ABSTRACT

This chapter is about the values police carry and where they acquire those values. The concept of the noble cause goes to the heart of the police. It dove-tails with a law enforcement orientation, but is something more than a rational, dispassionate invocation of the law or strict interpretation of the legal code. Antonio Damasio, one of the world's leading researchers in neuroscience and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, has produced the compelling "somatic marker" hypothesis that provides a framework for understanding the emotional roots of decision-making. Emotions similarly guide moral sentiments and actions. Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley and Cohen examined the neural systems that enable the making of moral decisions. Moral predispositions, because they are somatically marked, emerge at an early age. People choose to be police officers, in part, from their altruistic desire to "help people" or "make a difference in society".