Moral disciplining: the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality

Abstract

Why do many human societies condemn apparently harmless and pleasurable behaviors, such as lust, gluttony, drinking, drugs, gambling, or even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, hedonic restraint, sobriety, decency and piety as cardinal moral virtues? While existing accounts consider this puritanical morality as an exception to the cooperative function of moral intuitions, we propose that it stems, like other moral concerns, from moral intuitions targeting cooperative challenges. Specifically, we argue that it emerges in response to a key feature of cooperation, namely that the latter is (ultimately) a long-term strategy, requiring (proximately) the self-control of appetites for immediate gratification. Puritanical moralizations condemn and praise behaviors which, although not intrinsically cooperative or uncooperative, are perceived as affecting people’s propensity to cooperate, by modifying their ability to resist short-term impulses conflicting with cooperative motivations. Drinking, drugs, unruly feasts, dances, and immodest clothing are condemned as stimulating people’s short-term impulses, thus facilitating uncooperative behaviors (e.g. adultery, violence, economic free-riding). Immoderate indulgence in harmless bodily pleasures (e.g. lust, masturbation, gluttony) is perceived as addictively reinforcing short-term impulses, thus making harder the self-control of future temptations to cheat. Moralizations of ascetic temperance, daily self-discipline, and pious ritual observance are perceived as nurturing the self-restraint consubstantial to a cooperative character, able to resist selfish temptations when the latter arise. We review psychological, historical, and ethnographic evidence supporting this account, and discuss its implications regarding the cross-cultural variations and cultural evolution of puritanical norms.

Harmless bodily pleasures are moralized because they are perceived as reducing self-control and cooperativeness

“…This study finds support for the idea that harmless bodily pleasures are moralized because they are perceived as indirectly affecting cooperation, through their effects on self-control. These findings support the central contention of the Moral Disciplining Theory of puritanism (Fitouchi et al, 2021a). We find evidence that (a) people perceive indulgence as reducing self-control, cooperativeness, and moral character, while moderation improves selfcontrol, cooperativeness, and character; (b) the perceived effect of indulgence (vs. restraint) on cooperativeness and moral character is fully mediated by the perceived effect of indulgence (vs. restraint) on self-control; and (c) this perception that indulgence has deleterious effects on self-control, character, and cooperativeness predicts moral condemnation of harmless bodily pleasures.…”

“…Our findings also adds to recent work suggesting the importance of taking into account people's lay theories of human behavior for explaining moral judgements and their variations (Fitouchi et al, 2021a;Fitouchi & Singh, 2022;Moon et al, 2021;Nettle & Saxe, 2021). Puritanical condemnations, our results suggest, may stems from lay beliefs that repeatedly indulging in bodily pleasures would impair people's self-control, thus making future temptations-including uncooperative ones-harder to resist.…”

“…Contesting the disgust hypothesis, many researchers have argued that apparently harmless wrongs are, despite appearances, reducible to concerns for harm and fairness (Fitouchi et al, in press;Gray et al, 2014;Royzman et al, 2014;Royzman et al, 2009Royzman et al, , 2015Schein & Gray, 2018). Focusing on puritanical moralizations, the Moral Disciplining Theory of puritanism proposes that overindulgence in bodily pleasures is condemned because they are perceived as indirectly facilitating uncooperative behavior by altering people's self-control (Fitouchi et al, 2021a; see also 2021b).…”

“…If people perceive both that self-control is necessary for cooperative behavior (Righetti & Finkenauer, 2011), and that overindulgence in bodily pleasures reduces self-control, they may moralize bodily pleasures as indirectly facilitating antisocial behaviors (Fitouchi et al, 2021a).…”

Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies

“…This reasoning also applies to symbolic culture such as alphabets ( Dehaene, 2004 ; Changizi et al, 2006 ; Morin et al, 2019 ), fake-news ( Altay et al, 2020 ), shamanism ( Singh, 2018 ), make-up ( Sperber and Hirschfeld, 2004 ), puritanical norms ( Fitouchi et al, 2021 ), and symphonic orchestra ( Mehr et al, 2020 ; Dubourg et al, 2021c ). For instance, painters have discovered that, for some population, direct gaze ( Morin, 2013 ) and “neotenic” features (big eyes or round faces; Costa and Corazza, 2006 ) in portraits are likely to attract the viewer’s attention, which is we argue the ultimate motivation of painters.…”