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MIT Researchers Discover Magnets Can Blur Moral Judgement

by Caleb Johnson on March 31, 2010 at 09:00 AM

A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a way to blur people's delineations between right and wrong. According to an AFP report on Fox News, the researchers used a magnetic field attached to a person's head to send a current into the brain and successfully disrupt the right temporoparietal junction -- the part of the brain commonly associated with morality.

In the study, participants read different scenarios involving fictional characters and were asked to judge the morality of a character's actions. For example, one scenario involved a woman named Grace who, touring a chemical plant with a friend, put something toxic in the friend's coffee, even though she saw that it read 'Toxic' on the label. The participants were asked to judge Grace's behavior on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being forbidden and 7 being okay. When magnetic pulses were rocking their brains, the participants were much more likely to say that failed attempts to hurt somebody were okay.


Essentially, this research suggests that flooding the brain with magnetic pulses can blur the participant's concept of right and wrong. Unfortunately, a tin-foil hat may only make things worse. [From: MIT, via: AFP/Fox News]

Tags: brain, judgment, Magnet, magnets, mit, morality, research, science, study, top

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