Skip to main content

Human Sociability and Moral Deliberation

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation
  • 264 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter discusses the intrinsic social character of human existence, and how social structures provide expression for and variation of biological preferences of choice. A discussion is provided of the divide between social sciences and evolutionary theory in regard to the role of evolutionary dynamics for human social behavior, and how this disconnect furthers elements of artificiality in ethical deliberation. Social norms, social emotions, mirror neurons, language, and community will be discussed in reference to the judgments and deliberation about moral value.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The first approach is critiqued, and then the second is represented in R. N. Bellah, R. N. Madsen, W. M. Sullivan, A. Swidler, and S. M. Tipton (1992) The Good Society (New York: Vintage Books), 2–13. The second can also be seen in the rise of the social gospel movement and modern social ethics. See G. Dorrien (2011) Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), 1. It is also represented in J. Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press), 3.

  2. 2.

    R. I. Dunbar (2009) ‘The Social Brain Hypothesis and Its Implications for Social Evolution’, Annals of Human Biology, 36, 562–72.

  3. 3.

    G. Esposito, S. Yoshida, R. Ohnishi, et al. (2013) ‘Infant Calming Responses during Maternal Carrying in Humans and Mice’, Current Biology 23, 739–45.

  4. 4.

    V. N. Giri (2009) ‘Nonverbal Communication Theories’, in S. W. Littlejohn and K. A. Foss (eds) The Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.), 690–4; and T. Grossman and M. H. Johnson (2007) ‘The Development of the Social Brain in Human Infancy’, European Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 909–19.

  5. 5.

    T. Hutman and M. Dapretto (2009) ‘The Emergence of Empathy during Infancy’, Cognition, Brain, Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 13, 369.

  6. 6.

    C. Beckett, B. Maughan, M. Rutter, et al. (2006) ‘Do the Effects of Early Severe Deprivation on Cognition Persist into Early Adolescence? Findings from the English and Romanian Adoptees Study’, Child Development, 77, 696–711. Experiments that socially isolate infant rhesus monkeys for months after birth indicate severe abnormalities in subsequent behavior and sociability. H. F. Harlow and S. J. Suomi (1971) ‘Social Recovery by Isolation-Reared Monkeys’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 68, 1534–8. Similar effects can be expected among humans.

  7. 7.

    K. L. Sakai, (2005) ‘Language Acquisition and Brain Development’, Science, 310, 815–9.

  8. 8.

    Giri, ‘Nonverbal Communication Theories’, 690–94; and Grossman, ‘The Development of the Social Brain’, 909–19.

  9. 9.

    D. DeSteno, C. Brazeal, R. H. Frank, et al. (2012) ‘Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange’, Psychological Science, 23, 1549–56.

  10. 10.

    S. Hareli and B. Parkinson (2008) ‘What’s Social about Social Emotions?’ Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 38, 131–56.

  11. 11.

    J. Zaki and J. P. Mitchell (2013) ‘Intuitive Prosociality’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 466–70; and D. DeSteno (2009) ‘Social Emotions and Intertemporal Choice: “Hot” Mechanisms for Building Social and Economic Capital’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 280–4.

  12. 12.

    G. MacDonald and M. R. Leary (2005) ‘Why Does Social Exclusion Hurt? The Relationship Between Social and Physical Pain’, Psychological Bulletin, 131, 202–23.

  13. 13.

    Giri, ‘Nonverbal Communication Theories’, 690–94; and Grossman, ‘The Development of the Social Brain’, 909–19.

  14. 14.

    J. T. Lanzetta and B. G. Englis (1989) ‘Expectations of Cooperation and Competition and Their Effects on Observers’ Vicarious Emotional Responses’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 552.

  15. 15.

    G. Loewenstein and D. A. Small (2007) ‘The Scarecrow and the Tin Man: The Vicissitudes of Human Sympathy and Caring’, Review of General Psychology, 11, 112–26.

  16. 16.

    J. Levin and A. Arluke (10 August 2013) ‘Are People More Disturbed by Animal or Human Suffering?: The Influence of Species and Age’, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Hilton New York and Sheraton New York, New York, NY, http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p652313_index.html date accessed 5 September 2014.

  17. 17.

    Interestingly, there is little psychosocial research on this question, but R. C. Carpenter’s 2005 article ‘Women, Children, and Other Vulnerable Groups: Gender, Strategic Frames, and the Protection of Civilians as a Transnational Issue’, International Studies Quarterly, 49, 295–334, argues that transnational law and efforts to protect civilians emphasize protection of groups, including women, who are deemed to be more vulnerable than adult males, who themselves may be noncombatants, infirm, or parents of dependent children. The public concern, particularly in the USA, over the 2003 injury and capture of Jessica Lynch, a US Army soldier, by the Iraqi Army was highly disproportionate to the concern over other military personnel, especially males, who were killed, injured, or captured in the same incident. Lowenstein and Small, ‘The Scarecrow and the Tin Man’, 118, n. 7, and 123.

  18. 18.

    H. A. Herzog and L. L. Golden (2009) ‘Moral Emotions and Social Activism: The Case of Animal Rights’, Journal of Social Issues, 65, 493.

  19. 19.

    J. Haidt (2012) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books), 161.

  20. 20.

    Y. Inbar, D. A. Pizarro, and P. Bloom (2009) ‘Conservatives Are More Easily Disgusted than Liberals’, Cognition and Emotion, 23, 714–725.

  21. 21.

    N. Quinn (2005) ‘Universals of Child-Rearing’, Anthropological Theory, 5, 477–516.

  22. 22.

    Y. Dunham, E. E. Chen, and M. R. Banaji (2013) ‘Two Signatures of Implicit Intergroup Attitudes: Development Invariance and Early Enculturation’, Psychological Science, 24, 860–8.

  23. 23.

    V. Gecas (2000) ‘Socialization’, in E. F. Borgatta and R. J. V. Montgomery (eds) Encyclopedia of Sociology, Vol. 4. 2nd edn (New York: MacMillan Reference, USA), 2855–64.

  24. 24.

    M. L. Anderson and H. F. Taylor (2008) Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society, 4th edn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning Inc.), 105–06; S. S. Wiltermuth and C. Heath (2009) ‘Synchrony and Cooperation’, Psychological Science, 20, 1–5; and Gecas, ‘Socialization’, 2860.

  25. 25.

    R. Burkett (2013) ‘An Alternative Framework for Agent Recruitment: From MICE to RASCLS’, Studies in Intelligence, 57, 7–17.

  26. 26.

    The Bureau of Justice Statistics in the USA indicates that 75 % of prisoners are reincarcerated within 5 years of their release. See A. D. Cooper, M. R. Durose, and H. N. Synder (2014) ‘Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 30 States in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010’, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.bjs.gov/, date accessed 22 July 2015. Military basic training may also be limited in its effect, providing more of a screening process than an instilling of new values. Brainwashing is often brought up as an example of religious or political institutions changing people’s minds. Certainly, solitary confinement and torture, or exposure to a cultic community as the only source of authority can have coercive effects on a person’s behavior, but in most cases the effects of these efforts wear off after the coercive apparatus is no longer in play. See J. P. Healy (2011) ‘Involvement in a New Religious Movement: From Discovery to Disenchantment’, Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 13, 2–11; and A. Killen and S. Andriopoulos (2011) ‘Editors’ Introduction on Brainwashing: Mind Control, Media, and Warfare’, Grey Room, 45, 7–17.

  27. 27.

    E. H. Erickson (1980) Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: W. W. Norton & Company).

  28. 28.

    In spite of variation in what generational categories are used and the objection of many that the variations of sentiment and behavior between individuals within each category don’t support widespread generalizations, the categories have become broadly accepted. T. C. Reeves and E. Oh (2008) ‘Generational Differences’, in J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. V. Merriënboer, and M. P. Driscoll (eds) Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 3rd edn (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC), 295–303.

  29. 29.

    See Pew Research Center (2010) Millennials: Confident, Connected, Open to Change, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf, date accessed 5 July 2015, for a helpful overview of these issues.

  30. 30.

    Pew Research Center (2009) ‘Faith in Flux, Religion and Public Life Project’, http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/27/faith-in-flux/, date accessed 20 July 2015; and Office for National Statistics (2013) ‘What Does the Census Tell Us About Religion in 2011?’ http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/detailed-characteristics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/sty-religion.html, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  31. 31.

    E. Kaplan and S. Mukand (2011) ‘The Persistence of Political Partisanship: Evidence from 9/11’, Working Paper Series, No. 43, University of Warwick, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/research_old/papers/43.2011_kaplan.pdf, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  32. 32.

    J. M. Jones (8 January 2014) ‘Record-High 42 Percent of Americans Identify as Independents’, http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/record-high-americans-identify-independents.aspx, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  33. 33.

    D. Arielly (2008) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper Collins Publishers), 15–18; D. Card, A. Mas, E. Moretti, and E. Saez (2012) ‘Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction’, American Economic Review, 102, 2981–3003; and S. J. Solnick and D. Hemenway (1998) ‘Is More Always Better? A Survey on Positional Concerns’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 37, 373–83.

  34. 34.

    B. Buraimo, D. Forrest, and R. Simmons (2010) ‘The 12th Man?: Refereeing Bias in English and German Soccer’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 173, 431–49.

  35. 35.

    S. Fein, G. R. Goethals, and M. B. Kugler (2007) ‘Social Influence on Political Judgments: The Case of Presidential Debates’, Political Psychology, 28, 165–192.

  36. 36.

    B. Latané and J. M. Darley (1968) ‘Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 215–21.

  37. 37.

    M. S. Clark and J. Mills (1979) ‘Interpersonal Attraction in Exchange and Communal Relationships’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 12–24; and A. Fiske (1992) ‘The Four Elementary Forms of Sociality: Framework for a Unified Theory of Social Relations’, Psychological Review, 99, 689–723.

  38. 38.

    C. Jenks (2007) ‘Culture: Conceptual Clarifications’, in G. Ritzer (ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 928–32; and E. Durkheim (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by J. W. Swain (London: George Allen and Unwin, LTD.), 375.

  39. 39.

    A. Norenzayan, E. E. Smith, B. J. Kim, and R. E. Nisbett (2002) ‘Cultural Preferences for Formal versus Intuitive Reasoning’, Cognitive Science, 26, 653–84.

  40. 40.

    J. A. Kitts (2003) ‘Egocentric Bias or Information Management? Selective Disclosure and the Roots of Norm Misperception’, Social Psychology Quarterly, 66, 222–37.

  41. 41.

    D. A. Prentice (2012) ‘The Psychology of Social Norms and the Promotion of Human Rights’, in R. Goodman, D. Jinks, and A. K. Woods (eds) Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press), 23–46.

  42. 42.

    M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and M. E. Brashears (2006) ‘Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades’, American Sociological Review, 71, 355–75; and M. A. Painter and P. Paxton (2014) ‘Checkbooks in the Heartland: Change Over Time in Voluntary Association Membership’, Sociological Forum, 29, 408–28.

  43. 43.

    P. Dekker and A. van den Broek (2004) ‘Civil Society in Longitudinal and Comparative Perspective: Voluntary Associations, Political Involvement, Social Trust, and Happiness in a Dozen Countries’, Paper presented at the 6th International Conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research, Ryerson University, Toronto, 11–14 July, 2004, http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.istr.org/resource/resmgr/working_papers_toronto/dekker.paul.pdf, date accessed 20 July 2015; K. Hampton, L. S. Goulet, E. J. Her, and L. Rainie (2009) ‘Social Isolation and New Technology: How the Internet and Mobile Phones Impact Americans’ Social Networks’, http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media//Files/Reports/2009/PIP_Tech_and_Social_Isolation.pdf, date accessed 20 July 2015; and R. F. Baumeister and M. R. Leary (1995) ‘The Need to Belong: Desire for Social Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation’, Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

  44. 44.

    S. Milgram (2004) Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Perennial Classics), 1–12.

  45. 45.

    C. Haney, C. Banks, and P. Zimbardo (1973) ‘Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison’, International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97.

  46. 46.

    D. T. Regan (1971) ‘Effects of a Favor and Liking on Compliance’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7, 627–39.

  47. 47.

    R. B. Cialdini (2007) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, revised edn (New York: Collins), 43–86.

  48. 48.

    M. Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. J. White, W. Hood, and C. W. Sherif (1961) Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman, OK: The University Book Exchange).

  49. 49.

    C. K. Sigelman and E. A. Rider (2012) Life-Span: Human Development, 8th edn (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning), 378.

  50. 50.

    G. Clark (2014) The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 12.

  51. 51.

    D. Dawson (1999) ‘Evolutionary Theory and Group Selection: The Question of Warfare’, History and Theory, 38, 79–91, and J. Tooby and L. Cosmides (1992) ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture’ in J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (eds) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press), 19–135.

  52. 52.

    S. Pinker (2012) ‘The False Allure of Group Selection’, http://edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  53. 53.

    R. Dawkins (1989) The Selfish Gene, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press), 192–3.

  54. 54.

    See Tooby and Cosmides, ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture’, 19–31, and a short discussion in J. J. Tillman (2008) ‘Sacrificial Agape and Group Selection in Contemporary American Christianity’, Zygon, 43, 544–5.

  55. 55.

    C. Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company), 156–57, and Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 8.

  56. 56.

    M. F. Lenzenwenger, M. C. Lane, A. W. Loranger, and R. C. Kessler (2008) ‘DSM-IV Personality Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication’, Biological Psychiatry, 62, 553–64.

  57. 57.

    D. S. Wilson (2002) Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 22.

  58. 58.

    E. Szathmary (2011) ‘To Group or Not To Group’, Science, 334, 1648–9.

  59. 59.

    P. Gerbault, A. Liebert, Y. Itan, A. Powell, M. Currat, J. Burger, D. M. Swallow, and M. G. Thomas (2011) ‘Evolution of Lactase Persistence: An Example of Human Niche Construction’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences, 366, 863–77.

  60. 60.

    T. H. Seay (2013) ‘From Great Grandma to You: Epigenetic Changes Reach Down through the Generations’, Science News, 183, 18–21; and N. Tsankova, W. Renthal, A. Kumar, and E. J. Nestler (2007) ‘Epigenetic Regulation in Psychiatric Disorders’, Nature Review Neuroscience, 8, 355–67.

  61. 61.

    B. G. Dias and K. J. Ressler (2014) ‘Parental Olfactory Experience Influences Behavior and Neural Structure in Subsequent Generations’, Nature Neuroscience, 17, 89–96.

  62. 62.

    R. Boyd and P. J. Richerson (2005) The Origin and Evolution of Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press), 4; and M. S. Gazzaniga (2011) Who’s in Charge: Freewill and the Science of the Brain (New York: Ecco), 152.

  63. 63.

    Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral, 41–42, 102, and 133.

  64. 64.

    N. Forsyth (1987) The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), 44.

  65. 65.

    See J. Diamond (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking) for an emphasis on the environmental element.

  66. 66.

    Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral, 135–43.

  67. 67.

    J. Clarke (2004) ‘Interdisciplinary Perspective: Histories of Childhood’, in Dominic Wyse (ed.) Childhood Studies: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.), 3–12.

  68. 68.

    N. Bancel, T. David, and D. Thomas (2014) ‘Introduction: The Invention of Race—Scientific and Popular Representations of Race from Linnaeus to the Ethnic Shows’, in N. Bancel, T. Davice, and D. Thomas (eds) The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations (New York: Routledge), 11.

  69. 69.

    H. P. Young (2010) ‘The Dynamics of Social Innovation’, paper presented at Sackler Colloquium on the Dynamics of Social, Political and Economic Institutions, Irvine, California, 3 December 2010, http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/DynamicsSocial.pdf, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  70. 70.

    M. J. Salganik, P. S. Dodds, and D. J. Watts (2006) ‘Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market’, Science, 311, 854–6.

  71. 71.

    Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls are perhaps the most read theorists regarding this commitment, and their systems bear out this ideal of unidentified and unrelated individuals offering formal arguments in an ideal, abstract setting. See J. Habermas (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press); and J. Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press).

  72. 72.

    S.-J. Min (2009) ‘Deliberation, East Meets West: Exploring the Cultural Dimension of Citizen Deliberation’, Doctoral Dissertation, Ohio State University, 28–37, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/osu1243277918/inline, date accessed 20 July 2015.

  73. 73.

    The UNESCO World Values Survey indicates the persistent strength of both national and local identity. UNESCO (2009) Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue (Paris: UNESCO), 302–3, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001852/185202e.pdf, date accessed 22 July 2015.

  74. 74.

    Some of these points about context are made broadly about bioethics by A. Kleinman (1999) ‘Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography Reconcile Them? A Quandary for “The New Bioethics’’’, Daedalus, 128, 69–97; A. M. Hedgecoe (2004) ‘Critical Bioethics: Beyond the Social Science Critique of Applied Ethics’, Bioethics, 18, 120–43; and R. Rapp (2006) ‘The Thick Social Matrix for Bioethics: Anthropological Approaches’, in C. Rehmann-Sutter et al. (eds) Bioethics in Cultural Contexts: Reflections on Method and Finitude (Dordrecht: Springer), 341–51.

  75. 75.

    R. E. Nisbet (2003) The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why (New York: The Free Press), xii–xxiii.

  76. 76.

    M. E. Herman-Giddens (2013) ‘The Enigmatic Pursuit of Puberty in Girls’, Pediatrics, 132, 1125–6.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Tillman, J.J. (2016). Human Sociability and Moral Deliberation. In: An Integrative Model of Moral Deliberation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49022-3_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics