Moral Parochialism & Contextual Contingency Across Seven Societies

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. 

Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. 

We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement.

Below:  Reductions in the ranked ‘badness’ of transgressions, aggregated across scenarios, as a function of the consent of an authority figure, temporal distance, or spatial distance, presented as odds ratios and their 97.5% confidence intervals. The odds ratios, computed by exponentiating the beta coefficients (e^β), provide the odds of a badness judgement falling at a given ranked level or below when the factor is present, relative to when it is absent, across all badness levels. Odds ratios above 1 thus indicate reduced judgements of badness.

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/lSBZhu

By:  Daniel M. T. Fessler,1 H. Clark Barrett,1 Martin Kanovsky,2 Stephen Stich,3 Colin Holbrook,1 Joseph Henrich,4,5Alexander H. Bolyanatz,6 Matthew M. Gervais,1,†‡ Michael Gurven,7 Geoff Kushnick,8 Anne C. Pisor,7 Christopher von Rueden,9 and Stephen Laurence10

1Department of Anthropology and Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553, USA

2Institute of Social Anthropology, FSEV, Comenius University, 820 05 Bratislava 25, Slovakia

3Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1107, USA

4Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4

5Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4

6Social Sciences Subdivision, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137-6599, USA

7Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210, USA

8School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia

9Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173, USA

10Department of Philosophy and Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7QB, UK

¹Department of Anthropology and Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553, USA

²Institute of Social Anthropology, FSEV, Comenius University, 820 05 Bratislava 25, Slovakia

³Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1107, USA

⁴Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4

⁵Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4

⁶Social Sciences Subdivision, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137-6599, USA

⁷Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210, USA

⁸School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia

⁹Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173, USA

¹⁰Department of Philosophy and Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7QB, UK

e-mail: ude.alcu.orhtna@relssefd

^†Present address: Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1414, USA.

^‡Present address: School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, USA.

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