Determined, page 41
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Gambling study: D. Campbell-Meiklejohn et al., “Knowing When to Stop: The Brain Mechanisms of Chasing Losses,” Biological Psychiatry 63 (2008): 293. Alcohol on board: Y. Liu et al., “ ‘Free Won’t’ after a Beer or Two: Chronic and Acute Effects of Alcohol on Neural and Behavioral Indices of Intentional Inhibition,” BMC Psychology 8 (2020): 2. Kids versus adults: M. Schel, K. Ridderinkhof, and E. Crone, “Choosing Not to Act: Neural Bases of the Development of Intentional Inhibition,” Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 10 (2014): 93.
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“Freedom arises from”: B. Brembs, “Towards a Scientific Concept of Free Will as a Biological Trait: Spontaneous Actions and Decision-Making in Invertebrates,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278 (2011): 930; the paper approaches the topic from the very unorthodox (and interesting) angle of examining decision-making in insects. Mele quote: Mele, Free, 32.
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N. Levy, Hard Luck: How Luck Undermines Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2011).
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Footnote: H. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829.
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H. Frankfurt, “Three Concepts of Free Action,” Aristotelian Society Proceedings, Supplementary Volumes 49 (1975): 113, quote on p. 122; M. Shadlen and A. Roskies, “The Neurobiology of Decision-making and Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism and Mindedness,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 23 April (2012): 1, quote is on p. 10.
Footnote: Sjöberg, “Free Will and Neurosurgical Resections.”
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D. Dennett, Freedom Evolves (Penguin, 2004); the quote comes from p. 276. Dennett also expresses these ideas in a wide variety of his other books, e.g., D. Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press, 1984); D. Dennett, Freedom Evolves (Viking, 2003); his lectures, e.g., Dennett, “Is Free Will an Illusion?”; and his debates, e.g., D. Dennett and G. Caruso, Just Deserts: Debating Free Will (Polity, 2021);
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N. Levy, “Luck and History-Sensitive Compatibilism,” Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2009): 237, the quote comes from p. 244; D. Dennett, “Review of ‘Against Moral Responsibility,’ ” in Naturalism, https://www.naturalism.org/resources/book-reviews/dennett-review-of-against-moral-responsibility.
As a theme in this chapter, people have been arguing about Libetian issues for forty years, and the references cited barely scratched the surface of really interesting takes on these issues. Others include: G. Gomes, “The Timing of Conscious Experience: A Critical Review and Reinterpretation of Libet’s Research,” Consciousness and Cognition 7 (1998): 559; A. Batthyany, “Mental Causation and Free Will after Libet and Soon: Reclaiming Conscious Agency,” in Irreducibly Conscious: Selected Papers on Consciousness, ed. A. Batthyany and A. Elitzur (Universitäts-Verlag Winter, 2009); A. Lavazza, “Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10 (2016): 262; C. Frith, S. Blakemore, and D. Wolpert, “Abnormalities in the Awareness and Control of Action,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 355 (2000): 1404; A. Guggisberg and A. Mottaz, “Timing and Awareness of Movement Decisions: Does Consciousness Really Come Too Late?,” Frontiers of Human Neuroscience 7 (2013), doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00385; T. Bayne, “Neural Decoding and Human Freedom,” in Moral Psychology vol. 4, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (MIT Press, 2014).
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3. Where Does Intent Come From?
Implicit bias and shootings: J. Correll et al., “Across the Thin Blue Line: Police Officers and Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 1006; J. Correll et al., “The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002): 1314. For an excellent overview of the entire field, see J. Eberhardt, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do (Viking, 2019).
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Implicit effects of disgust: D. Pizarro, Y. Inbar, and C. Helion, “On Disgust and Moral Judgment,” Emotion Review 3 (2011): 267; T. Adams, P. Stewart, and J. Blanchard, “Disgust and the Politics of Sex: Exposure to a Disgusting Odorant Increases Politically Conservative Views on Sex and Decreases Support for Gay Marriage,” PLoS One 9 (2014): e95572; Y. Inbar, D. Pizarro, and P. Bloom, “Disgusting Smells Cause Decreased Liking of Gay Men,” Emotion 12 (2012): 23; J. Terrizzi, N. Shook, and W. Ventis, “Disgust: A Predictor of Social Conservatism and Prejudicial Attitudes Toward Homosexuals,” Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010): 587.
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More disgust: S. Tsao and D. McKay, “Behavioral Avoidance Tests and Disgust in Contamination Fears: Distinctions from Trait Anxiety,” Behavioral Research Therapeutics 42 (2004): 207; B. Olatunji, B. Puncochar, and R. Cox, “Effects of Experienced Disgust on Morally-Relevant Judgments,” PLoS One 11 (2016): e0160357.
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And more disgust: H. Chapman and A. Anderson, “Things Rank and Gross in Nature: A Review and Synthesis of Moral Disgust,” Psychological Bulletin 139 (2013): 300; P. Rozin et al., “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 (1999): 574. The insula, when activated by aversive emotional states, talking to the amygdala: D. Gehrlach et al., “Aversive State Processing in the Posterior Insular Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience 22 (2019): 1424.
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Implicit effects of sweet tastes: M. Schaefer et al., “Sweet Taste Experience Improves Prosocial Intentions and Attractiveness Ratings,” Psychological Research 85 (2021): 1724; B. Meier et al., “Sweet Taste Preferences and Experiences Predict Prosocial Inferences, Personalities, and Behaviors,” Psychological Sciences 102 (2012): 163.
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Confusing beauty and moral goodness: Q. Cheng et al., “Neural Correlates of Moral Goodness and Moral Beauty Judgments,” Brain Research 1726 (2020): 146534; T. Tsukiura and R. Cabeza, “Shared Brain Activity for Aesthetic and Moral Judgments: Implications for the Beauty-Is-Good Stereotype,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 6 (2011): 138; X. Cui et al., “Different Influences of Facial Attractiveness on Judgments of Moral Beauty and Moral Goodness,” Science Reports 9 (2019): 12152; T. Wang et al., “Is Moral Beauty Different from Facial Beauty? Evidence from an fMRI Study,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 10 (2015): 814; Q. Luo et al., “The Neural Correlates of Integrated Aesthetics between Moral and Facial Beauty,” Science Reports 9 (2019): 1980; C. Ferrari et al., “The Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Mediates the Interaction between Moral and Aesthetic Valuation: A TMS Study on the Beauty-Is-Good Stereotype,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12 (2017): 707.
Then there’s an irresistible study showing that botanists choose to spend their careers studying prettier flowers (blue ones, taller ones): M. Adamo et al., “Plant Scientists’ Research Attention Is Skewed towards Colourful, Conspicuous and Broadly Distributed Flowers,” Nature Plants 7 (2021): 574. To the best of my knowledge, I did not choose to devote thirty-three summers to studying wild baboons because I thought they were as pretty as a picture.
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The initial study that introduced the term “Macbeth effect”: C. Zhong and K. Lijenquist, “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing,” Science 313 (2006): 1454.
Additional behavior studies of the Macbeth effect: S. W. Lee and N. Schwarz, “Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths: Embodiment of the Moral-Purity Metaphor Is Specific to the Motor Modality Involved in Moral Transgression,” Psychological Sciences 21 (2010): 1423; E. Kalanthroff, C. Aslan, and R. Dar, “Washing Away Your Sins Will Set Your Mind Free: Physical Cleansing Modulates the Effect of Threatened Morality on Executive Control,” Cognition and Emotion 31 (2017): 185; S. Schnall, J. Benton, and S. Harvey, “With a Clean Conscience: Cleanliness Reduces the Severity of Moral Judgments,” Psychological Sciences 19 (2008): 1219; K. Kaspar, V. Krapp, and P. Konig, “Hand Washing Induces a Clean Slate Effect in Moral Judgments: A Pupillometry and Eye-Tracking Study,” Scientific Reports 5 (2015): 10471.
Brain imaging studies of the Macbeth effect: C. Denke et al., “Lying and the Subsequent Desire for Toothpaste: Activity in the Somatosensory Cortex Predicts Embodiment of the Moral-Purity Metaphor,” Cerebral Cortex 26 (2016): 477; M. Schaefer et al., “Dirty Deeds and Dirty Bodies: Embodiment of the Macbeth Effect Is Mapped Topographically onto the Somatosensory Cortex,” Scientific Reports 6 (2015): 18051.
For a study suggesting that this linkage may not be universal: E. Gámez, J. M. Díaz, and H. Marrero, “The Uncertain Universality of the Macbeth Effect with a Spanish Sample,” Spanish Journal of Psychology 14 (2011): 156.
Finally, one study showing that among university students, social science majors are more vulnerable to the Macbeth effect than are engineering students: M. Schaefer, “Morality and Soap in Engineers and Social Scientists: The Macbeth Effect Interacts with Professions,” Psychological Research 83 (2019): 1304.
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Ginger and moral disgust: J. Tracy, C. Steckler, and G. Heltzel, “The Physiological Basis of Psychological Disgust and Moral Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition 116 (2019): 15. An interesting paper showing that disgust influences moral judgments less concerning distant events, and that this is probably mediated by a psychological framing where it is someone else, rather than you, who has to directly interact with the disgusting stimulus: M. van Dijke et al., “So Gross and Yet So Far Away: Psychological Distance Moderates the Effect of Disgust on Moral Judgment,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 9 (2018): 689.
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The original study of judges: S. Danziger, J. Levav, and L. Avnaim-Pesso, “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 108 (2011): 6889. This study was challenged by some other researchers, suggesting that the finding is an artifact of poor study design; in my opinion, the original authors effectively rebutted these charges. See notes 28 and 29 in chapter 4 for details about this.
More on the topic: L. Aaroe and M. Petersen, “Hunger Games: Fluctuations in Blood Glucose Levels Influence Support for Social Welfare,” Psychological Sciences 24 (2013): 2550.
A connection between hunger for food and for money: B. Briers et al., “Hungry for Money: The Desire for Caloric Resources Increases the Desire for Financial Resources and Vice Versa,” Psychological Sciences 17 (2006): 939.
Some circumstance where the connection is demonstrable only in some domains: J. Hausser et al., “Acute Hunger Does Not Always Undermine Prosociality,” Nature Communications 10 (2019): 4733; S. Fraser and D. Nettle, “Hunger Affects Social Decisions in a Multi-round Public Goods Game but Not a Single-Shot Ultimatum Game,” Adaptive Human Behavior 6 (2020): 334; I. Harel and T. Kogut, “Visceral Needs and Donation Decisions: Do People Identify with Suffering or with Relief?,” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 56 (2015): 24.
As is so often the case, the suggestion that this phenomenon is influenced by culture: E. Rantapuska et al., “Does Short-Term Hunger Increase Trust and Trustworthiness in a High Trust Society?,” Frontiers of Psychology 8 (2017): 1944.
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For more details about this general topic, see chapter 3 in R. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press, 2017).
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The classic study demonstrating that testosterone does not generate aggression de novo but, instead, amplifies preexisting social learning about aggression: A. Dixson and J. Herbert, “Testosterone, Aggressive Behavior and Dominance Rank in Captive Adult Male Talapoin Monkeys (Miopithecus talapoin),” Physiology and Behavior 18 (1977): 539.
How some of the behavioral effects of testosterone arise from their effects in the brain: K. Kendrick and R. Drewett, “Testosterone Reduces Refractory Period of Stria Terminalis Neurons in the Rat Brain,” Science 204 (1979): 877; K. Kendrick, “Inputs to Testosterone-Sensitive Stria Terminalis Neurones in the Rat Brain and the Effects of Castration,” Journal of Physiology 323 (1982): 437; K. Kendrick, “The Effect of Castration on Stria Terminalis Neurone Absolute Refractory Periods Using Different Antidromic Stimulation Loci,” Brain Research 248 (1982): 174; K. Kendrick, “Electrophysiological Effects of Testosterone on the Medial Preoptic-Anterior Hypothalamus of the Rat,” Journal of Endocrinology 96 (1983): 35; E. Hermans, N. Ramsey, and J. van Honk, “Exogenous Testosterone Enhances Responsiveness to Social Threat in the Neural Circuitry of Social Aggression in Humans,” Biological Psychiatry 63 (2008): 263.
In 1990, the ethologist John Wingfield of the University of California at Davis, along with colleagues, published an immensely influential paper about the nature of testosterone’s effects on aggression. Their “Challenge Hypothesis” posits that not only does testosterone not cause aggression, it doesn’t uniformly just amplify preexisting social tendencies toward aggression either. Instead, at times when an organism is challenged for social status, testosterone amplifies whatever behaviors are needed to maintain status. Well, that doesn’t seem like much of an elaboration—if you’re a male baboon whose rank is being challenged, aggression is what you need to maintain status. But when it comes to humans, there are greater subtleties, because status can be maintained in different ways. For example, in an economic game where status is accrued through generous economic offers, testosterone increases such generosity. See: J. Wingfield et al., “The ‘Challenge Hypothesis’: Theoretical Implications for Patterns of Testosterone Secretion, Mating Systems, and Breeding Strategies,” American Naturalist 136 (1990): 829. The hypothesis helps explain a wide range of testosterone-dependent behaviors: J. Wingfield “The Challenge Hypothesis: Where It Began and Relevance to Humans,” Hormones and Behavior 92 (2017): 9. Also see: J. Archer, “Testosterone and Human Aggression: An Evaluation of the Challenge Hypothesis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 30 (2006): 319.
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Papers concerning the behavioral and neurobiological underpinnings of testosterone make people reactive to perceived threat: E. Hermans, N. Ramsey, and J. van Honk, “Exogenous Testosterone Enhances Responsiveness to Social Threat in the Neural Circuitry of Social Aggression in Humans,” Biological Psychiatry 63 (2008): 263; J. van Honk et al., “A Single Administration of Testosterone Induces Cardiac Accelerative Responses to Angry Faces in Healthy Young Women,” Behavioral Neuroscience 115 (2001): 238; N. Wright et al., “Testosterone Disrupts Human Collaboration by Increasing Egocentric Choices,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279 (2012): 2275; P. Mehta and J. Beer, “Neural Mechanisms of the Testosterone-Aggression Relation: The Role of Orbitofrontal Cortex,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22 (2010): 2357; G. van Wingen et al., “Testosterone Reduces Amygdala-Orbitofrontal Cortex Coupling,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 35 (2010): 105; P. Bos et al., “The Neural Mechanisms by Which Testosterone Acts on Interpersonal Trust,” Neuroimage 2 (2012): 730.
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Some studies exploring sources of individual differences in the workings of the testicular system: C. Laube, R. Lorenz, and L. van den Bos, “Pubertal Testosterone Correlates with Adolescent Impatience and Dorsal Striatal Activity,” Development and Cognitive Neuroscience 42 (2020): 100749; B. Mohr et al., “Normal, Bound and Nonbound Testosterone Levels in Normally Ageing Men: Results from the Massachusetts Male Ageing Study,” Clinical Endocrinology 62 (2005): 64; W. Bremner, M. Vitiello, and P. Prinz, “Loss of Circadian Rhythmicity in Blood Testosterone Levels with Aging in Normal Men,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 56 (1983): 1278; S. Beyenburg et al., “Androgen Receptor mRNA Expression in the Human Hippocampus,” Neuroscience Letters 294 (2000): 25.
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Some good general reviews, see: R. Feldman, “Oxytocin and Social Affiliation in Humans,” Hormones and Behavior 61 (2012): 380; Z. Donaldson and L. Young, “Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Neurogenetics of Sociality,” Science 322 (2008): 900; P. S. Churchland and P. Winkielman, “Modulating Social Behavior with Oxytocin: How Does It Work? What Does It Mean?,” Hormones and Behavior 61 (2012): 392.
Papers related to differences in the oxytocin system comparing monogamous and polygamous rodents: L. Young et al., “Increased Affiliative Response to Vasopressin in Mice Expressing the V1a Receptor from a Monogamous Vole,” Nature 400 (1999): 766; M. Lim et al., “Enhanced Partner Preference in a Promiscuous Species by Manipulating the Expression of a Single Gene,” Nature 429 (2004): 754.
Papers related to differences in the oxytocin system comparing monogamous and polygamous nonhuman primates: A. Smith et al., “Manipulation of the Oxytocin System Alters Social Behavior and Attraction in Pair-Bonding Primates, Callithrix penicillata,” Hormones and Behavior 57 (2010): 255; M. Jarcho et al., “Intranasal VP Affects Pair Bonding and Peripheral Gene Expression in Male Callicebus cupreus,” Genes, Brain and Behavior 10 (2011): 375; C. Snowdon et al., “Variation in Oxytocin Is Related to Variation in Affiliative Behavior in Monogamous, Pairbonded Tamarins,” Hormones and Behavior 58 (2010): 614.
