a graduate student in the Boston College Psychology Department. He is a member
of the Morality Lab, under the direction of Liane Young. His research investigates the cognitive and neural processes underlying moral judgment using
methods from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He is supported
by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
LIANE YOUNG SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Liane Young is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at
Boston College, where she directs the Morality Lab. Her research focuses on
the cognitive and neural bases of human moral judgment, including the roles
of mental state reasoning and emotional processing. Her research relies on

Understanding the Adaptive Functions of Morality from a Cognitive Psychological Perspective

the tools of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and
the study of patients with cognitive and neural deficits. Young received her
BA in philosophy (2004) and her PhD in cognitive psychology (2008) from
Harvard University, after which she did postdoctoral work in Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department.
Personal webpage: https://www2.bc.edu/liane-young/
Curriculum vitae: https://www2.bc.edu/liane-young/CV.html
Morality Lab at Boston College: http://moralitylab.bc.edu/
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