As the environments that intelligent agents operate in become more reflective of the real world, agent’s decision-making processes must become more nuanced. In this paper, we present a decision-making model for an intentional agent which has been inspired by Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and the appraisal theory of emotion. Agents utilising this model anticipate how undertaking actions...

This article provides an answer to the question of why agents make self-serving decisions under moral hazard and how their self-serving decisions can be kept in check through institutional arrangements. Our theoretical model predicts that the agents’ power and the manner in which they are held accountable jointly determine their propensity to make self-serving decisions. We test our theory in t...

There has been a recent upsurge of research on moral judgment and decision making. One important issue with this body of work concerns the relative advantages of calculating costs and benefits versus adherence to moral rules. The general tenor of recent research suggests that adherence to moral rules is associated with systematic biases and that systematic cost-benefit analysis is a normatively...

Complex moral decision making is associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in humans, and damage to this region significantly increases the frequency of utilitarian judgments. Since the vmPFC has strong anatomical and functional links with the hippocampus, here we asked how patients with selective bilateral hippocampal damage would derive moral decisions on a classic moral dile...

There are a great variety of theoretical models of cognition whose main purpose is to explain the inner workings of the human brain. Researchers from areas such as neuroscience, psychology, and physiology have proposed these models. Nevertheless, most of these models are based on empirical studies and on experiments with humans, primates, and rodents. In fields such as cognitive informatics and...

The cognitive processes that give rise to moral decisions have long been the focus of intense study. Here I illustrate how computational approaches to studying moral decisionmaking can advance this endeavor. Computational methods have traditionally been employed in the domains of perceptual and reward-based learning and decision-making, but until recently had not been applied to the study of mo...

In this article, the author argues that there are psychological and biological constraints on our moral behaviour, rational decision-making and capacities to love. For example, low oxytocin levels can constrain our willingness to cooperate with others, and our capacity to maintain long-term loving relationships. There is also evidence that increasing iodine intake can improve a person's general...