How do common medications influence moral decisions?

A recent study shows that medications used to treat depression and Parkinson’s disease can alter moral decision-making in healthy people. Lead author Molly Crockett discusses what we can and cannot conclude from these findings.Can drugs change our morals? My colleagues and I recently addressed this question in a study carried out at University College London. We gave healthy people the opportunity to earn money by delivering painful electric shocks to either themselves or others, and investigated how common medications influence these moral decisions. One group of volunteers received either the serotonin-enhancing antidepressant drug citalopram or placebo. Enhancing serotonin made participants more reluctant to harm, regardless of whether this benefited themselves or another person. The volunteers who received citalopram were willing to pay nearly twice as much money as those who received placebo to prevent both themselves and other people from receiving pain. Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science Psychology Neuroscience Source Type: news