Morals

Question 1

Is Morality Intuitive or Rational?
Legalization of same-sex marriage

Answer 1

First, he decided whether to allow same-sex marriage.

Then he informed his staff of this outcome. The staff then went to work, searching past court decisions and legislation that would not only justify but actually compel the Attorney General’s desired decision.

The report that resulted from this process read as if the issue and past case law had been carefully considered and the final, inevitable verdict was rendered because the research revealed that it was the only possible conclusion.

Question 2

Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, suggest that a moral decision is a result of

Answer 2

deliberate reasoning, incorporating one’s values and principles

Question 3

more contemporary moral theorists suggest that your moral decision making is

Answer 3

more like the process employed by this Attorney General: your decision is instantaneous, automatic, and intuitive

Moral reasoning only follows this outcome, when your mind recruits all available precedent, principles and logic to support the decision you have made.

Question 4

Morality:

Answer 4

The intuitive sense of right and wrong that guides our own behavior and leads us to judge and possibly condemn others’ behaviors.

Question 5

humans vs. animals morality

Answer 5

humans are unique in holding some behaviors as obligatory and others as prohibited.

Animals may know what behaviors lead to negative consequences

Question 6

Prosocial Behavior:

Answer 6

All the nice things we do for, and to, others, including altruism, friendship, coalitional behaviors, and even parental behaviors.

It includes altruism, friendship, coalitional behaviors, and even parental behaviors.

Many prosocial behaviors develop very early in life, and you will read about empathetic and helpful toddlers and infants who prefer to affiliate with nice characters.

Question 7

Hobbes -

Answer 7

Leviathan that “Justice and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind.”- minds were blank slates with respect to justice. - not innate, learned

Morality was learned - explicit tutoring was necessary, according to this Hobbesian view.

Question 8

John Locke also held an _______ view of morality

Answer 8

empiricist view of morality

Question 9

John Stuart Mill - utilitarianism

Answer 9

could and should make deliberate moral decisions based on what is best overall for the greatest number of people.

theoretically, sum up the positive outcomes or “utility” conferred by a given course of action distributed across everyone, and whichever course of action conferred the greatest utility was the morally correct path

individual could be injured, even killed, if a sufficient number of people benefitted a sufficient amount to justify the injury.

The trolley problem is a classic illustration of utility

Maximize utility and that is what is moral

Question 10

Moore - naturalistic fallacy

Answer 10

Error of equating what is good with what is natural and is akin to the “is-ought” fallacy
occurs when a person uses naturally existing conditions to test whether something is morally acceptable.

People might refer to the behavior of animals, or of humans in the EEA in discussing the moral appropriateness of homosexuality, meat eating, or the use of natural resources, for example.

defining what is good in terms of what occurs in nature, or conversely what is bad in terms of what does not occur in nature, is not valid
—-Women worldwide spend more of their time engaged in childcare than men do. Is it correct to conclude that these naturally occurring human behaviors are therefore moral imperatives?
——To draw that conclusion is to make the naturalistic fallacy

Question 11

Twentieth Century Views on Moral Development –Piaget and Kohlberg

Answer 11

morality and moral judgments are taught to the developing child by society, and that reward and punishment are important processes in moral development.

Moral judgment requires sufficient cognitive development so that a child could think through the dispassionate analyses that Piaget and Kohlberg believed constituted moral thinking.

Question 12

For Piaget and Kohlberg, morality is not based on intuition but on

Answer 12

deliberate cognitive reasoning.

Question 13

Piaget - wrote Moral Judgement of the Child
Stage Theory

Answer 13

a child’s understanding changed from a concrete acceptance of rigid, unchangeable rules to an understanding of rules as a social contract that was negotiable and changeable.

According to Piaget, this change came about largely as a result of conflict and negotiations with peers rather than as a result of interactions with adults.

Question 14

Piaget employed a couple of different methods in his study of moral development - experiment

Answer 14

Earlier work - observational method in which he observed children playing games together- negotiated their games, created rules, and dealt with the violation of rules

Standardized interview method - told a child a short story and then had the child identify the more serious of two transgressions. He was interested in whether it made a difference if breaking a rule was intentional or accidental.

asked which of two children was naughtier: a child named Augustine who accidently knocked over a large glass of juice while helping set the table or a child named Julian who knocked over a small glass of juice while running in the house, a forbidden act.

Children younger than 8 considered only the amount of damage, whereas older children also considered the intentions of the actor

Question 15

Piaget described stages of moral development, 1. Morality of Constraint

Answer 15

Children younger than 8 - not yet in concrete operations

No moral ambiguity - good guys and bad guys - person could never change categories - never be a person who falls in between these categories
Rules as unchangeable and non negotiable

Rule is a rule because an authority figure says that it is
Punishment is also justified
Good and bad are clear and easy to define
—-Follow rules = good, violating rules = bad

2 reasons for acceptance of rules as unalterable:
1. only understand rules as “things” whose existence could not be disputed- did not yet reason about formal abstractions
2. Parents are bigger than kids and have power over kids, so small children are not in a position to enter into negotiations.

Question 16

Piaget described stages of moral development 2. Transitional Period

Answer 16

8-10 - spend an increasing amount of time with peers who are equal to them with respect to power and status

Increased time with peers - More opportunities to negotiate and have input into what the rules are and how they are enforced

Learn that rules can change - adapt games etc
Take the perspectives of others into account - consider intentions when deciding on punishments

Question 17

Piaget described stages of moral development, 3. Autonomous morality

Answer 17

Enter after 10, rules are social contracts that can be negotiated and renegotiated

RUles have to meet the needs of multiple people - consider multiple perspectives when proposing fair rules

Punishment is a product of social agreement and should be fair to everyone involved
Believe that sometimes authority figures impose rules that are not fair

Question 18

Kohlberg

Answer 18

Biggest contributor to the foundation of the moral development field

Influenced by piaget

Taught explicitly and morality is deliberate not intuitive
Gave children fictional stories that ended in a dilemma and asked them to tell him what the right thing to do would be and why
If the child appealed to authority, the law, and law enforcement, the child was at a lower level of moral development than a child who mentioned concern for the wife’s health and well-being.

Question 19

Kohlberg - 3 levels of moral reasoning -
1. Pre-conventional

Answer 19

Self-centered, concrete, immediate

Focused on punishment and how to avoid it

Stage 1 - obedience stage - children suggest that the person should follow the law in order to avoid punishment
Stage 2 - exchange stage - children might suggest bargaining in order to mitigate punishment - give back to make things ok

Question 20

Kohlberg - 3 levels of moral reasoning -
1. Conventional

Answer 20

Rules are social contracts
People are expected to follow rules and laws in order to preserve social order and fulfill social rules

Stage 3 - relationships stage - relationships are the focus - should do what is expected by virtue of his role in his relationships as a good citizen
Stage 4 - social systems - people behave as they do in order to preserve social systems such as the legal system marriage or law&order

Question 21

Kohlberg - 3 levels of moral reasoning -
1. post-conventional

Answer 21

Follows moral ideals or principles
Breaking a rule might be called for if doing so is consistent with a principle while obeying the rule is inconsistent with that principle

Stage 5 - social contract and individual rights stage
—Focus is on the greatest good for the greatest number
—People can reason hypothetically
—Imagine how their own society might be even better than it is

Stage 6 - universal moral principles stage - reasoning in a way that is consistent with one’s own moral principles - equality or respect for all event if adhering to these principles means breaking the law
—Development from stage 5 and stage 6 can be thought of as shifting from a social, communal perspective to a more personal perspective with an emphasis on the value of each person

Question 22

Kohlberg on his stages

Answer 22

Believed that these stages were achieved in the same order cross-culturally

Not all people reached the same final stage

Stage 5 was attained by less than 10% of people

Majority reach and stay in stage 4 reasoning

Abandoned stage 6 because few people achieved it

Small but positive relationship between moral reasoning and moral behavior
Higher stage of moral reasoning are more likely to provide assistance to others in need and less likely to engage in immoral behaviors

Relationship is weak because people actually act impulsively and intuitively and then use moral reasoning to justify their decisions rather than to guide them

Question 23

SHORTCOMINGS OF KOHLBERG’s RESEARCH

Answer 23

1 - All of kohlbergs subjects were male
—–His measures of moral development were based on his work with boys and reflects the answers boys give at various ages
—–Gilligan - testing girls on research measures that were normed exclusively on males will produce unreliable results - women value relationships more
—–If girls give different answers at a given age then they will be judged to be less mature than boys their age- unfair and inaccurate

2 - Proposes that stages are universal but results cant be generalized cross-culturally
Children in non-western cultures typically do not climb as high
——Bias fails to reflect differences in values: more traditional societies where conflicts are more likely to be worked out face to face among people who have a lifelong relationship
——Adherence to ideal principles may not be highly valued or even useful

3 - DO not predict behavior

Question 24

Turiel’s Social Domain Theory

Answer 24

Investigated children’s developing moral understanding by telling them stories involving some transgressive behavior
Suggested that children reason differently about transgressions in different domains

1. Moral Domain
   —-Clear rules that were meant to regulate fairness equality and justice
   —-Rules against stealing, lying, harming, killing
2. Social Domain
   —-Social conventions and regulated traditions or customs
   —-Raising a hand in class before speaking
   Addressing adults with proper titles
3. Personal Choice
   —-How one spends ones free time, wears hair - provided that one does not live in a culture in which such things are dictated by the social conventions described in the second domain

Question 25

Turiel - Universal Morals vs. Conventions - what are prohibitions and conventions

Answer 25

Rules in the moral domain are imperatives whether prohibitions, permissions or obligations
Cross cultural and universal
Part of human psychoogy
Develop reliably

Prohibitions: cheating, stealing, harming and murdering
—Rules - Important to all environments of evolutionary adaptedness - cognitive process that underlies does not require information about the specific ecological or cultral conditions in which a person lives in order to develop reliably

Conventions are rules that are not universal
–Can dill be serious
Ex. rules about nudity and rules about the familiarity with people of various sexes, ages and status levels, age of consent, marriage btw cousins
—Cognitive processes that underlie conventional rules do seem to need specific inputs in order to develop and some have critical or sensitive periods

Question 26

Rules in the moral domain are

Answer 26

imperatives, whether prohibitions, permissions, or obligations

Question 27

People distinguish moral rules from conventions - Turiel

Answer 27

Dont hit vs. dont stand up while someone is reading a story

Children - moral rules as impermissible without exception, more serious if violated and more likely to be true in other countries as well

3-4 judge moral transgressions to be more serious regardless of context and wrong regardless of authority support

3yr more likely to spontaneously protest a moral transgression than a conventional transgression

Children - explain moral rules in terms of harm to others but explain conventions in terms of what are socially acceptable - rude

Conventional rules can be overturned by an authority figure but moral rules cannot - authority who can overturn the rules is context specific

Question 28

Psychopaths

Answer 28

No distinction between universal and conventional rules
Children with psychopathy - likely to say that moral prohibitions against hitting are not in effect if there is no explicit rule against hitting - control prohibited without a stated rule

Typical children explain moral rules in terms of harm
Psychopathy - explain in terms of social conventions - because we just dont do that
Evidence that specialized cognitive machinery underlies moral thinking

Question 29

What would Evolutionary Psychologists say?

Answer 29

Evolution by NS - led to cognitive adaptations giving rise to human morality and moral thinking

Moral psychology is cognitively complex and well-designed for the complex adaptive problems allowing us to get along with a large group of others

Part of what allows us to live in large social groups and to develop culture.
some moral rules can be learned, there is not a completely unfettered blank slate

Question 30

evolutionary psych - learning mechanisms

Answer 30

learning mechanisms allow developing children to “learn” their culture to the extent that these specialized learning mechanisms were designed for this purpose

Learning morals does not happen without constraint, because such a blank slate design would be vulnerable to exploitation.
universals in the development of morality, and the culture-specific or individual differences from the universal template should be customizable in predictable ways based on relevant factors in the developing individual’s life

local moral norms are to some extent manipulable, and people can influence local norms in ways that favor their own interests
view explicitly rejects the idea that a developing child is capable of absorbing any moral norms that are taught.
– Moral learning is constrained by our cognitive learning mechanisms, which were in turn designed by natural selection.

Question 31

The Function of Morality

Answer 31

the function of our moral psychology is not to provide some ideal moral truth.
The function of our moral psychology is to enable us to behave in the world in a way that maximizes our evolutionary fitness

—functions so well that it creates a veneer of instinct blindness

—Notice this perspective stands in contrast to Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s perspective: They believed that there were real, ideal moral judgments that should be unchanging across situations or points of view.

The function of our moral psychology is to allow us to live in cooperative groups

Shame - can inform people who are choosing between action plans thus preventing the commission of an immoral act or can motivate apologies, reparation attempts or social withdrawal after an immoral act is committed

A moral psychology allows us to choose partners who will benefit us, and with whom we can profitably and safely engage in trade and mutually support

Question 32

Moral Relativism

Answer 32

Piaget and Kohlberg thought about morality in terms of passionless reasoning about ideal principles.
Childrens thinking - there is actual right from wrong

Contemporary view of moral psych - does not reveal any ideal or actual truth despite instinct blindness
Moral psychology - make decisions that maximize fitness

Leaves room for: Moral Relativism: The idea that there is not a single set of moral principles that applies to all people, but that what appears to be morally correct can depend on an individual’s status, social role, religion or perspective.

People with different points of view may believe that different courses of action are morally correct

Question 33

moral relavitism - Examine prosocial behavior in individuals 7-18

Answer 33

Dictator game - player given tokens that can be exchanged for cash and gets to decide how the tokens are shared with the other player

Proposals become more equitable with age - expectations of fairness developed

Taller players kept more for themselves than shorter players - height a better predictor than gender

What they saw as fair may have been influenced by relative height and thus relative power

Question 34

Moral relativism framework allows for more hypotheses than either Piaget or Kohlberg considered

Answer 34

Piaget observed that young children reasoned about morality almost exclusively in terms of authority
—Rules articulated by authority defined what was moral
—-young child’s inability to consider other approaches to morality was due to a lack of cognitive development

Moral relativism - alternate explanation
young child is small, and his behavior can be effectively controlled by an authority figure, a parent or teacher, who is much larger and much stronger.

Moral reasoning that involved negotiable rules and reciprocity would not serve this child functionally and may, indeed, be maladaptive.

Question 35

specific kinds of moral psychology designed to affect behavior in specific domains

Answer 35

Altruism, pro-social behavior, fairness in the distribution of resources, social exchange reasoning, and incest avoidance.

Question 36

Evolutionary Routes to Altruism

Answer 36

Altruism: A behavior which has the effect of reducing the actor’s fitness while increasing the recipient’s fitness.

Alleles are spread throughout a population if they “win”.

If an allele is associated with generosity, such as making a person more likely to share meat, how could that allele be competitive?

Question 37

An early, now largely refuted, attempt to explain altruistic behavior was an appeal to group selection

Answer 37

individuals could be self-sacrificing for the good of the group. Maybe if weaker individual sacrifices for the benefit of an individual who has a better chance of reproducing and raising healthy offspring, that act will better the group, and such behavior may be rewarded by natural selection. Shared resources make the group as a whole better off

Problem with this:
nice guys can be cheated. If many are behaving altruistically, theoretically strengthening the group, an individual can become a free-loader, taking advantage of the benefits of everyone’s altruism, without making any contribution. This alternative strategy will out-compete the altruists.

Question 38

Group selection theory regards the___________, not the individual or the gene, as the unit of selection.

Answer 38

group

Particulate - groups were not the relevant unit of selection
individuals were not even the important level of selection to consider—the gene was

Question 39

Kin Selected Altruism

Answer 39

Altruism that was shaped by the fitness advantage provided by increasing the frequency of one’s genes via the fitness success of genetic relatives.

Inclusive fitness - promotes the fitness of those who are closely related, because others who are closely related share some genes by virtue of common decent

squirrel makes itself more conspicuous when it stands on its hind legs and emits a loud alarm call. Why would an individual ground squirrel issue an alarm call when a predator was near and when doing so would attract the attention of the predator? Because those who would benefit from the alarm call would be individuals who were likely to share genes with the squirrel making the call.

People are better cooperators with parents and full siblings than with cousins and grandparents than non-kin - inclusive fitness theory

Question 40

kin selection - people are more trusting of people who resemble themselves

Answer 40

participants played a trust game with another person. This game is designed so that if the two people trust each other, they can win more by working together, but trust is risky, because the player who is trusted can defect and take the reward leaving his counterpart with nothing.

not actually playing with other people - morphed image

more trusting when the photo they were shown resembled themselves, compared to those shown non-self-resembling photographs. The author of this study sees this self-resemblance as a cue to relatedness, and these results as evidence supporting the kinselected theory of altruism

Question 41

Reciprocal Altruism

Answer 41

Helping another individual and then having the favor returned.

Goods do not have the same value to every person- based on need

benefits exceed our costs, regardless of relatedness. According to the reciprocal altruism theory, the overall benefit for both parties is greater than the cost once the altruism is reciprocated

Question 42

Very few species have delayed reciprocal altruism

Answer 42

isk of exploitation - makes evolution difficult
must ensure that one is not giving away valuable resources to those who will not reciprocate.
strategy that is stable and also compatible with reciprocal altruism is a strategy often called the tit-for-tat strategy.
——means starting out nice and repaying others’ kindnesses but excluding anyone who has cheated from further exchanges
——-Evolutionarily Stable Strategy A strategy which, if played by a number of individuals in a population, cannot be invaded via natural selection by an alternative strategy that is introduced at a low frequency

Question 43

vampire bats practice reciprocal altruism.

Answer 43

They live in stable social groups and have a long lifespan: up to 20 years. Thus, they have many opportunities to interact with the same individual. If an individual bat has not hunted successfully for more than 60 hours, it will die, unless another bat shares food with it.

frequently do share with each other, even with non-relatives. These bats practice a tit-for-tat strategy: They share food with those who have shared with them in the past, but exclude cheaters

Question 44

Humans, too, participate in reciprocal altruism, and have cognitive adaptations that allow them to resist being exploited, including

Answer 44

the ability to detect cheaters. Without this ability, reciprocal altruism would not be sustainable.

Question 45

Evolution of Friendships

Answer 45

— Friends often find it awkward to keep track of exact exchange values and prefer to return favors in a more casual, less exact way.
—The closer and more intimate relationships get, the less people ensure that exchanges are equal.
—-To make an exchange explicit and equal is offensive in an intimate relationship

Instinct blindness makes it seem very natural that the closer the friendship the more relaxed we are about keeping an exact balance of give and take in a relationship, but nothing about the theory of reciprocal altruism allows for this.

This kind of relationship requires its own psychological and evolutionary explanation

Question 46

Tooby and Cosmides - A number of factors influence the selection of friends, according to by-product mutualism

Answer 46

Skill, social status, willingness to expend effort all predict productivity, that the likelihood that spending time together might yield bene

In the EEA, spending time with someone who knew how to navigate the local area, knew how to speak the neighboring dialect, or knew the seasonal patterns of game would confer a benefit and cost the actor little

Question 47

Tooby and Cosmides - people are willing to accept a cost in order to spend time with potentially productive individuals experiment

Answer 47

Participants played a game in which they could decide how much of their tokens to share with another person. They believed they were playing with the person whose image they were seeing on the computer screen.

The images had been rated by a different set of participants in terms of how productive they would likely be if they “lived 100,000 years ago, when humans had to hunt or gather food and find or build shelter.” People shared more (without promise of reciprocation) with people who were expected to be more productive

This is consistent with the idea that these people were more valuable potential friends.

Question 48

Other factors also influenced the choice of one’s friends:

runaway friendship

Answer 48

those who are good at interpreting your communications, who have similar goals, and who return your feelings of friendship are valuable

Once a person became a friend, they were of greater value, both because they understood you better and also because they valued you as a friend
—–Because they were of greater value, it was worth behaving altruistically toward them when they were in need: feeding them if they were hungry, helping them if they were injured or sick, etc.

This situation created what Tooby and Cosmides called a runaway friendship: Since one person valued another to the extent that they were willing to make great sacrifices for them, they, in turn, became more valuable to their friend and would benefit from extraordinary aid in their own times of need
did not have time to be everyone’s special friend, when one did create a deep bond, the friendship was of value and worth incurring some cost to keep.

This created a situation in which great acts of altruism could take place without strict accounting in terms of how much was reciprocated

Question 49

Evidence of Empathy

Answer 49

Roots of empathy emerge by 6m - when an infant will respond with distress upon hearing another infant crying

Experiments that probe empathetic responses - experimenter will pretend to get hurt

Dependent measures include the child’s looking behavior, facial expression and approach

14m - empathy is evident

Thought to be a primary motivation for altruism and prosocial behavior

Second year - relationship between sympathetic feelings and prosocial behavior is measurable

Question 50

Early Helping

Answer 50

14m - will help an unfamiliar adult who is carrying too many items to open a door, reach a pencil etc.
——True even when the experimenters goal is not expressed verbally and the experimenter makes no request for help
——Evidence of the ability to perceive others’ goals and of a desire or motivation to be helpful

—–2&3 yr olds also respond to others signs of distress by helping or offering to share

—–Earliest helping behavior is not contingent on reciprocity or on the relationship with the beneficiary - by age of 3 - help people more if those individuals have shared with the child previously

—Apparent intention to share is more influential than actual successful sharing for 3 yr but not 2 yrs

Low cost helping and sharing emerges early and at the same age across cultures
Helping behavior is evident in the second year of life - not common

Lab situations - designed to give children an opportunity to help
More than half of a group of 18m did not help

Question 51

Factors that influence individual differences in helping:

Answer 51

Children who were not emotionally impacted by the experimenters apparent distress were less likely to respond

Some children sought comfort instead of helping

Children whose parents explicitly encourage prosocial behavior were more likely to respond to the experimenters apparent need

Children who didnt help were characterized by immaturity with respect to social
understanding, social motivation and emotion regulation

Question 52

Recognizing Helpful Individuals

Answer 52

Infants can distinguish individuals who behave pro-socially and those who are mean and they prefer nice characters

Within subjects paradigm = infants watched a character struggle to climb a hill

Some trials 12m - saw a hinderer - blue square pushing the circle down the hill
Other trials - helper yellow triangle pushing the circle up the hill

Violation of expectations paradigm revealed that infants expected the protagonist to approach and affiliate with the helper but not the hindered

When given a choice between the helper and the hinderer - infants reached for the helper

Question 53

Later experiment infants watched as a puppet struggled to open a box in order to access a toy

Answer 53

Saw one puppet approach and slam the box shut - preventing it from being opened
Different puppet assisted the protagonist and opened the box

When given a choice, 5&9 m infants reached for the helper, not the hindered

See infants awareness of a third party’s goals as evidence of empathy and as the roots of moral development

Helping and hindering puppet - 8m but not 5m - the intention of the actor is relevant to an evaluation of whether the actor is helpful or harmful

5m - always preferred the helper
Strong preference for the puppet who behaved cooperatively
8m - sophisticated appreciation for punishment
Only preferred the helper in the condition when the helper and hinderer were interacting with the prosocial puppet
If interacting with the antisocial puppet - 8m and 19m strongly preferred the hinderer

Question 54

Infants would try a food that was preferred by a helpful character but did not choose to try a food that was preferred by a hindering character

Answer 54

16-month-olds

Question 55

Infants also approve of those who harm individuals who

Answer 55

are dissimilar from themselves

Question 56

Usual preference for helper not see if recipient of behavior is a backpack not an animate character

Answer 56

10m - more willing to accept a toy from someone who has comforted a child while kicking a backpack than from someone who has done the opposite

Question 57

Infants expect equitable sharing as early as

Answer 57

15m

16m - watched one character distributing resources between two other characters

16m but not 10m looked longer at the fair distributor - when given a choice between the two - were more likely to reach for the fair than the unfair - more likely to reach for the fair than the unfair distributor

16m not only expect a fair distribution of rewards and also prefer to affiliate with those who distribute rewards fairly

Question 58

Sommerville - compared 12m and 15m - similar violation expectations experiment

Answer 58

One actor distributed a set of crackers to two other characters

Some trials - distribution was equitable and others it was uneven

Control condition - actor created the same groupings of crackers but there was no recipient characters present

15m but 12m looked longer at the unfair distribution of crackers between recipients
There was no looking time difference if the recipients were not present

expectation of a fair distribution of resources develops between 12 and 15 months of age

Question 59

toddler’s notion of fair sharing is fairly sophisticated, in that toddlers can take effort into account when calculating expected rewards.

Answer 59

violation of expectation paradigm, 20m - watched as a number of puppet characters worked together to complete a task.

Some conditions, there was a slacker -a character who was not contributing equitably to the group’s effort.

Between-subject design- saw the slacker over-rewarded while other infants saw them under-rewarded.

Infants looked longer when the slacker was over-rewarded, indicating a violation of expectations.

If A and B do equal work, toddlers expect and want an equal distribution of rewards. But if A works hard while B slacks off, they are surprised if the slacker is rewarded more
However, sharing resources with ingroup members is expected by infants, and this expectation overrides even effort-based allocations of resources

Question 60

Does a toddler’s expectation of a fair distribution make a difference in behavior?

Answer 60

toddlers tend to be very self-serving in tasks involving the distribution of a reward.

Toddlers who have a stronger expectation of equitable sharing are themselves more generous

Older children can enact fairness through sharing.

A study involving 3 year olds showed that if two children worked together to complete a task, they share the reward equally, even when one of the children is given the opportunity to monopolize the reward

Enacting fairness can vary depending on the identity of the recipient: 5- and 6-year-old children share most with friends, less with strangers and least with familiar non-friends
Still, equitable sharing is still developing, and young children are less likely to share equally than are older children.

By the age of 9 or 10 children are finally reflecting their declared preference for fair distribution in their own behavior

Question 61

Reciprocal altruism requires specialized cognitive machinery.

Answer 61

necessary that individuals be able to recognize and exclude cheaters - otherwise favour may never be returned - too many errors and resources depleted

Children as young as 3 are good at identifying cheaters

Question 62

Evidence that adults are particularly good at detecting cheaters relies on the wason four card selection task

Answer 62

The answer to the first problem is the “D” card and the “7” card. The answer to the second problem is the “Got a pension” card and the “Worked for 8 years” card.
Most people find the second problem easy, while the first problem takes some thinking.

evidence that humans have specialized cognitive processes for detecting cheaters, just the sort of thing a species would need in order for reciprocal altruism to evolve

Question 63

Young children show evidence of having access to adult-type cognitive machinery for cheater detection

Answer 63

One day Carol wants to do some painting. Carol says that if she does some painting, she always puts her apron on.”

cheater condition, children were asked “Show me the picture where Carol is doing something naughty and not doing what her Mum said,” while in the control condition they were asked “Show me the picture where Carol is doing something different and not doing what she said.”

Both 3 and 4 year olds performed significantly better (twice as well) in the cheater condition than in the control condition

Although the logic of the two problems was the same performance differed, consistent with the idea that our cognitive machinery is designed to detect cheaters

Performance on the social exchange version of this task is facilitated by cognitive processes that are designed to detect cheaters

Question 64

The Development of Incest Avoidance

Answer 64

Incest - could lead to the pairing of harmful recessive alleles, which in turn could lead to maldevelopment

This phenomenon, called inbreeding depression, occurs in humans and in many other sexually reproducing species
better strategy is to pair your genetic contribution with someone who is not closely related and thus reduce the risk of pairing deleterious recessives in your developing offspring.

strategies that reduce the probability that individuals will mate with close kin
social primate species, one sex or the other leaves the home group and joins another group prior to becoming sexually active -

Without such dispersal, humans have evolved psychological machinery for incest avoidance
Humans spend lots of time with close kin

Question 65

In contrast, evolutionary thinkers have suggested that incest avoidance is part of the human cognitive architecture. - selection pressure in favor of incest avoidance

Answer 65

categorize individuals according to relatedness- may be specific kin-recognition mechanisms that are employed for the purpose of incest avoidance

close kin are identified as those who live in the same household in early life. - children will stay in their parents’ household for many years.
Siblings’ childhoods thus overlap, and those children who live in your parents’ home with you, and appear to be receiving parental support from your parents are likely to be your siblings

Westermarck Effect: A psychological process that makes sexual attraction unlikely between two people who lived together as young children. This process is thought to be designed to avoid incest.

Question 66

unusual child-rearing practices have provided evidence supporting Westermarck’s idea

Answer 66

China and Taiwan, there has been a practice of “adopting” a son’s bride as an infant or young child, a practice called minor marriage.

Parents of a young son select his bride early in his life and then bring that girl into their homes, raising her from infancy.

40 years’ worth of data and found that contrary to the parents’ hopes, but consistent with Westermarck’s predictions, married couples who were raised together as children have higher divorce rates (three times higher) and produce fewer children (40 per cent fewer) than contemporaries who were not raised together.

Couples who were raised together as children were also more likely to have extramarital affairs. The woman in particular was likely to object to the marriage, especially if she joined the family prior to 30 months of age (Wolf, 1995).

These are the measurable results of the couple’s sexual disinterest in one another

Question 67

children reared together in Israeli kibbutzim had difficulties creating fertile marriages

Answer 67

children were reared communally from a very young age and so spent much of their time together rather than in nuclear family units.

After puberty, sexual intercourse between members of a kibbutz was rare, even though the individuals involved were not close genetic relatives.

Marriage between members of the same kibbutzim was also rare.

It is telling that frequent sexual play between boys and girls did occur in the kibbutzim but only when the children involved were prepubescent. At the age of puberty, sexual behavior among children reared together stopped

Question 68

Recent evidence suggests that the moral repugnance people have at the thought of having sexual relationships with close kin may be mediated by the same cognitive processes

Answer 68

People who are raised with opposite-sex siblings are more horrified at the idea of siblings having sex than are people who were raised without opposite-sex siblings

length of time that one spent in the same household with an opposite-sex sibling predicted the strength of the “moral wrongness” judgment regarding sex with siblings, and the number of years of co-residence is a stronger predictor of this judgment than actual genetic relatedness

Adults who were raised in a kibbutz showed a measurable association between the amount of time they has spent in residence in the kibbutz and the degree to which they thought it morally wrong to have a sexual relationship with peers who grew up together in a kibbutz

Question 69

For an older sibling, the experience of having seen the younger sibling breastfeeding with his or her own mother is also a powerful cue to sibling relatedness, and also predicts sexual aversion

Answer 69

if you have seen your mother nurse an infant, that experience alone is enough to create a lasting sexual aversion for this sibling, regardless of the duration of childhood co-residence

Although the function of these processes is the avoidance of inbreeding, they do not prevent the sexual attraction of people who are closely related unless those people were frequently together during childhood.

Genetic siblings who were not reared in the same household are much more likely than siblings reared together to have sexual intercourse with each other as adults

Question 70

Teaching Morals

Answer 70

Greater parental punishment and authoritarianism are associated with less maturity in terms of moral reasoning and moral behavior - over rewarding does not facilitate the internalization of prosocial values

parenting style that relies on physical punishment and coercion is associated with children who lack sympathy and display little prosocial behavior

If the goal is the internalization of prosocial values, a supportive and constructive parenting style is more effective

encourage prosocial behavior in children, the most effective strategy seems to be asking the child to reflect on the effect of her behavior on others

Both authoritarian and permissive parenting styles can lead to poor outcomes with respect to moral development. Children who are subjected to authoritarian parenting, complete with high demand and rigid regulation, are more likely to show physically aggressive behavior in childhood and juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior later on

Question 71

Moral Intuition or Rational Decision Making

Answer 71

Piaget and Kohlberg assumed that a moral decision was a result of a deliberate process of decision making during which an individual carefully considered moral principles and precedents.

Morality is first and foremost a matter of consulting reason

How our moral reasoning seems to unfold - explain our moral decisions - even to ourselves - in terms of the reasons that seem to compel rather than justify the decisions we have adopted

Question 72

Moral Intuition or Rational Decision Making
- Instinct blindness

Answer 72

moral decisions are made quickly and intuitively

Then the deliberate work of finding the reasons, principles, and precedents to motivate that decision are retrieved and amassed
supports a more intuitive view of morality over a rational view

contemporary developmental psychologists recognize that the beginnings of moral beliefs and intuitions are evident in infants and toddlers. Some moral psychology is available without rational decision making

Question 73

Jonathan Haidt emphasizes the intuition that drives the decision. 5 domains of morality

Answer 73

reactions to moral dilemmas are intuitive, automatic and emotional.
Moral reasoning, if it occurs at all, occurs after the decision has been made and only as a means to justify the decision

Harm
requires people to refrain from harming others, and is universal and early developing. The harm domain also includes the obligation to care for one’s offspring, according to Haidt

Reciprocity
answers the evolutionary demands of reciprocal altruism, and you read above that 3 year olds have a cognitive psychology designed to detect cheaters

Ingroup
leads to a preferential consideration of people in one’s group and infants show evidence of this preference

Hierarchy
demands fear and respect on the part of subordinates, and dominant individuals are morally obliged to provide protection.

Purity
purity domain includes sexual mores, and it also includes religion-based dietary restrictions. Disgust is the moral emotion associated with this domain. Each domain has the capacity to evoke an emotional and difficult-to-resist moral response

Question 74

Experimental evidence that one’s moral intuition is difficult to resist is the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding.

Answer 74

Once a participant makes a moral judgment, if the experimenter logically counters (thus dismissing) each proposed justification, the participant sticks with her moral decision, but without a logical justification she is left “morally dumbfounded”

The state of being certain that the act was immoral while having no moral reasoning to support the decision is what Haidt calls being morally dumbfounded. He takes this as evidence that intuition, not reasoning determines moral decisions

Question 75

Moral Grammar

Answer 75

The rules, heuristics, and intuitions that are a part of our human psychology and allow us to make moral decisions quickly and automatically.

Question 76

Hauser -

Answer 76

contends that we make instantaneous judgments and then use reasoning and logic to explain and support our decisions.

proposed that the revolution in thinking about language development can inform the way we think about morality and its development.