W9: Morality and evolutionary psyc Flashcards
Evolution
Darwinian evolution’s 3 premises
Evolution: change in inherited characteristics within a population over successive generations
Three premises:
1) Individuals of a species show variation in traits (behavioral, morphological, psychological, physiological characteristics)
2) Some of these variations are heritable
3) Some traits provide benefits in terms of survival and reproductive success (adaptation)
Darwinian evolution:
Consequences
Consequence:
1) Those individuals with greater chances of survival and reproductive success due to the possession of adaptations, will leave more offspring, and those offspring will tend to resemble their parents (i.e. inherit their traits)
2) Thus certain adaptive traits are selected for over the course of generations
3) Adaptive traits increase in frequency in future generations, thus coming to be widespread within a species
What is Evolutionary Psychology (EP) and EP’s assumptions
application of evolutionary theorising to understanding human psychology and behaviour
Assumptions of EP:
Mind is composed of collection of evolved psychological mechanisms
Adaptations
Domain specific
Designed to solve various recurrent problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors, such as
Disease avoidance, mate selection and retention, kin care…
The problem of altruism
S8
if evolution tailors organisms to behave in ways that facilitate their own reproductive success, doesn’t this mean that organisms will be selfish?
a ‘gene’s-eye view’:
Q: “If you were a gene, what would facilitate your reproduction?”
A: “Get my host to behave in ways that increase chances of me proliferating”
BUT:
If a prosocial behavior happens to increase the likelihood that one’s genetic material is passed on to future generations, then such a behavior will be selected for
Prosocial Behaviour:
Inclusive fitness direct and indirect
Hamilton (1964)
Inclusive fitness: capacity for genetic information to spread in the population
Direct (classical) fitness: number of offspring
Indirect fitness increasing the classical fitness of others who also share one’s genes
Indirect Fitness
Hamilton (1964)
help kin survive and reproduce, then cos of share genes, indirectly increasing chances that shared genes spread in the population
But not all kin are equal:
This account predicts that evolution will have shaped patterns of helping such that we are more likely to help those more closely related to us
Indirect Fitness
Sherman, 1977, 1981
sample studies in non humans
S10
Belding’s ground squirrels
Alarm calls in response to predators (cost prosocial as predector knows were they r now)
More likely to call in the presence of sisters, aunts and nieces
Indirect Fitness Essock-Vitale, & McGuire, 1985 sample study in human S10
LA women
Helping:
more correlation (related) more ppl helped
need more from lecture cap
EP:
relationship of Parent and children
Daly and Wilson (1988)
Study:
Single largest predictor of child abuse and homicide: presence of a step-parent in the home
40-100 times higher if there’s a step-parent at home (vs. both genetic parents)
EP:
relationship of Parent and children
Difference between mums vs. dads
Although offspring are theoretically r=0.5, there is a further complication
Paternity uncertainty
Father not so certian=> social norms: virginity, no cheating, esp for the woman. => increase certainty that it’s theirs
Mothers are more certain=>mothers are nicer
Grandparental Certainty
(Grandmother VS grandparents; father’s VS mothers)
(Laham et al., 2005)
Mom's mom VS dad's mom explored Grandparental investment Closer to which == more investment M's mom> M's dad > D's mom > D's dad D's dad => double uncertainty
Why does M’s dad > D’s mom?
Hypothesis:
D’s mom might have other more certain grandkids (tho. daugthers) to invest in.
found: When don’t have alternatives, they do invest similarly to M’s dad.
Challenges and Criticisms of EP
1) Pan-adaptationism: All aspects of human behaviour are adaptations (too extreme)
2) Genetic determinism
No nurture
Implication that we can’t help it
3) Implications for morality
Naturalistic fallacy
rebuttal?:
Do believe in (gene X Environ)
The value of EP
(4)
S14
1) Metatheory: organizing framework
2) Function
3) Distal (ultimate) causes
E.g., operant conditioning
(but what classifies as reward or punishment)
4) Fruitful re: novel hypotheses
In each instance, for each trait,
it’s a question of how well EP
(vs. other theories) accounts for data
Moral Psychology:
Defination
Morality:
Code of conduct or set of rules pertaining to “right” /“good”/ “wrong”/ “bad”/ “praiseworthy”/“punishable”, held by an individual or group
Defination varies
The moral/conventional distinction
Turiel et al (1987)
details
the moral/conventional task:
Show children ‘violation’ of rule:
Asked to judge these situations:
1) wrong/serious,
2)punishable,
3)authority dependent (e.g., if teacher said X was ok. Would it still be wrong?),
4)general in scope (temporally and geographically),
5)how is the wrongness explained (rights, harm, justice)
The moral/conventional distinction
Turiel et al (1987)
results:
signature moral response
Found The signature moral response (SMR): 1) Serious, wrong, bad 2) Punishable 3) Authority independent 4) General in scope (universal)
The key distinguishing feature of stimulus: harm or welfare (also rights and justice) If harm (or justice or rights), then SMR
signature moral response
challange:
Haidt, Koller, & Dias (1993)
Provided:
Non-harm violations evoke the signature moral response:
Some people judge these transgressions as:
1) Authority independent
2) General in scope
Systematizing variability in moral responses:
Shweder et al. (1997)
3 main components:
1) autonomy (harm/right)
2) Community (hiearchy; duty, role, authority)
3) Divinity (purity)
Moral Foundations Theory
(Haidt & Graham, 2004, 2007)
Expand Shweder’s 3 to 5:
5 domains:
1) Harm/ care - to self or others
2) Fairness /reciprocity - representing the norms of reciprocal relations, equality, rights and justice.
3) Authority /respect - representing moral obligations related to hierarchical relations
4) Ingroup/ loyalty - covering moral obligations related to group membership, such as loyalty, betrayal, and expectations of preferential treatment
5) Purity / sanctity - representing the moral ideal of living in an elevated, noble, and less carnal way.
Cultural, demographic factors influence SMR to these domains
What accounts for judgments of right and wrong? (Moral Judgement)
For most of the history of thought about morality, there has been a debate about whether it is reasoning or emotion/intuition:
Caveat: Coarse distinction, but useful to structure the extant research and thinking on moral judgment
Moral reasoning VS intuition
Haidt, 2001
moral reasoning:
conscious mental activity (process is intentional, effortful, and controllable, aware) that consists of transforming given information about people in order to reach a moral judgment.
moral intuition:
sudden appearance in consciousness of a moral judgment, including an affective valence (good-bad, like-dislike), without any conscious awareness (largely dependent on emotions) of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion.
Moral dumbfounding (Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993)
Reasoning processes not accessible
If anything, people fumbled around for reasons in order to justify/ rationalize their intuitions.
Social Intuitionist Model (SIM; Haidt, 2001)
S32
Moral judgment is a function of affect-laden intuitions. Reasoning is post-hoc rationalisation.
eliciting situation -> activates intuition -> informs judgment ->post Hoc reasoning
(look at slide)
Reasoning and emotion
but
Reasoning vs. emotion (in competition)
Both kinds of processes are likely involved in moral judgments, but they compete in order to give rise to a judgment
Trolly problem: push switch (more) VS push man (less)
Trolly problem:
push switch (more) VS push man (less)
difference?
Each problem pits a deontological option (based on the rule: do not kill innocents) against a utilitarian option (greatest good for greatest number)
But most say yes (utilitarian) to switch but no (i.e., deontological) to footbridge
Trolly problem:
push switch (more) VS push man (less)
why?
Deontological response driven by gut-reactions, emotions, intuitions
Utilitarian response driven by controlled, effortful reasoning processes
footbridge: direct contact with another (‘personal dilemma’), sacrificing this one person is more emotionally aversive, and thus the deontological response is more potent.
Switch: no direct contact - less emotion – utilitarian response overrides deontological
Footbridge: direct contact – more emotion – deontological response overrides utilitarian
Mainipulation of our emotions to increase Utilitarian responses
Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006)
If one reduces negative affect during dilemma processing, one should see more utilitarian responding
Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006)
Clip ‘SNL’ or documentary
Footbridge qn:
more choose Utilitarian responses after SNL -> happy?
Relational models should influence
moral judgments
Relationship Regulation Theory (Rai & Fiske, 2011) CS: Unity AR: Hierarchy EM: Equality MP: Proportionality Simpson, Laham & Fiske (2016)
wrongness judgement depends on the type of relations
The moral circle: that category of entities in
the world worthy of moral concern
That we deem it impermissible to harm or treat unfairly
Historical expansion of the moral circle (Pinker, 2011; Singer, 1981)
Inclusion vs. Exclusion Mindsets
Inclusion-exclusion discrepancy (IED; Yaniv & Schul, 1997, 2000)
Inclusion mindsets (circling) lead to smaller final choice sets than exclusion mindsets (crossing out)
Hinges on the treatment of borderline cases and foci of justification:
Items have a greater probability of being retained in the final choice set under exclusion mindsets (Yaniv et al., 2002)
IED and the moral circle
Laham (2009)
Non-human animals
Margins of life (e.g., PVS, foetus
results:
Those in exclusion mindsets had larger moral circles
This expansion of moral circle accounted for a range of positive attitudes towards outgroups
