Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent has received a grant of approximately $60,000 to support research into the brain’s ability to link moral principles with specific judgments.

Sargent’s grant is part of the Defining Wisdom Project of the University of Chicago, a worldwide scholarly project seeking to understand the nature and benefits of wisdom.

Sargent is exploring the consistency, or lack thereof, between people’s stated principles and the reasons that actually shape their moral judgments.

“Typically there’s a mismatch,” he says. “People may offer a justification for a judgment, but those won’t be the real reasons. People aren’t very good at identifying the actual operative principles that underlie their judgments.”

But, he says, some people actually do base moral judgments on their espoused moral code. “I simply want to know, what conditions have to hold in order for those two to align?”

The grant, which includes funds from the John Templeton Foundation, will support two years of research based largely on public surveys. While much of this work will be done in Maine, the grant will enable Sargent to conduct national online surveys reaching thousands of people.

The “trolley problem,” a hypothetical test case used by philosophers, is typical of the kinds of scenarios that Sargent will pose to his respondents. It goes like this:

A streetcar is hurtling out of control toward five individuals who are on the tracks. You are standing near a switch that can divert the trolley onto a side track — but there is one person on the side track. Should you flip the switch even if that one person will die?

“There’s at least a utilitarian argument to be made for throwing the switch,” Sargent says. “You throw the switch and one dies rather than five. One is less than five — it’s easy to make a case for doing that.”

But contrast the “footbridge problem.” Here the trolley is still hurtling toward the five individuals, but now you are on a footbridge overlooking the tracks. There is a man next to you who would be heavy enough to stop the trolley if he fell in its path. Should you push him?

In both cases, says Sargent, you would sacrifice one life for the sake of five. But typically, people who feel it’s appropriate to flip the switch in the first case say that in the second, it is morally wrong to push the heavy man in front of the streetcar. That distinction is typical of the discrepancies that interest Sargent.

Does the physical contact make the difference? Or is it the intentionality of an act? The so-called doctrine of double effect holds that it may be morally permissible to harm a person as long as that harm is not intended, even if it is foreseen. Pushing the fat man off the bridge would intentionally harm him, whereas flipping the switch would have the intention of saving the five and the unintended consequence of killing the one.

“Very few individuals can articulate exactly why they make that judgment,” he says. “The nub of what I want to get at is how to identify the people who can do this, or how we identify the conditions under which individuals can do this.”

In the long term, Sargent says, the implications of this research could reach beyond psychology. There’s an obvious connection with the law. “Ultimately, the hope is to be able to speak not just to moral judgment, but perhaps even legal judgment,” although making such a connection is only speculative at this point.

Sargent is one of the year’s 23 recipients of a Defining Wisdom Grant. With $2 million in funding from the Templeton Foundation, the project was created by the University of Chicago’s Arete Initiative, which explores ways to catalyze broad-based interdisciplinary research.

The three tenure recipients are assistant professor Pamela Johnson of the Department of Art and Visual Culture; associate professor John McClendon of the programs in African American studies and American cultural studies; and assistant professor Michael Sargent of the Department of Psychology.

All three live in Lewiston and have taught at Bates since 1999.

Johnson teaches studio art media and techniques. A painter and printmaker, she has recently completed a body of more than 50 mixed-media pieces that use images from fairy tales and nature to explore themes of female identity. She has shown work in solo and group exhibitions at Maine venues including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, in Rockport, and Zero Station, Portland, as well as the Bates College Museum of Art. Her work has appeared at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., Bennington College, Vermont, and Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Mass.

Johnson received a B.F.A. in art history at the University of Kansas, a second B.F.A. in painting at the Kansas City (Missouri) Art Institute, and her master’s at Bennington College. In 1993 and 1994, she worked as a personal assistant to Helen Frankenthaler, the noted Abstract Expressionist painter. Johnson also studied at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

McClendon teaches courses in cultural politics, African American philosophers, Africana thought and practice, theory and method in African American studies, and the role of athletics in African American culture. He is interested in the intersections of philosophy, social science and the African American experience, and particularly in African American expressions and adaptations of leftist thought.

McClendon is a widely sought-after public speaker and a prolific author. He has written diverse articles for scholarly journals, reference works and anthologies, served on the advisory board of the journal Cultural Logic, and served as editor of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience. His book C.L.R. James’s Notes On Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? was published by Lexington Books in January, and he has three other book manuscripts in progress.

Before Bates, McClendon taught in public schools and in academic settings including the University of Missouri and the University of Illinois at Champaign. He received a B.S. in black studies and political science at Central State University in Ohio, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Kansas.

Sargent teaches courses in social and political psychology, research methodology, prejudice and stereotyping, and social cognition. Most of his research focuses on stereotyping and prejudice.

Sargent has written and spoken extensively on the Implicit Association Test, an instrument for measuring attitudes and responses that individuals are either incapable of recognizing in themselves or unwilling to report honestly. He has also written and spoken on issues of race in police work and the legal system.

Before Bates, he taught at the Ohio State University. Sargent received his B.A. in psychology at Hendrix College in Arkansas, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Ohio State.