Reality about Human Morality: Substantiating Research
Updated January 2019

 Statement #1

Morality is an evolved repertoire of cognitive and emotional mechanisms with distinct biological underpinnings, as modified by experience acquired throughout the human lifespan.

  1. Abe, N., & Greene, J. D. (2014). Response to anticipated reward in the nucleus accumbens predicts behavior in an independent test of honesty. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34(32), 10564-10572.PDF
  2. Bernhard, R. M., Chaponis, J., Siburian, R., Gallagher, P., Ransohoff, K., Wikler, D., ... & Greene, J. D. (2016). Variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) is associated with differences in moral judgment. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(12), 1872-1881.PDF
  3. Burkart, J. M., Allon, O., Amici, F., Fichtel, C., Finkenwirth, C., Heschl, A., ... & Meulman, E. J. (2014). The evolutionary origin of human hyper-cooperation. Nature Communications, 5.PDF
  4. Cesarini, D., Dawes, C. T., Fowler, J. H., Johannesson, M., Lichtenstein, P., & Wallace, B. (2008). Heritability of cooperative behavior in the trust game. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 105, 3721-3726. PDF
  5. Chakroff, A., & Young, L. (2015). How the Mind Matters for Morality. AJOB Neuroscience, 6(3), 43-48.PDF
  6. Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2002). Knowing thyself: The evolutionary psychology of moral reasoning and moral sentiments.  Business, Science and Ethics, 91-127.
  7. Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Evolutionary Psychology Handbook. NY: Wiley. PDF
  8. Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation - A Problem-Centred Approach. In The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51). Springer International Publishing.PDF
  9. Curry, O. S., Rowland, L. A., Van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2018). Happy to Help?: A systematic review and meta-analysis of othe effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 320-329.PDF
  10. Cushman, F., Kumar, V., & Railton, P. (2017). Moral learning: Current and future directions. Cognition, 167, 1-10.PDF
  11. Cushman, F. (2015). Deconstructing intent to reconstruct morality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 97-103.PDF
  12. Cushman, F. A., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Finding faults: How moral dilemmas reveal cognitive structure. Social Neuroscience, 7(3), 269-279. PDF
  13. Cushman, F. A., Young, L., & Greene, J. (2010). Our multi-system moral psychology: Towards a consensus view. In J. Doris et al. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford University Press. PDF
  14. Darby, R. R., Horn, A., Cushman, F., & Fox, M. D. (2017). Lesion network localization of criminal behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201706587. PDF
  15. DeQuervain, DJ-F., Fischbacher U., Treyer V., Schellhammer M., Schnyder U., Buck A., & Fehr E. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305, 1254-1258.
  16. DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2009). Mysteries of morality. Cognition, 112, 281-299. PDF
  17. DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2013). A solution to the mysteries of morality. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 477-496. PDF
  18. DeScioli, P. (2016). The side-taking hypothesis for moral judgment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 23-27. PDF
  19. Decety, J., & Chaminade, T. (2003). Neural correlates of feeling sympathy. Neuropsychologia - Special Issue on Social Cognition, 41(2), 127-138. PDF
  20. Efferson, C., & Fehr, E. (2018). Simple moral code supports cooperation. Nature, 555 (7695), 169. PDF
  21. Everett, J.A.C., Pizarro, D. A. & Crockett, M.J., (in press). Inference of trustworthiness from intuitive moral judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. PDF
  22. Fehr, E. & Rockenbach, B. (2004). Human altruism: economic, neural, and evolutionary perspectives. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 784–790. PDF
  23. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012) Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 298-302. PDF
  24. Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366-385. PDF
  25. Greene, J. D. (2017). The rat-a-gorical imperative: Moral intuition and the limits of affective learning. Cognition, 167, 66-77.PDF
  26. Greene, J. D. (2015). The rise of moral cognition. Cognition, 135, 39-42.PDF
  27. Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M. & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44, 389−400. PDF
  28. Greene, J.D., Sommerville, R.B., Nystrom, L.E., Darley, J.M. & Cohen, J.D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, 2105-2108. PDF
  29. Heekeren, H. R., Wartenburger, I., Schmidt, H., Schwintowski, H. P. & Villringer, A. (2003). An fMRI study of simple ethical decision-making. Neuroreport, 14, 1215−1219.
  30. Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2014). A social cognitive developmental perspective on moral judgment. Behaviour, 151(2-3). PDF
  31. Holbrook, C., Fessler, D. M., & Pollack, J. (2016). With God on our side- Religious primes reduce the envisioned physical formidability of a menacing adversary. Cognition, 146, 387-392.PDF
  32. Johnson, D. D., & MacKay, N. J. (2015). Fight the power- Lanchester's laws of combat in human evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior. 36(2), 152-163.PDF
  33. Kiehl, K. A., Smith, A. M., Hare, R. D., Mendrek, A., Forster, B. B., Brink, J., & Liddle, P. F. (2001). Limbic abnormalities in affective processing by criminal psychopaths as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Biological Psychiatry, 50(9), 677-684. PDF
  34. Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Hauser, M., Cushman, F., & Damasio A. (2007). Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908-911. PDF
  35. Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. J., Fischbacher, U., & Fehr, E. (2005). Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature, 435, 673-676. PDF
  36. Margoni, F., & Surian, L. (2015). Explaining the U-shaped development of intent-based moral judgments. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.PDF
  37. Martin, J. W., & Cushman, F. (2016). Why we forgive what can't be controlled. Cognition, 147, 133-143.PDF
  38. McCabe K., Houser D., Ryan L., Smith V., & Trouard T. (2001). A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 98, 11832-11835. PDF
  39. Moll, J., Eslinger, P. J. & Oliveira-Souza, R. (2001). Frontopolar and anterior temporal cortex activation in a moral judgment task: preliminary functional MRI results in normal subjects. Arq. Neuropsiquiatry, 59, 657−664. PDF
  40. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Bramati, I. E. & Grafman, J. (2002). Functional networks in emotional moral and nonmoral social judgments. Neuroimage, 16, 696−703. PDF
  41. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Eslinger, P. J., Bramati, I. E., Mourão-Miranda, J., Andreiuolo, P. A., & Pessoa, L. (2002). The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 22(7), 2730-2736. PDF
  42. Morris, A., MacGlashan, J., Littman, M. L., & Cushman, F. (2017). Evolution of flexibility and rigidity in retaliatory punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201704032. PDF
  43. Müller, J. L., Sommer, M., Wagner, V., Lange, K., Taschler, H., Röder, C. H., Schuierer, G., Klein, H.E., & Hajak, G. (2003). Abnormalities in emotion processing within cortical and subcortical regions in criminal psychopaths: Evidence from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using pictures with emotional content. Biological Psychiatry, 54(2), 152-162. PDF
  44. Niemi, L., Wasserman, E., & Young, L. (2018). The behavioral and neural signatures of distinct conceptions of fairness. Social Neuroscience, 13(4), 399-415. PDF
  45. Norenzayan, A. (2014). Does religion make people moral? Behaviour, 151, 365-384. PDF
  46. Norenzayan, A., Henrich, J., & E. Slingerland (2013) Religious Prosociality: A Synthesis. In P. J. Richerson & M. H. Christiansen (Eds.), Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language and Religion. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. PDF
  47. Park, S. Q., Kahnt, T., Dogan, A., Strang, S., Fehr, E., & Tobler, P. N. (2017). A neural link between generosity and happiness. Nature Communications, 8, 15964. PDF
  48. Pascual, L., Rodrigues, P., & Gallardo-Pujol, D. (2013). How does morality work in the brain?: A functional and structural perspective of moral behaviors. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 7 (65). PDF
  49. Patil, I., Calò, M., Fornasier, F., Young, L., & Silani, G. (2017). Neuroanatomical correlates of forgiving unintentional harms. Scientific Reports, 7, 45967. PDF
  50. Pizarro, D.A., Inbar, Y., & Helion, C. (2011). On disgust and moral judgment. Emotion Review, 3, 267–268. PDF
  51. Pizarro, D.A., Tannenbaum, D., & Uhlmann, E.L. (2012). Mindless, harmless, and blameworthy. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 185-188. PDF
  52. Pollack, J., Holbrook, C., Fessler, D. M., Sparks, A. M., & Zerbe, J. G. (2018). May God guide our guns. Human Nature, 1-17. PDF
  53. Raine, A., Lencz, T., Bihrle, S., LaCasse, L. & Colletti, P. (2000). Reduced prefrontal gray matter volume and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial personality disorder. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 57, 119−127; discussion 128−129. PDF
  54. Rilling, J.K., Gutman, D.A., Zeh, T.R., Pagnoni, G., Berns, G.S., & Kilts, C.D. (2002.) A neural basis for social cooperation. Neuron, 35, 395-405. PDF
  55. Rottman, J., & Young, L. (2015). Mechanisms of Moral Development. The Moral Brain: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, 123.PDF
  56. Saslow, L. R., Willer, R., Feinberg, M., Piff, P. K., Clark, K., Keltner, D., & Saturn, S. R. (2012). My brother’s keeper? Compassion predicts generosity more among less religious individuals. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 31–38. PDF
  57. Schaefer, M., Haun, D., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Fair is not fair everywhere. Psychological Science, 26, 1252-1260. PDF
  58. Sell, A., Sznycer, D., Al-Shawaf, L., Lim, J., Krauss, A., Feldman, A., ... & Tooby, J. (2017). The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion. Cognition, 168, 110-128. PDF
  59. Shariff, A. F. (2015). Does religion increase moral behavior?. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 108-113.PDF
  60. Shariff, A. F., Willard, A. K., Andersen, T., & Norenzayan, A. (2016). Religious Priming- A metanalysis with a focus on prosociality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20, 27-48. PDF
  61. Shariff, A.F. & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18, 803-809. PDF
  62. Singer, T., Kiebel, S.J., Winston, J.S., Kaube, H., Dolan, R.J., & Frith, C.D. (2004). Brain responses to the acquired moral status of faces. Neuron, 41,653-662. PDF
  63. Sivan, J., Curry, O. S., & Van Lissa, C. J. (2018). Excavating the foundations: Cognitive adaptations for multiple moral domains. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-12. PDF
  64. Sznycer, D., Delton, A. W., Robertson, T. E., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2018). The ecological rationality of helping others: Potential helpers integrate cues of recipients' need and willingness to sacrifice. Evolution and Human Behavior. 40(1), 34-45. PDF
  65. Soderstrom, H., Hultin, L., Tullberg, M., Wikkelso, C., Ekholm, S., & Forsman, A. (2002). Reduced frontotemporal perfusion in psychopathic personality. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 114(2), 81-94. PDF
  66. Stone, V., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N. & Knight, R.T. (2002.) Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 99, 11531-11536. PDF
  67. Takahashi, H., Yahata, N., Koeda, M., Matsuda, T., Asai, K., & Okubo, Y. (2004). Brain activation associated with evaluative processes of guilt and embarrassment: An fMRI study. Neuroimage, 23(3), 967-974.
  68. Tomasello, M.  & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of human cooperation and morality.  Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–55. PDF
  69. Tsoi, L., Dungan, J., Waytz, A., & Young, L. (2016). Distinct neural patterns of social cognition for cooperation versus competition. Neuroimage, 137, 86-96. PDF
  70. Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). A person-centered approach to moral judgment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72-81.PDF
  71. Van Elk, M., Matzke, D., Gronau, Q. F., Guan, M., Vandekerckhove, J., & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2015). Meta-analyses are no substitute for registered replications: A skeptical perspective on religious priming. Frontiers in psychology, 6.PDF
  72. Wallace, B., Cesarini, D., Lichtenstein, P., & Johannesson, M. (2007). Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10(1073). PDF
  73. Wallach, W., Franklin, S., & Allen, C. (2010). A conceptual and computational model of moral decision making in human and artificial agents. In W. Wallach & S. Franklin (Eds.), Topics in Cognitive Science, special issue on Cognitive Based Theories of Moral Decision Making (pp. 454-485): Cognitive Science Society. PDF
  74. Willard, A. K., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2016). Religious priming as a research tool for studying religion- Evidentiary value, current issues, and future directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 12, 71-75. PDF
  75. Young, L., Bechara, A., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., Hauser, M., & Damasio, A. (2010). Damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex impairs judgment of harmful intent. Neuron, 65, 845-851. PDF
  76. Young, L., Camprodon, J., Hauser, M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Saxe, R. (2010). Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 6753-6758. PDF
  77. Young, L., Cushman, F., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., & Hauser, M. D. (2006). Does emotion mediate the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status? Neuropsychological evidence. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 6(1-2), 265-278. PDF
n.b.
Prof. Peter Singer suggested adding at the end of sentence “…and by our capacity to reason and reflect on that experience.”

 Statement #2

Morality is not the exclusive domain of Homo sapiens; there is significant cross-species evidence in the scientific literature that animals exhibit "pre-morality" or basic moral behaviors (i.e. those patterns of behavior that parallel central elements of human moral behavior).

  1. Aureli, F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (Eds.). (2000). Natural conflict resolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
  2. Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390-1396. PDF
  3. Brosnan, S. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425, 297–299. PDF
  4. Burkart, J. M., Bruegger, R. K., & van Schaik, C. P. (2018). Evolutionary origins of morality: Insights from nonhuman primates. Frontiers in Sociology, 3, 17. PDF
  5. Chen, K. & Hauser, M.D. (2005). Modeling reciprocation and cooperation in primates: Evidence for a punishing strategy. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 235, 5-12.
  6. Church, R. M. (1959). Emotional reactions of rats to the pain of others. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 52(2), 132.
  7. Coyte, K.Z., Schluter, J. and Foster, K.R. (2015). The ecology of the microbiome- Networks, competition, and stability. Science 350 (626) 663-666. PDF
  8. Crespi, B. J. (2001). The evolution of social behaviour in microorganisms. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16(4), 178-183. PDF
  9. De Waal, F. B. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 279-300. PDF
  10. De Waal, F. B., Leimgruber, K., & Greenberg, A. R. (2008). Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(36), 13685-13689. PDF
  11. Engelmann, J. M., Clift, J. B., Herrmann, E., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Social disappointment explains chimpanzees' behaviour in the inequity aversion task. Proceedings of the Royal Society - B, 284(1861), 20171502. PDF
  12. Engelmann, J. M., Herrmann, E., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Chimpanzees trust conspecifics to engage in low-cost reciprocity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1801) 20142803. PDF
  13. Engelmann, J. M., Herrmann, E., & Tomasello, M. (2016). The effects of being watched on resource acquisition in chimpanzees and human children. Animal cognition, 19(1), 147-151.PDF
  14. Grueneisen, S., Duguid, S., Saur, H., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Children, chimpanzees, and bonobos adjust the visibility of their actions for cooperators and competitors. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 8504.PDF
  15. Hamilton, W. D. (1963). The evolution of altruistic behavior. The American Naturalist, 97, 354-356. PDF
  16. Harcourt, A., & de Waal, F. B. M. (Eds.). (1992). Coalitions and alliances in humans and other animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  17. Maynard Smith, J., & Price, G. R. (1973). The logic of animal conflict. Nature, 246, 15-18. PDF
  18. Melis, A. P., Engelmann, J. M., & Warneken, F. (2018). Chimpanzee helping is real, not a byproduct. Nature Communications, 9(1), 615. PDF
  19. Melis, A., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Chimpanzees’ strategic helping in a collaborative task. Biology Letters, 9, 2013. PDF
  20. Melis, A.P., Warneken, F., Jensen, K., Schneider, A.C., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Chimpanzees help conspecifics obtain food and non-food items. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 278(1710), 1405-1413. PDF
  21. Meloni, M. (2013). Moralizing biology: The appeal and limits of the new compassionate view of nature. History of the Human Sciences 26 (3), 82-106. PDF
  22. Monsó, S., Benz-Schwarzburg, J., & Bremhorst, A. (2018). Animal morality: What it means and why it matters. The Journal of Ethics, 1-28. PDF
  23. Oliveira, N. M., Martinez-Garcia, E., Xavier, J., Durham, W. M., Kolter, R., Kim, W., & Foster, K. R. (2015). Biofilm formation as a response to ecological competition. PLoS Biology, 13(7). PDF
  24. Pande, S., Shitut, S., Freund, L., Westermann, M., Bertels, F., Colesie, C., ... & Kost, C. (2015). Metabolic cross-feeding via intercellular nanotubes among bacteria. Nature Communications, 6. PDF
  25. Pierce, J., & Bekoff, M. (2012). Wild justice redux: What we know about social justice in animals and why it matters. Social Justice Research, 25(2), 122-139. PDF
  26. Range, F., Leitner, K., & Virányi, Z. (2012). The influence of the relationship and motivation on inequity aversion in dogs. Social Justice Research, 25(2).PDF
  27. Rosati, A. G., DiNicola, L. M., & Buckholtz, J. W. (2018). Chimpanzee cooperation is fast and independent from self-control. Psychological Science, 29(11), 1832-1845.PDF
  28. Suchak, M., Watzek, J., Quarles, L. F., & de Waal, F. B. (2018). Novice chimpanzees cooperate successfully in the presence of experts, but may have limited understanding of the task. Animal Cognition, 21(1), 87-98. PDF
  29. Sussman, R. W., Garber, P. A., & Cheverud, J. M. (2005). Importance of cooperation and affiliation in the evolution of primate sociality. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 128(1), 84-97. PDF
  30. Tomasello, Michael. (2018). Precís of a natural history of human morality. Philosophical Psychology, 31, 661-668. PDF
  31. Tomasello, M., & Call, J. (2018). Thirty years of great ape gestures. Animal Cognition, 1-9. PDF
  32. Trivers R.L. (1971.) Evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57. PDF
  33. Trivers, R. L. (1985). Social evolution. Menlo Park, California: Benjamin/ Cummings.
  34. Warneken, F. (2013). The development of altruistic behavior: Helping in children and chimpanzees. Social Research, 80(2), 431-442. PDF
  35. Warneken, F. (2016). Insights into the biological foundation of human altruistic sentiments. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 51-56.PDF
  36. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 2006, 1301-1303. PDF
  37. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(9), 397-402. PDF
  38. Warneken, F., Chen, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Cooperative activities in young children and chimpanzees. Child Development, 77 (3), 640-663. PDF
  39. Wolf, J. B., Howie, J. A., Parkinson, K., Gruenheit, N., Melo, D., Rozen, D., & Thompson, C. R. (2015). Fitness trade-offs result in the illusion of social success. Current Biology, 25(8), 1086-1090.PDF

 Statement #3

Morality is a "human universal" (i.e., exists across all cultures worldwide), a part of human nature acquired during evolution.

  1. Aime, H., Broesch, T., Aknin, L. B., & Warneken, F. (2017). Evidence for proactive and reactive helping in two-to five-year-olds from a small-scale society. PLoS One, 12(11), e0187787.
  2. Apicella, C. L. (2018). High levels of rule-bending in a minimally religious and largely egalitarian forager population. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 133-148.
  3. Blake, P. R., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T. C., & Warneken, F. (2016). Give as I give: Adult influence on children’s giving in two cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 152, 149-160.
  4. Blake, P.R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., Barry, O., Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K.L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F., (2015) The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature, 528, 258–261.
  5. Boyd R., Gintis H., Bowles S., & Richerson P.J. (2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100, 3531-3535.
  6. Brown, D.E. (1991). Human universals. New York : McGraw-Hill.
  7. Bursztyn, L., Fiorin, S., Gottlieb, D., & Kanz, M. (2015). Moral incentives - Experimental evidence from repayments of an Islamic credit card (No. w21611). National Bureau of Economic Research.PDF
  8. Cushman, F., Young, L., & Hauser, M.D. (2007). The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgments: Testing three principles of harm. Psychological Science, 17 (12), 1082-89. PDF
  9. Dahlsgaard, K., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Shared virtue: The convergence of valued human strengths across culture and history. Review of General Psychology, 9(3), 203-213. PDF
  10. Fehr E., Fischbacher, U. & Gachter, S. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13:1-25. PDF
  11. Fiddick, L. (2003). Is there a faculty of deontic reasoning? A critical reevaluation of abstract deontic versions of the Wason selection task. In D. Over (Ed.), Evolution and the psychology of thinking: The debate. (pp. 33-60). Psychology Press. PDF
  12. Fiddick, L. (2004). Domains of deontic reasoning: Resolving the discrepancy between the cognitive and moral reasoning literatures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57A, 447-474. PDF
  13. Geipel, J., Hadjichristidis, C., & Surian, L. (2015). The foreign language effect on moral judgment- The role of emotions and norms. PloS one, 10(7), e0131529.PDF
  14. Gintis, H., Bowles, S., Boyd, R. & Fehr, E. (2003). Explaining altruistic behavior in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 153-172. PDF
  15. Graham, J., Meindl, P., Beall, E., Johnson, K. M., & Zhang, L. (2016). Cultural differences in moral judgment and behavior, across and within societies. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 125-130.PDF
  16. Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., . . . Tracer, D. (2005). 'Economic Man' in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 795–855. PDF
  17. Johnson, D.D.P. (2005) God's punishment and public goods: A test of the supernatural punishment hypothesis in 186 world cultures. Human Nature, 16 (4), 410–446. PDF
  18. Lieberman, D. & Symons, D. (1998).  Sibling incest avoidance: From Westermarck to Wolf. Quarterly Review of Biology, 73 (4), 463–466.
  19. Lieberman, D. (2007). Moral sentiments relating to incest: Discerning adaptations from by–products. In W. Sinnott–Armstrong (Ed.), Moral Psychology Volume 1: The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
  20. Lieberman, D., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2003). Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments regarding incest. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B, 270, 819–826. PDF
  21. McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2016). Supernatural punishment, in-group biases, and material insecurity- Experiments and ethnography from Yasawa, Fiji. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6, 34-55. PDF
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  23. Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.PDF
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  26. Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2013). Secular rule of law erodes believers’ political intolerance of atheists. Religion, Brain, and Behavior. PDF
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  29. Purzycki, B. G., Ross, C. T., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Cohen, E., McNamara, R. A., ... & Henrich, J. (2018). Material security, life history, and moralistic religions: A cross-cultural examination. PLoS One, 13(3), e0193.
  30. Roes, F. L., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 126–35.
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  35. Smith, K., Larroucau, T., Mabulla, I. A., & Apicella, C. L. (2018). Hunter-gatherers maintain assortativity in cooperation despite high-levels of residential change and mixing. Current Biology, 28, 1-6, 856.PDF
  36. Smith, D., Dyble, M., Major, K., Page, A. E., Chaudhary, N., Salali, G. D., ... & Mace, R. (2019). A friend in need is a friend indeed: Need-based sharing, rather than cooperative assortment, predicts experimental resource transfers among Agta hunter-gatherers. Evolution and Human Behavior, 40(1), 82-89.PDF
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 Statement #4

Young children and infants demonstrate some aspects of moral cognition and behavior (which precede specific learning experiences and worldview development).

  1. Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2017). You get what you give: Children's karmic bargaining. Developmental Science, 20(5). PDf
  2. Cummins, D.D. (1996). Evidence for the innateness of deontic reasoning. Mind and Language, 11, 160–190. PDf
  3. Cummins, D.D. (1996). Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-olds. Memory and Cognition, 24, 823–29.
  4. Engelmann, J. M., Herrmann, E., Rapp, D., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Young children (sometimes) do the right thing even when their peers do not. Cognitive Development, 39, 86-92. PDf
  5. Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in young children. Nature, 454(7208), 1079-1083. PDf
  6. Feiman, R., Carey, S., & Cushman, F. (2015). Infants’ representations of others’ goals: Representing approach over avoidance. Cognition, 136, 204-214.PDF
  7. Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450, 557-559. PDF
  8. Hamlin, J.K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2010). Three-month-olds show a negativity bias in their social evaluations. Developmental Science, 13(6), 923-929. PDF
  9. Hardecker, S., & Tomasello, M. (2017). From imitation to implementation: How two‐and three‐year‐old children learn to enforce social norms. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 35(2), 237-248. PDF
  10. Heiphetz, L., Lane, J. D., Waytz, A., & Young, L. L. (2018). My mind, your mind, and God's mind: How children and adults conceive of different agents’ moral beliefs. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.PDF
  11. Heiphetz, L., Gelman, S. A., & Young, L. L. (2017). The perceived stability and biological basis of religious beliefs, factual beliefs, and opinions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 156, 82-98.PDF
  12. Heiphetz, L., Lane, J. D., Waytz, A., & Young, L. L. (2015). How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind. Cognitive science.PDF
  13. Heiphetz, L., Spelke, E. S., & Young, L. L. (2015). In the name of God - How children and adults judge agents who act for religious versus secular reasons. Cognition, 144, 134-149.PDF
  14. Hepach, R., Haberl, K., Lambert, S., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Toddlers help anonymously. Infancy, 22(1), 130-145.PDF
  15. Hepach, R., Kante, N., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Toddlers help a peer. Child Development, 88(5), 1642-1652.PDF
  16. Hepach, R. & Warneken, F. (2018). Early development of prosocial behavior: Revealing the foundation of human prosociality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 20, iv-viii.PDF
  17. Herrmann, E., Engelmann, J. M., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Children engage in competitive altruism. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 179, 176-189.PDF
  18. Kachel, U., Svetlova, M., & Tomasello, M. (2018). Three‐year‐olds’ reactions to a partner's failure to perform her role in a joint commitment. Child Development, 89(5), 1691-1703. PDf
  19. Leslie, A.M., Knobe, J., & Cohen, A. (2006). Acting intentionally and the side-effect effect: 'Theory of mind' and moral judgment. Psychological Science, 17,421–427. PDf
  20. Leslie, A.M., Mallon, R., & DiCorcia, J.A. (2006). Transgressors, victims, and cry babies: Is basic moral judgment spared in autism? Social Neuroscience, 1 (3), 270 – 283. PDF
  21. McAuliffe, K., Blake, P. R., Steinbeis, N., & Warneken, F. (2017). The developmental foundations of human fairness. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(2), 0042. PDF
  22. Riedl, K., Jensen, K., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Restorative justice in children. Current Biology, 25(13), 1731-1735.PDF
  23. Rossano, F., Fiedler, L., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Preschoolers’ understanding of the role of communication and cooperation in establishing property rights. Developmental psychology, 51(2), 176.PDF
  24. Sánchez-Amaro, A., Duguid, S., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Chimpanzees and children avoid mutual defection in a social dilemma. Evolution and Human Behavior, 40(1), 46-54. PDF
  25. Siposova, B., Tomasello, M., & Carpenter, M. (2018). Communicative eye contact signals a commitment to cooperate for young children. Cognition, 179, 192-201. PDF
  26. Tasimi, A., & Young, L. (2016). Memories of good deeds past- the reinforcing power of prosocial behavior in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 147, 159-166. PDF
  27. Tomasello, M., & Gonzalez-Cabrera, I. (2017). The role of ontogeny in the evolution of human cooperation. Human Nature, 28(3), 274-288. PDF
  28. Ulber, J., Hamann, K., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Young children, but not chimpanzees, are averse to disadvantageous and advantageous inequities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 155, 48-66.PDF
  29. Ulber, J., Hamann, K., & Tomasello, M. (2015). How 18-and 24-month-old peers divide resources among themselves. Journal of experimental child psychology, 140, 228-244.PDF
  30. Vaish, A., Herrmann, E., Markmann, C., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Preschoolers value those who sanction non-cooperators. Cognition, 153, 43-51. PDF
  31. Vogelsang, M., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Giving is nicer than taking: Preschoolers reciprocate based on the social intentions of the distributor. PLoS One, 11(1)- e0147539. PDF
  32. Warneken, F. (2016). Insights into the biological foundation of human altruistic sentiments. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 51-56. PDF
  33. Warneken, F. (2013). The development of altruistic behavior: Helping in children and chimpanzees. Social Research, 80(2), 431-442. PDF
  34. Warneken, F. (2013). Young children proactively remedy unnoticed accidents. Cognition, 126(1), 101-108. PDF
  35. Warneken, F. , Hare, B., Melis, A.P., Hanus, D., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children. PLoS Biology, 5(7), e184. PDF
  36. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311(5765), 1301-1303. PDF
  37. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and cooperation at 14 months of age. Infancy, 11(3), 271-294. PDF
  38. Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(9), 397-402. PDF
  39. Warneken, F., Chen, F., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Cooperative activities in young children and chimpanzees. Child Development, 77 (3), 640-663. PDF
  40. Wynn, K., Bloom, P., Jordan, A., Marshall, J., & Sheskin, M. (2017). Not noble savages after all: Limits to early altruism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 0963721417734875. PDF

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