The Brights' Net

Moral er et produkt av evolusjon og menneskelig erfaring.

Det vil si, moral er et produkt både av hjernens nedarvede biokjemi og individets sosiokulturelle påvirkning. Figuren over viser områder i hjernen som aktiveres når mennesker handler moralsk. (Pascual et al., 2013).

Is human morality a product of nature? Of nurture? There has been a long dispute in the social sciences about which is responsible. The debate has largely been unproductive. It seems that morality results from both nature and nurture.[1][2]

Nature already supplies many elements of humanity’s moral psychology. Research in the evolutionary behavioral sciences has accumulated strong evidence: the hardware of our brains is pre-programmed with propensities for moral judgment. We are ready to feel shame or exhibit cooperation.[3] We are already outfitted for empathy, altruism, and compassion.[4]

So, too, do we come readily equipped for what most people regard as immoral behavior. Because of our brains, humans are capable of violence. We are prepared to sometimes inflict pain.[5][6]

Humans are geared by nature toward learning ethical behavior from their social environments.[7] So, as we live, nurture is also at work. Upbringing by family members counts. Socialization by peers and communities about “right” or “wrong” is critical to shaping conduct.[8][9]

Reconciling these disparate parts of ourselves requires an understanding of humankind’s social and cognitive complexity. One thing is clear from the research: religious imperative is not necessary for morality.[10] Research shows that such moral sentiments encourage our caring for and helping others evolved independently of religion.[11][12]

Endnotes

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.
Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2014). A social cognitive developmental perspective on moral judgment. Behaviour, 151(2-3).
Tomasello, M. & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of human cooperation and morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–55.
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).
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Evolutionary Psychology Handbook. NY: Wiley.
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.
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.
Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2014). Ibid.
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.
Norenzayan, A. (2014). Does religion make people moral? Behaviour, 151, 365-384.
Waal, F. B. M. (2013). The bonobo and the atheist: In search of humanism among the primates.
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.

Main Page

Påstand 2

References

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.
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.
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.
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.
Chakroff, A., & Young, L. (2015). How the Mind Matters for Morality. AJOB Neuroscience, 6(3), 43-48.
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2002). Knowing thyself: The evolutionary psychology of moral reasoning and moral sentiments. Business, Science and Ethics, 91-127.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Evolutionary Psychology Handbook. NY: Wiley.
Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation - A Problem-Centred Approach. In The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51). Springer International Publishing.
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.
Cushman, F., Kumar, V., & Railton, P. (2017). Moral learning: Current and future directions. Cognition, 167, 1-10.
Cushman, F. (2015). Deconstructing intent to reconstruct morality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 97-103.
Cushman, F. A., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Finding faults: How moral dilemmas reveal cognitive structure. Social Neuroscience, 7(3), 269-279.
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.
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.
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.
DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2009). Mysteries of morality. Cognition, 112, 281-299.
DeScioli, P., & Kurzban, R. (2013). A solution to the mysteries of morality. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 477-496.
DeScioli, P. (2016). The side-taking hypothesis for moral judgment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 23-27.
Decety, J., & Chaminade, T. (2003). Neural correlates of feeling sympathy. Neuropsychologia - Special Issue on Social Cognition, 41(2), 127-138.
Efferson, C., & Fehr, E. (2018). Simple moral code supports cooperation. Nature, 555 (7695), 169.
Everett, J.A.C., Pizarro, D. A. & Crockett, M.J., (in press). Inference of trustworthiness from intuitive moral judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Fehr, E. & Rockenbach, B. (2004). Human altruism: economic, neural, and evolutionary perspectives. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 784–790.
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.
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.
Greene, J. D. (2017). The rat-a-gorical imperative: Moral intuition and the limits of affective learning. Cognition, 167, 66-77.
Greene, J. D. (2015). The rise of moral cognition. Cognition, 135, 39-42.
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.
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.
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.
Heiphetz, L., & Young, L. (2014). A social cognitive developmental perspective on moral judgment. Behaviour, 151(2-3).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. J., Fischbacher, U., & Fehr, E. (2005). Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature, 435, 673-676.
Margoni, F., & Surian, L. (2015). Explaining the U-shaped development of intent-based moral judgments. Frontiers in Psychology, 7.
Martin, J. W., & Cushman, F. (2016). Why we forgive what can't be controlled. Cognition, 147, 133-143.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Niemi, L., Wasserman, E., & Young, L. (2018). The behavioral and neural signatures of distinct conceptions of fairness. Social Neuroscience, 13(4), 399-415.
Norenzayan, A. (2014). Does religion make people moral? Behaviour, 151, 365-384.
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.
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.
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).
Patil, I., Calò, M., Fornasier, F., Young, L., & Silani, G. (2017). Neuroanatomical correlates of forgiving unintentional harms. Scientific Reports, 7, 45967.
Pizarro, D.A., Inbar, Y., & Helion, C. (2011). On disgust and moral judgment. Emotion Review, 3, 267–268.
Pizarro, D.A., Tannenbaum, D., & Uhlmann, E.L. (2012). Mindless, harmless, and blameworthy. Psychological Inquiry, 23, 185-188.
Pollack, J., Holbrook, C., Fessler, D. M., Sparks, A. M., & Zerbe, J. G. (2018). May God guide our guns. Human Nature, 1-17.
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.
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.
Rottman, J., & Young, L. (2015). Mechanisms of Moral Development. The Moral Brain: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, 123.
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.
Schaefer, M., Haun, D., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Fair is not fair everywhere. Psychological Science, 26, 1252-1260.
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.
Shariff, A. F. (2015). Does religion increase moral behavior?. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 108-113.
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.
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.
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.
Sivan, J., Curry, O. S., & Van Lissa, C. J. (2018). Excavating the foundations: Cognitive adaptations for multiple moral domains. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-12.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tomasello, M. & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of human cooperation and morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–55.
Tsoi, L., Dungan, J., Waytz, A., & Young, L. (2016). Distinct neural patterns of social cognition for cooperation versus competition. Neuroimage, 137, 86-96.
Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). A person-centered approach to moral judgment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72-81.
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.
Wallace, B., Cesarini, D., Lichtenstein, P., & Johannesson, M. (2007). Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10(1073).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

The studies linked on this page are accessible via the researchers' websites and other public domain sources. If not linked, those studies are only available via academic journals.