When it comes to making moral decisions, we often think of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Yet, why we make such decisions has been widely debated. Are we motivated ...

Selfless behavior and cooperation cannot be taken for granted. Mohammad Salahshour of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (now at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior), has ...

It's not hard to identify people who have a strong moral compass. Their behavior is different in a way that shows how much ...

Moral and civil behavior by all, toward all, is an essential aspect of a safe and welcoming learning environment. While focused on student achievement rates and teacher performance in the service of ...

Two of my previous posts on moral development described the origins and consequences of following inner expectations and others' expectations. We form our inner expectations (conscience, or what we ...

Some people may rely on principles of both guilt and fairness and may switch their moral rule depending on the circumstances, according to a new study on moral decision-making and cooperation. When it ...

Just as optical illusions can fool the eye to present a distorted image of reality, moral illusions can fool our decision-making ability, making us more selfish. This is the conclusion of a newly ...

Why don’t some people practice what they preach? Researchers reveal that a brain region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved. Publishing March 19 in the Cell Press journal ...

As kids we were often nudged by our parents to be conventional: “look at your behavior- why don’t you behave like everyone else?” is a sentence I’ve been hearing from mum too often as a child. When we ...

Do children need religion to grow into good people? Sixty-five percent of Americans think so. And even though younger adults have been leaving traditional faiths in droves, about 48% of them still ...

This is the second in a two-part series from Albert Bandura, a pioneer in the field of social cognitive theory and the most cited living psychologist in the world. Read the first piece on ...

Coupling two approaches of game theory can shed light on how moral norms evolve. Selfless behaviour and cooperation cannot be taken for granted. Mohammad Salahshour of the Max Planck Institute for ...