Why Good People Disagree About Right and Wrong

Why do reasonable people disagree so strongly about right and wrong? And why are we so quick to assume that people on the other side of a moral or political issue are irrational, selfish, ignorant, or simply bad?

Michael Shermer speaks with Cornell psychologist Audun Dahl, author of Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing, about how human morality develops and why many familiar explanations fall short.

They discuss whether babies are born with a moral sense, what children and other primates can really tell us about the origins of morality, how parents shape their children's values, classic experiments in moral psychology, and whether science can tell us what is right and wrong. The conversation also turns to abortion, competing rights, immigration, religion, and the growing tendency to misunderstand and demonize people who reach different moral conclusions.

Audun Dahl is a professor of psychology at Cornell University, where he directs the Developmental Moral Psychology Lab. His research examines how people develop ideas about right and wrong across the lifespan, from infancy through adulthood, and how moral judgments are shaped by everyday social interactions. He is the author of Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing.