The Psychology of Moral Judgment

Joshua Greene's fMRI studies found that trolley-type dilemmas activate different brain regions depending on the scenario. Impersonal dilemmas (pulling a lever) engage areas tied to rational calculation. Personal dilemmas (pushing someone) engage emotional processing centers.

This suggests our moral judgments are not the product of a single coherent system but the result of competition between emotional and rational brain networks. The discomfort we feel with the footbridge variant reflects a genuine neurological conflict, not just philosophical confusion.