The Moral Context
Major Wilhelm Trapp and his five hundred men of the German Reserve Police Battalion 101, were woken up at the crack of dawn on July 13th 1942, they were given extra ammunition and driven to a small village.
They were assigned a morally odious task, which was unpleasant, and morally reprehensible. Yet in the wartime Nazi Germany was happening everyday. The world today knows it as the Holocaust. Wilhelm Trapp, and his men were in their middle ages. Trapp was 53, and had grown up in Hamburg, before the Nazi's takeover he was a supporter of the German democrats. In this small village there were 1800 Jews, and they were supposedly involved with the partisans. The men who could work were to be transported to a labour camp. Those who were old, very young, and women were to be shot. This was the first time the men of the 101st battalion were given such an order.
Major Trapp, made them an extraordinary offer; if any of the older men did not feel upto the task they could step out. They had a few seconds to process it. A dozen men stepped out. The rest went on to fulfill their order. In a seminal study of this event historian Christopher Browning writing in his book Ordinary Men says that the usual reasons of group-think, pervasive Nazism or retribution did not apply fully. The urge not to separate from the group, or do not break rank, even though following this meant breaking the moral imperative, don't kill innocent people. The peer group exerts a vast pressure to conform, and norms often go unchecked, especially in a world with infinite array of tasks, and precious little processing time. How do we make morally significant decisions?
Can BS help?
Contrasting Thoughts
Following from the thematic question of the way in which we make decisions, morally significant or otherwise, renowned psychologist Angela Duckworth is asked about her opinion on the impact of personality versus circumstance on an individual's behaviour. She cites examples of arguments on both sides and invokes the metaphor of a conversation between an individual's character traits/personality, as well as their environment or circumstance.
But how are the choices made that lead to this behaviour? Especially the hard choices? On these, Ruth Chang speaks about using the space of hard choices - where the reasons for choosing an alternative runs out from what has been told to us, and rather creating the reasons for our choice through our own agency. This is at odds with our tendency for rationalisations and indulging in hindsight bias.
This makes Nassim Taleb angry. From his experience as a trader, he speaks about his frustration at the, often inaccurate, predictive certainty of risk quantifying analysts in financial institutions. Reliance on educated 'educated experts', or falling prey to the halo effect, and basing models and decisions with warped risk assessment or under the sway of present bias are often the cause for making bad choices. Adopting an agency based approach as spoken about by Dr. Chang in this TED talk would be a cognitively heavy, but potentially rewarding change of pace.
There are seldom actions or behaviours that occur in solitude. At any given point of time, a large number of alternatives exist for the enactment of any behaviour. The final choice that is taken is a function of several factors, including personality and environment. But to what extent are these choices made due to the reasons that we are taught, as compared to the reasons that we create? How do we learn to look at our world better to make better choices everyday? These are just some of the questions we ask ourselves when we look into the mirror each morning.
The Lab This Week
Morality Lab @ Boston College

The lab works on the following currently, but has done interesting work in related fields. Moreover they also teach Psychology.
What dimensions organize person space and action space?
How do we update our impressions of others when they violate our expectations?
Do we update our impressions differently when close friends behave unexpectedly, relative to strangers?
Does the failure to negatively update impressions of close others help to maintain close relationships?
What special obligations do people think others have to their family, relative to strangers?
How do we decide which social partners to choose, and which ones to leave behind?
Do we discount virtue when it is signaled publicly? Does discounting depend on the type of virtue being signaled?
The lab can be found at the following website, https://moralitylab.bc.edu/
