Joshua Greene

that they're more likely to give those sort of utilitarian response.

But we don't think it's because they care more about the greater good.

I think it's because they don't have that emotional response that goes, ah, don't push, you know, don't hurt people, don't commit acts of violence, right?

As a parallel to that, this is work that was done as an undergrad thesis done by a student named Xin Shang, who was interested in this stuff.

And she thought, hmm, I wonder how Buddhist monks would respond.

Because there were sort of some teachings that would suggest that Buddhist monks might actually kind of make more of a utilitarian response.

But if you ask most people, would a Buddhist monk push someone off the footbridge?

I said, no, of course not.

Buddhist monks are very pious, good people, right?

So she went to the mountain city of Lhasa and interviewed, I think, 48 Buddhist monks.

And something over 80% of them said that it would be okay to push the guy off the footbridge.

And when you ask them why, many of them cited this sutra, this teaching, which describes a sort of advanced, sort of almost enlightened being who...

was in a situation where there was a murderer who was going to cause a lot of harm.

And the only way to stop them was to kill them.

And the person killed them, not out of malice or hatred, but to prevent this harm.

And actually with the expectation that it would be karmically harmful for himself.

But because he did it with that pure intention of promoting the greater good, then that was sort of part of his path to being a bodhisattva and enlightened being on earth.

And that's what we found with Buddhist monks.

So you've got psychopaths and Buddhist monks, both...

giving the utilitarian judgment.