Morality is a "human universal" (i.e., exists across all cultures worldwide), a part of human nature acquired during evolution.
Because they occur universally in all human cultures with no known exceptions, moral universals like the ones displayed here are most likely evolved psychological phenomena (Brown, 1991).
Anthropologist Donald E. Brown didn’t expect to discover the moral unity of mankind. But he did.
The scientist was looking for behavioral or cognitive traits common to all neurologically-normal humans, no matter what culture they belonged to. His idea was to list “human universals” in all societies.
His project uncovered a number of constant ethical patterns present in every single culture.
The faiths and belief systems on all the continents were colorful and variegated. Nonetheless, each proscribed certain conduct. Rape? - prohibited. Murder? - forbidden in all.[1]
Other commonalities were identified. Empathy, for example. Cooperation. Shame. The concept of Fairness. And so on. From developed Western democracies to isolated indigenous societies – “moral universals".[2]
Decades of cross-cultural research has demonstrated that no society has a monopoly on good behavior. Moral human conduct doesn’t depend on one’s preferred religion or deity [3-7], which points to its evolutionary roots.
There is a now a large body of global research about morality across cultures, some of which builds on the moral universals that Brown discovered.[8-11] The social scientist Ara Norenzayan sums it up: “…Religion’s connection with morality is culturally variable; this link is weak or absent in small-scale groups, and solidifies as group size and societal complexity increase over time and across societies.”[12]
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References
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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.
