Who is the fundamental norm of morality

Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Search within In This Article I. Behavior in Accord with Norms II. Enforcement and Punishment III. Moral Signals References. Go to page:. Here we argue that these norms of fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation are all subserved by, and rooted in, a single mechanism—reciprocity—that enables people to make flexible moral decisions across a range of social contexts.

Reciprocity has traditionally been operationalized either as individual beliefs about the structure of the world, or as a culturally mandated standard of behavior. Such a belief in universal justice implies that destructive individuals who violate expectations of reciprocity will eventually face consequences for disturbing the equilibrium. This framework argues that reciprocity operates either by responding to negative actions with negative treatment, or by responding to positive actions with positive treatment.

Below, we discuss the roles that contextual factors, emotional experiences, and learning play in influencing how reciprocity supports flexible moral action. In the following section, we use a game theoretic approach to examine fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation. This is done for two reasons. As each game has a series of discrete rule sets, researchers can control and manipulate the structure and context of any game Camerer, Second, the strategic interactions and behaviors that fall out of economic games are mathematically expressed on a universal scale: We know with precision how much money an individual is willing to altruistically offer another, how much punishment is conferred upon a perpetrator in the wake of a fairness violation, and how much people care to trust or cooperate with an unfamiliar partner.

Together, these two dimensions of economic games provide a powerful testbed for understanding moral norms and their influence on behavior. Although resources can be divided meritoriously e. Evidence for this fairness norm is abundant.

How humans resolve fairness transgressions has been a central question in behavioral economics for decades. In the Ultimatum Game, two players partake in an economic exchange. One player acts as the Proposer and makes an offer to the other participant, the Responder. The Responder can then either accept or reject the offer. If accepted, the money is split as proposed.

If rejected, then neither player receives any money, which effectively punishes the Proposer for offering an unfair split. The most rational decision for the Responder is to accept any offer from the Proposer no matter how small, since some money is better than no money. This class of unfairness is termed advantageous inequality when one receives more than another , which stands in contrast to disadvantageous inequality when one receives less than another.

The mutual expectation of fair treatment therefore leads individuals on both sides of the dyad to prefer equal payoffs. This may be due in part to the notion that failing to punish can itself be punishable Kandori, For example, individuals who punish are trusted more, and in return, behave in a more trustworthy manner Jordan et al. Some accounts of natural selection argue that survival requires self-benefit be prioritized at all costs.

Accumulating evidence now demonstrates that altruistic behavior is not confined to kin selection strategies, and many species expend valuable resources to help unrelated others FeldmanHall, Mobbs, et al. Applying a slight modification to the Ultimatum Game described above elegantly illustrates this point.

If the option to reject the offer is removed, the social exchange becomes a Dictator Game Camerer, where the Receiver must accept any offer no matter how small. On the surface, charitable giving does not seem to be a self-beneficial act. Money is given to unknown others, oftentimes in distant countries where there is little chance of meeting those who received the donation. Thus, acting selflessly by donating to others provides an advantage to the altruist in that there will be some kind of indirect, downstream benefit or avoidance of admonishments from the community at large.

Compellingly, human social groups that act altruistically appear to fare better than those who do not Ostrom, Take welfare states for example: Even though many Western societies are large and complex, members are intimately dependent on one another, as there are social expectations that people who are more fortunate will help those who are less fortunate Wilensky, This norm of altruism ranges from long-term governmental edicts to fleeting one-on-one relationships Barr, If an individual is drowning in a lake or falls off a subway platform, people nearby will even risk their lives to help the distressed individual Marsh et al.

These acts of altruism are typically performed without the belief that the beneficiary will directly return the favor. For example, activating norms of altruism induces greater helping, and fluctuations in the environment e. Other motivations, such as the desire for social prestige and reputation Olson, , or avoiding social ostracism Becker, , are also known to influence altruism and can be considered positive or negative reciprocity, respectively.

This is unsurprising given that a significant aspect of any economic transaction is the ability to trust and cooperate with nonrelated others Arrow, Without trust, however, neither markets nor social relations could thrive, as there would be an unwillingness to risk something of value in exchange for a later reward.

A typical Trust Game involves a one-shot social interaction between two players, an Investor and a Trustee. The first player, the Investor, is initially faced with a decision to keep an endowment of money e.

If shared, the investment is multiplied often by a factor of four , and the Trustee faces the difficult decision to repay the trust by sending back up to half of the increased sum, or to violate that trust by keeping all the money, leaving the Investor with nothing.

The social dilemma for the Investor is clear: Though it is more profitable to trust if it will be reciprocated, doing so leaves the Investor susceptible to the risk of a breach in trust, and ultimately, the loss of money. This game can be adapted for repeated play, such that social sanctions, communication between players, reputation, and relationships can all be manipulated. In one-shot games where there is no opportunity for social sanctions or reputation building through repeated play, it is rather surprising that Trustees return so much of the money, especially since many economists would argue that a rational, self-interested person should return nothing.

Of course, the degree to which individuals value norms of trust can vary. Even when the parameters of a task are held constant, there are some individuals who resolutely adhere to reciprocal trust norms and others who deviate from this norm Baumgartner et al.

Evidence that individuals behave in accordance with, or deviate from, a moral norm depending on the context, suggests that adhering to a moral code of trust can be quite malleable. Norms can also powerfully influence cooperative behavior Ostrom, From a purely economic perspective, this is a puzzling behavior, as it suggests that the social norm of cooperation is more motivating than maximizing favorable outcomes for the self. Even group size i. Once there is an initial signal to cooperate, others will cooperate in return.

In contrast, cooperation languishes when external rules and sanctions are directly and explicitly imposed, compared with systems that allow internal norms to spontaneously develop Yamagishi, These cooperative patterns can be manipulated by expectations of either direct or indirect reciprocity.

In these cases, individuals form a belief that their fellow partners will cooperate if they cooperate, a form of direct reciprocity. Importantly, many of these contextual factors can also shape perceptions of reciprocity. For example, when social cues are available e. In contrast, when there is uncertainty within the environment e. The clearest neural evidence that people value reciprocity comes from studies on trust, cooperation, and fairness. In the domain of trust, neuroimaging experiments utilizing the Trust Game illustrate that the caudate, a region critical for indexing reward, computes information about the intention to reciprocate trusting acts King-Casas et al.

A recent meta-analysis further reveals that these value signals are likely to be linked to aspects of reciprocity rather than to trust itself.

The value associated with reciprocal trust also appears to be conditional on social distance. Individuals trust close friends with more money than strangers even when friends and strangers reciprocate at the same rate , which is associated with greater ventral striatum activity Fareri et al.

Thus, not only does reciprocity appear to depend on immediate observations i. Studies of reciprocal cooperation demonstrate a similar engagement of reward-processing regions. This suggests that even when monetary benefits to the self are not maximized, the act of cooperating is in itself rewarding.

There is also an abundance of evidence illustrating that reciprocal actions are valued in the wake of a fairness violation. Neural evidence for the value of reciprocity in altruism is less straightforward and less abundant, largely due to the fact that altruism appears to draw upon an indirect reciprocity mechanism.

This tautologically requires that any expected returns from norm compliance be abstracted from the altruistic action itself e. Accordingly, identifying the neural underpinnings of reciprocity in the domain of altruism requires observing how indirect reciprocity manifests over time, or at least between multiple individuals in an iterated task. These features make it relatively difficult to study the neural value of reciprocity within an altruistic context, and thus there is limited work on the topic.

However, in the few cases in which researchers have fruitfully examined the blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal underpinning the effects of indirect reciprocity during altruistic social exchanges, evidence dovetails with work on trust, fairness, and cooperation: Altruistic decisions are influenced by indirect reciprocity motivations, which is subserved, in part, by increased caudate activity Watanabe et al.

In other words, even an indirect reciprocity mechanism that manifests across multiple individuals behaving altruistically appears to rely on regions that process reward.

In contrast, those who have broken a moral norm oftentimes to selfishly enhance their own monetary benefit demonstrate a different pattern of neural activity that does not reliably include reward regions.

These neural data paint an emerging picture that cognitive control appears to be required to resolve self-other conflicts that ultimately favor the self. Take, for instance, a situation where you contemplate cheating on your spouse.

You might feel a pang of disapproval or shame upon considering such behavior. These moral emotions moderate moral standards is it wrong if you are in an unhappy marriage? Guilt-proneness consistently correlates with measures of perspective-taking and is inversely related to antisocial and criminal behavior Tangney et al. Aligning with these findings, several neuroimaging studies have found that when describing moral transgressions, feelings of guilt are associated with neural activity in a network that corresponds with thinking about other people Basile et al.

Although emotions such as guilt encourage people to avoid breaking norms, other emotions motivate people to actively comply with norms. For example, some theories propose that empathy sensitizes people to value altruism Batson et al.

Unsurprisingly, watching people break moral norms that target other individuals can also give rise to a similar set of moral emotions, including righteous anger, indignation, contempt, and disgust Dubreuil, ; Moll et al.

Contempt the moral denunciation of others is often expressed in response to the violation of communal codes, and is therefore a negative social evaluation of others Tangney et al.

Contempt is most often expressed by those not directly harmed by the violation, and thus deals with norm compliance from a third-party perspective. Bystanders observing an injustice can express contempt to ostracize the agent causing harm.

For example, people feel contempt towards those who violate social hierarchy norms Rozin et al. In other words, the medial frontal cortex likely processes internal emotional signals alongside cues about social norms to help guide successful moral behavior.

Individuals diagnosed with psychopathy and conduct disorder also provide a compelling case for the intimate link between disrupted emotional responses and patterns of aberrant moral behaviors. Individuals with higher levels of psychopathy cooperate less and exhibit reduced activity in orbitofrontal cortex when cooperating Rilling et al.

The frequency with which these norms are attended and adhered to suggests that they are indoctrinated at an early age House, Children as young as three years old can distinguish between legal and social violations Smetana, Such vicarious learning appears early in the developmental trajectory, and can help facilitate the distinction between social and moral norms in young children e.

These expectations can be expressed both directly e. For example, breaking certain social norms, such as wearing the wrong outfit to school, can evoke scorn and mockery from peers, and if the transgression is particularly egregious, it may even induce social rejection. Accordingly, the feedback received from others acts as a reinforcement mechanism that can dictate the adherence to or deviance from moral norms Aknin et al. Over the last few years, researchers have begun to successfully apply reinforcement learning frameworks to explain how social learning unfolds.

In one of the first studies illustrating that norm violations generate prediction errors, researchers found that subjects in a Trust Game transferred less money to partners who violated trust King-Casas et al. Subsequent work further decoupled monetary reward from learning about moral traits e. To probe whether prediction errors are contextually modulated, researchers have dynamically manipulated moral expectations using the Ultimatum Game.

When led to believe that unfair offers are ubiquitous, subjects were less willing to punish partners who break fairness norms Sanfey, , which provides compelling evidence that people adjust their behaviors according to the prevailing norms of a specific social environment.

Here, we have tried to strike a balance between parsimony and explanatory power. For example, Moral Foundations Theory may place undue weight on certain norms e. On the other hand, the Theory of Dyadic Morality is parsimonious by its very nature. Although we would agree that many moral situations can be perceived through a lens of harm, such an account can be overly restrictive when trying to explain the wide range of findings in psychology, economics, and neuroscience. By allowing the findings from psychology and neuroeconomics to guide us, we have highlighted reciprocity as a common mechanism that motivates adherence to a discrete suite of moral norms.

The idea that reciprocity provides a unifying principle for social behavior is not new Berg et al. Moral norms facilitate harmonious interpersonal exchanges by providing people with a set of common expectations. Here we highlight four norms—fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation—that we believe to be the most foundational for successful social living. By discussing the ways in which these norms can shape behavior, we offer an account for the proximate psychological mechanisms motivating moral norm compliance: Reciprocity.

People comply with moral norms because they have the direct or indirect expectation that others will also adhere to these norms, and because they believe that norm violations may have negative repercussions for the future well-being of both specific individuals and entire societies. In addition, we examine how aversive moral emotions such as contempt and guilt facilitate norm enforcement by devaluing selfish, norm-violating actions. The degree to which humans act fairly, help, trust, and cooperate is often viewed as a puzzle across an array of disciplines.

Some of the deepest thinkers in human history, including Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Charles Darwin, have attempted to provide accounts of how social norms dictate appropriate behaviors in nearly every aspect of human life, from the trivial e. However, few accounts have successfully reconciled two seemingly contradictory features of norm compliance: Although social norms are pervasive and often perceived as inflexible in nature, the degree to which an individual adheres to these norms produces malleable and context-specific behaviors.

Emerging research in moral psychology and neuroscience elucidates how norms are supported by the simple cognitive mechanism of reciprocity. Reciprocal behavior is stable enough to support interpersonal exchanges between strangers, yet flexible enough to accommodate adaptive behavior across a range of social environments.

We provide a unifying framework for understanding how a wide variety of putatively unrelated moral behavior—helping a homeless person, getting angry at a fraudster, asking a stranger at the library to look after your computer while you take a call—are supported by expectations of reciprocity and the associated neural encoding of reward. We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and assistance from members of the FeldmanHall Lab. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Personal Neurosci v.

Personal Neurosci. Published online Sep 7. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Author for correspondence: Oriel FeldmanHall, E-mail: ude. Accepted May 9.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract A complex web of social and moral norms governs many everyday human behaviors, acting as the glue for social harmony. Key words: moral, norms, reciprocity, emotions, learning. What are social and moral norms? Reciprocity as a mechanism Reciprocity has traditionally been operationalized either as individual beliefs about the structure of the world, or as a culturally mandated standard of behavior.

The norms that govern moral behavior In the following section, we use a game theoretic approach to examine fairness, altruism, trust, and cooperation. Altruism Some accounts of natural selection argue that survival requires self-benefit be prioritized at all costs. Cooperation Norms can also powerfully influence cooperative behavior Ostrom, Conclusions Moral norms facilitate harmonious interpersonal exchanges by providing people with a set of common expectations.

Conflicts of Interest: None. Acknowledgment: We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and assistance from members of the FeldmanHall Lab. Notes Inaugural Invited Paper. References Adolphs R. Neural systems for recognizing emotion. Current Opinion in Neurobiology , 12 , — The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 50 , — Hamlin J.

Positive feelings reward and promote prosocial behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology , 20 , 55— Impure altruism and donations to public goods: A theory of warm-glow giving. The Economic Journal , , — Miller J. The limits of organization. Wager T. Empathic care and distress: Predictive brain markers and dissociable brain systems. Neuron , 94 , — Voslinsky A. Beliefs and social behavior in a multi-period ultimatum game. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience , 9 , 1— Economics of the welfare state.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reh L. Social comparison nudges—Guessing the norm increases charitable giving. Economics Letters , , 73— Bozzali M. Deontological and altruistic guilt: Evidence for distinct neurobiological substrates.

Human Brain Mapping , 32 , — Buckholtz J. Psychopathic individuals exhibit but do not avoid regret during counterfactual decision making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , , — Todd R. Empathic joy and the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 61 , — Dufwenberg M. Guilt in games. The American Economic Review , 97 , — Fehr E.

The neural circuitry of a broken promise. Neuron , 64 , — Dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex orchestrate normative choice. Nature Neuroscience , 14 , — The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage. Brain and Cognition , 55 , 30— Anderson S. Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition , 50 , 7— Damasio A.

Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex , 10 , — Deciding advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science , , — A theory of social interactions.

Journal of Political Economy , 82 , — Rushworth M. Associative learning of social value. Nature , , — Krueger F. Human Brain Mapping , 38 , — Meier S. Do people behave in experiments as in the field? Experimental Economics , 11 , — McCabe K.

Trust, reciprocity, and social history. Games and Economic Behavior , 10 , — Robinson T. Parsing reward. Trends in Neurosciences , 26 , — The grammar of society: The nature and dynamic of social norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chavez A. Behaving as expected: Public information and fairness norms.

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making , 23 , — Brief report: Morality in the autistic child. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders , 26 , — Warneken F. Scientific Reports , 5 , 1—9. Frey B. Ockenfels A. ERC: A theory of equity, reciprocity, and competition. The American Economic Review , 90 , — Zwick R.

Anonymity versus punishment in ultimatum bargaining. Games and Economic Behavior , 10 , 95— Humans expect generosity. Scientific Reports , 7 , Evolution of responses to un fairness. Science , , Suleiman R. Resource dilemmas with environmental uncertainty and asymmetric players.

European Journal of Social Psychology , 20 , — Simultaneous vs. Acta Psychologica , 80 , — Rapoport A. Positional order and group size effects in resource dilemmas with uncertain resources. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 61 , — Behavioral game theory : E xperiments in strategic interaction. Thaler R. Anomalies: Ultimatums, dictators and manners.

The Journal of Economic Perspectives , 9 , — Payne B. Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 1 , 1— Niblo G. Benevolent characteristics promote cooperative behaviour among humans. PLoS One , 9 , e Robinson P.

Why do we punish? Deterrence and just deserts as motives for punishment. Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Reframing Catholic Theological Ethics. Find in Worldcat. Go to page:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.