Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

Abstract

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. morality | intentions | cognition | culture | human universals

Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates

“…Identifying universal moral norms in humans is still an ongoing endeavor (e.g., Barrett et al, 2016) but they minimally include the contents of not harming infants, avoiding inequity, caring for one's own offspring, and avoiding incest. Some evidence suggests that they may be present at least in dyadic, but sometimes even in third-party contexts in non-human primates too.…”

“…However, despite this variability in the content of what counts as moral among cultures, there are also elements that seem universal, both with regard to the proximate mechanisms that regulate moral behavior and the content of moral norms. For instance, Barrett et al (2016) found that across societies, including small-scale societies, humans take an agent's reason for action into account for moral judgments, but they also found independent variation when looking at specific contents, e.g., harm vs. theft, or in how the content influences the role of intentionality. Furthermore, even if conformist transmission could in principle stabilize a variety of behaviors and norms (Chudek and Henrich, 2011), there appears strong canalization in that some kinds of content (such as for instance not to harm others, or engage in parental investment) are more readily considered moral than others (van Schaik, 2016).…”

Valuation of Morality and Mind: Morality as a Metacognitive Byproduct

“…Accordingly, some have proposed that morality is determined by the perceived motive of the act [48]. Likewise, evidence suggests that intent perception is a cross-cultural determinant of moral judgements [49]. The mitigating factor of 'necessity' (doing harm to help another) exhibited universal applicability in the severity of moral judgements (across nine societies).…”

Moral status of accidents

“…One reason for this variation may be that individuals and groups have different views about what a person could control or ought to know. Barrett et al (1) acknowledge that they cannot explain the observed pattern of variation in the status of actions and mistakes, across cultures and contexts; devising and testing potential explanations will be a key challenge for future research.…”

“…Indeed, the burden of proof seems to be on the other side: Is there anything universal about human moral cognition? In PNAS, Barrett et al (1) test one candidate for a universal principle of human morality: that an action's moral value depends not only on the action's consequences but on the person's intentions.…”