Would you sacrifice one person to save five? What have you had to cause harm with your own hands?

Welcome back to savvy psychologist. with your own hands.

Welcome back to savvy psychologist.

I'm your host, Dr. Jade Wu.

Every week I'll help you meet life challenges

with evidence-based research,

a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. We'd like to believe that we make moral judgments based

on rational thought, but the truth is that our moral thinking cannot escape our emotions. So today let's take a look at how anxiety,

empathy, anger, and disgust all shape our moral thinking and how we can harness these emotions for making better moral decisions.

Imagine this scenario. As you're walking by a train station,

you notice there are some construction workers working on the tracks.

There's a fork in the track so a train could either go left or right.

On the left track, there's only one person working. On the right track there are five people

working. They all have noise canceling headphones on and don't seem to know what's

going on around them. Suddenly you see an out-of-control train car coming down the tracks. It must

have gotten loose from a train. The fork in the track is directed towards the right

side so the out-of-control car is headed straight for the five workers

certain to kill them all. There's no way to stop the train car. The only thing you

can do is pull a switch to redirect the car towards the left track,

which will kill the one worker there.

It's a tough one, isn't it?

On the one hand, it seems like a no-brainer that killing one person to save five

...