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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.

SUBMITTER: Barrett HC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4855604 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Barrett H Clark HC   Bolyanatz Alexander A   Crittenden Alyssa N AN   Fessler Daniel M T DM   Fitzpatrick Simon S   Gurven Michael M   Henrich Joseph J   Kanovsky Martin M   Kushnick Geoff G   Pisor Anne A   Scelza Brooke A BA   Stich Stephen S   von Rueden Chris C   Zhao Wanying W   Laurence Stephen S  

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20160328 17


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  ...[more]

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