Quite a challenging read as it describes in detail a large number of scentific studies, which help our understanding of innate and learnt human behaviour.
Hunter-gatherer societies, typically but not always nomadic and without food storage capacity, are largely egalitarian, with collaborative decision making. Availability of large game is unpredictable, which leads to food sharing. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. An income-distribution study found that when people freely chose to allow inequalities, while taking care of the most in need does not reduce incentives to work hard, nor create a large number of free-loaders who suck the welfaresystem dry. When the same regime is imposed, more cheat and put in less effort because they perceive redistribution through taxes as a right.
While all societies have a sense of fairness, each culture sets the allowable responses to specific situations. Formal laws sometimes override our sense of fairness. Legal policies have to establish why particualr principles are justified, and what happens to those who violate them. Punishment is one answer. If the public does not have faith in the legal system, some individuals will exact punishment instead of, or in addition to, the official one.
Variations of the classic 'trolley problem' (a train will hit and kill 5 hikers on the track if it stays on course, but a bystander can pull a lever divert the train onto another track where it will kill only one person) show that it is permissible to pull the lever and kill one if the intent is to save 5 people and none of the six are known to the bystander; when information about identity is known, kin will be saved over non-kin, friends over strangers, humans over non-humans and politically safe or neutral individuals over politically abhorrent persons. There is no evidence that gender, age or national affiliation affects the judgement.
Men are responsible for a disproportionately large number of homicides, and of these, most are young men between the ages of 15 and 30. [cf New research indicates that the human brain, and in particular the capacity for self control, do not reach maturity until the late teens or early twenties.] The best predictor of violence is the number of unmarried young men; societies that practise polygamy are the most vulnerable to such violence as some men have many spouses, leaving others with none.
Culture-of-honour psychology is a problem, and can have awful, often fatal, consequences for women. Those in power see specific behaviour as immoral and proscribe punishments intended to shame the victim and exonerate the murderer and his family; most occur in public and are supported by local culture.
Throughout history and in all the world's cultures, there are statements of various versions of the Golden Rule. However, selfish instincts can override this.
- Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
- Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: do not do unto others what you not have them do unto you.
- Taoism: Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain and your neighbour's loss as your own loss.
- Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.
- Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even unto them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.
- Islam: Not one of you is a believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
The moral intuitions that drive many of our judgements often conflict with guidelines set out by law, religion or both. This has lead recently to battles over euthenasia and abortion. Governments can shoose whether to spend thousands of pounds on continued support for a patient in a vegetative state or spend the money on treatments that will benefit many people or on famine relief programmes.
Hauser concludes that we do have an inbuilt universal moral capacity, that develops over time, but is partially culturally determined. We share a universal moral grammar and at birth could have acquired any of the world's moral systems.
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