DePauw Stories

You’ve heard the clichés since childhood: Think hard. Put your mind to it. Wear your thinking cap.

Apparently Mom was right – or, at least, early evidence from a research study being conducted by a DePauw University professor and his students suggests so. It appears that, when an ethical decision is considered, those who put more mental energy into the task are more likely to decide ethically. Those with low self-control are more likely to make an unethical decision.

Many more experiments must be conducted and many ethical questions must be considered before definitive statements can be made, findings can be verified and practical ways to use the work can be identified. But the work by Robert West, a neuroscientist and the Elizabeth P. Allen distinguished university professor, and his students already is attracting international attention.

West, who came to DePauw in fall 2015 in part to create a new neuroscience major, has expanded on two experiments that he had conducted with a colleague at Iowa State University. There, West and the colleague, who worked in information systems, wanted to find out what happens in the brain when people decide to commit cybercrimes, which cost the world economy $3 trillion – yes, that’s with a “t” – in 2015 and are expected to cost $6 trillion by 2021.

West’s work at DePauw constitutes a third experiment, on which he collaborated with Emily Budde ’18, starting with her 10-week summer research experience in 2016 and, except for the following summer, until she graduated in May.

“Right now we’re at the point where we’re trying to understand what’s going on when you’re making those decisions,” West says. “What are some of the variables that might modulate that? And so, 10 years from now, we might actually be able to make a recommendation.”

The first goal of the research at DePauw was to reproduce the effects found at Iowa State in a new environment. West and Budde also sought to learn if eliminating an aspect of the first two experiments that raises ethical concerns for some – deception of the subjects – would make a difference in the results. The subjects in Iowa were told that a survey they completed established a personality profile and that their stipends would be higher if their responses during the research were consistent with the profile. That wasn’t true, West says, but the researchers used the deception – which is considered acceptable by some researchers as long as it is ultimately revealed – to motivate subjects to answer candidly, even when doing so revealed their willingness to make an unethical decision.

At DePauw, the subjects were encouraged to answer the questions as honestly as they could while pretending to be someone else. “We got rid of the deception and still basically got the same data,” West says.

They also introduced several new concepts: Did the time span between a decision and the anticipated result matter? Did it matter who benefited from the decision – the person making it or someone else? And did one’s self-control, impulsivity and willingness to take risks – determined by the volunteer subjects’ responses to questions about the likelihood that they would engage in certain activities – affect the results?

For the experiment, 40 subjects – students, faculty and staff – worked a saline gel into their scalps and donned headgear resembling a swim cap. As the subjects completed a questionnaire that posed ethical questions, 32 electrodes measured activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction parts of their brains.

“Within about a fifth of a second to a half of a second after the person starts thinking about this, making one of these decisions, this region seems to be active,” West says. Less brain activity occurred when a subject made an unethical decision, apparently because he or she was “not spending the brain energy to do the work of making the correct decision.”

West and Budde noted that the effects did not occur when the subject was making a less consequential decision, such as whether to attend a ballgame. “It’s only when you’re making a decision about doing something you shouldn’t be doing,” West says. “It’s not simply the act of having to weigh a decision.”