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By Julia Haas Julia Haas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes College. Her research focuses on theories of valuation and choice. Imagine a shopper named Barbara in the pasta aisle of her local market.  Just as she reaches for her favorite brand of pasta, she remembers that one of the company's senior executives made a homophobic statement . What should she do? She likes the brand's affordability and flavor but prefers to buy from companies that support LGBTQ communities . Barbara then notices that a typically more expensive brand of pasta is on sale and buys a package of that instead. Notably, she doesn't decide what brand of pasta she will buy in the future. Barbara’s deliberation reflects a common form of human choice. It also raises a number of questions for moral psychological theories of normative cognition. How do human beings make choices involving normative dimensions? Why do normative principles affect individuals differen...

Julia Haas is a McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on decision-making. Over the past two decades, computational and neurobiological research has had a big impact on the field of economics, bringing into existence a new and prominent interdisciplinary field of inquiry, ‘neuroeconomics.’ The guiding tenet of neuroeconomics has been that by combining both theoretical and empirical tools from neuroscience, psychology and economics, the resulting synthesis could provide valuable insights into all three of its parent disciplines (Glimcher 2009). And although some economists have resisted the influence of neuroscience research (Gul and Psendorfer 2008), neuroeconomics has by all measures thrived as a theoretical endeavor, and proven itself as a discipline capable of marshaling substantial institutional and financial resources. For example, theories from economics and psychology have alre...

"What drives our desire to behave morally? Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it "the moral molecule") is responsible for trust, empathy and other feelings that help build a stable society." For more read our previous blog post "Liquid Trust and Artificial Love" here.