The cognitive foundations of moralistic culture

Abstract

What is the structure and function of moral cognition? According to leading theories, moral judgments arise from a collection of disparate mechanisms (e.g., reciprocity, norm-enforcement, pathogen-avoidance). My research, by contrast, suggests that moral cognition is more unified: most of moral thought and culture can be reduced to cognitive adaptations for reciprocity. I illustrate this approach with two lines of research. The first concerns puritanical morality—moralizations of carnal sins that do not harm other people. I present psychological evidence suggesting that, despite longstanding assumptions to the contrary, these behaviors activate cognitive systems for reciprocal cooperation. The second line of research concerns retributive justice—intuitions about how wrongdoers deserve to suffer. I present ethnographic and psychological evidence that, although they are often assumed to enforce group norms, retributive intuitions function more to restore fairness between offender and victim in reciprocal interactions. Explaining human morality may not require adding cognitive systems unrelated to reciprocal cooperation in our models of the moral mind.