Moral Judgment In Designer Colors

Written by Administrator

 What if, by having them take a pill, you could get people to start caring more about each other? 

Well, as it just so happens, you can. For the last twenty years I've noticed that when people get onto the right antidepressant, they often feel less alone, less isolated. They start caring more about others. Still, wouldn't it be nice to have some hard evidence?

It's finally here. Molly J. Crockett, Luke Clark, Marc Hauser, and Trevor Robbins took about thirty people, gave half of them a pill to increase retention of serotonin in the brain, and let them sit in a quiet place for about ninety minutes. Then they ran game simulations to, in essence, see if there were a difference in compassion. What they found was that the subjects who had taken the chemical tended to be significantly more empathic, more unlikely to do things that might harm others.

Folks, it didn't take two weeks, or even two days, to get these changes. It took only ninety minutes! Now, that's impressive!

Couple this with the already-documented tendency of serotonin-enhancing chemicals to significantly reduce violent behavior, and you have a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Now, this admittedly raises all sorts of ethical questions, but what price would we be willing to pay just to have everybody to get along with each other?

'Sounds like a song just waiting to be written . . .