Week 15: Panel Presentation
Sean Astrup, Jessica Hecht, and Emily Trebek
Loyola Marymount University
Summary of Is Believing in God Evolutionary Advantageous? by A. Spiegel
Although there were no readings for Week 14, the suggested reading was on the
benefits of religion in our society. The author, Alix Spiegel, tells the story of Jesse Bering
who had a mother who died of cancer very peacefully in her home surrounded by family.
The morning after she had passed, Bering claims he heard wind chimes outside his
mother’s window and he somehow knew he had made it to the other side and gone to
heaven. Bering is a confirmed atheist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural because he
prefers things that are measurable. Although it seems unlikely scientifically, every culture
has believed in the supernatural world at one point in time, and when something is so
widespread scientists start to question if it is evolutionary. God must have been so helpful
that the people who believed in religion thrived while those who didn’t slowly died out.
Bering has done experiments to understand the advantages of believing in a
supernatural force. One of his experiments studied children between the ages of 5-9. The
children were told to throw a Velcro ball at a Velcro dartboard, and if they could hit the
bull’s-eye, they’d get a prize. The catch was that the children weren’t allowed to face the
dartboard and they couldn’t use their dominant hand to throw the ball. The children were
divided into 3 groups. The first was left alone and told to play to the best of their ability.
The second was told the same, but they were told there was someone special who was
going to watch them who was a made up character named Princess Alice. Alice had a power
that made her invisible, and the children were told she was sitting in the chair. The third
group was told to play the game as the researcher watched them. The kids in the first group
cheated the most and the kids in the second group were just as likely to not cheat as those
in the third group even though their presence was supernatural rather than physical.
Bering derived from this study that if someone believes a supernatural presence is
watching them, their behavior will be affected regardless if the presence is God, karma, a
ghost, etc. Believing in the supernatural is so common that our minds turn to it even if a
person is an atheist because we have evolved to work this way. Atheists often experience
these thoughts but reject them. Dominic Johnson is another researcher in this field and says
it’s important to appreciate how “improbable our modern lives are”. Our society has people
that are incredibly nice to strangers daily like curing others, repairing people’s belongings,
etc. They swap food for money and vice versa and they cooperate with one another which
creates coordination. There is an obvious individual benefit from cheating the system like
paying taxes, but if there were a large amount of cheats it would compromise the
cooperation. If people didn’t pay for the subway, there would be no subway.
If we break the rules we deal with the law, but thousands of years ago if someone
did something wrong another person would have to punish them. It was equally dangerous
to punish the person because that person has a memory and will lead to consequences.
However, if the person is just enforcing God’s law, the punisher isn’t at fault—the
supernatural being is omnipresent. If God is everywhere, people will do the right thing
even if there’s no one there. There are always opposing views though, and some academics
disagree with this theory. Some believe that religious beliefs have been more harmful than
helpful because those who are strongly religious tend to go to war. Some believe
cooperation doesn’t come from God and it evolved from the need to care for our families
and other and show potential mates our strengths.
An Evolutionary Perspective on Morality by S.F. Brosnan
Outline:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Introduction
Smith, Darwin, and moral emotions
Moral emotions and moral behaviors in non-humans
a. Justice, equity, and equality
b. Equity and equality in non-humans
c. The context of inequity
d. The evolution of the sense of justice
i. Four stages of inequity response
Conclusion
Summary:
Historically, it was thought that only human beings have higher-level processes that
demonstrate morality. However, with recent research, and with a closer look at individual
moral behaviors, it is determined that related moral behaviors – such as conflict resolution,
reciprocity, empathy, sympathy, and community concern – is present in non-human species
as well, especially in primates. This sort of discovery is especially important because it can
help researchers discover how our own moral behaviors might have evolved. This research
addresses the evolution of one moral behavior, the sense of justice, from a biological
perspective, using empirical data on how non-humans respond to inequitable and unequal
outcomes (Brosnan, 2010). It also aims at showing how studying non-human species can
tremendously help studying humans.
Charles Darwin strongly believed that humans and animals shared an evolutionary
history. He argued that morality is innate and not something created by humankind. In
non-human species, this morality and sympathy for one another can also be seen. This
behavior requires a fairly advanced intellectual ability as well as developed social instincts,
both which can be found in a wide variety of animal species. Darwin proved how this
morality is innate through his study with facial expressions and how they are universally
recognized by both humans and non-human species.
Adam Smith is a known economist who, in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
supports the idea of evolutionary continuity and how animal species share many of the
same positive and negative traits as humans. Smith thought that human instincts were in
place to promote survival and reproduction and that these instincts were experienced as
emotions serving unconscious ends, instead of rational thought. Evolutionary continuity
was endorsed by both Smith and Darwin, but it has more or less disappeared in the last
century.
Moral emotions are considered to be “emotions that focus on others and result in an
outcome which helps others or society” (Brosnan, 2010). These emotions uphold social
norms and conventions. They include both positive and negative emotions, such as pride
and guilt or prosocial and antisocial emotions.
Two important factors of morality and justice are equality and equity. Equality
“assumes identical outcomes, but fails to account for effort and deservedness” (Brosnan,
2010). Equity fills this void. Equity has two parts: reactions to one’s own outcomes, and
one’s reaction to others’ outcomes. Our reaction to others’ outcomes is the most common
and, according to researchers, more easily explained by evolution – individuals who notice
that they receive less than another and change their behavior in ways that rectifies the
inequity directly improve their outcomes, so this behavior is under strong positive
selection. However, this really only focuses on your own outcomes. To be considered a
moral behavior, we must also notice when others’ outcomes are less well or
disadvantageous. But how can we explain this behavior evolutionarily? Well, first,
advantageous inequity responses also benefit the self as a commitment device to show the
other person our own merit as a social partner. Second, responding to rectify inequity
increases own our reputation, which provides benefits in the future. Even though we’re
directly helping others, it benefits us in the long run, which is why it was selected for in
evolution.
Many non-human species – like chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys, dogs, and rabbits –
show responses that indicate frustration or distress when they are treated less well than a
social partner. However, these behaviors only appear when the animal has “direct
competition” (Brosnan, 2010). In other words, when the expectation to get something is
not met, the animal will be frustrated. This frustration does not appear if the animal is on
its own because it has nothing to compare itself to or derive expectations from. In a study
where capuchin monkeys had to work together to pull in a heavy tray which contained food
for each of them, the subjects were willing to work for lower value rewards as long as they
both got about half of the higher value rewards across all trials. This shows how animals
will cooperate with one another as long as their rewards are equally divided. When only
one animal would receive the reward, the cooperation decreased tremendously. In another
study, where chimps were given two options to bring food to itself only or an option to
bring food to itself and a partner, the chimp’s choices were not significantly significant.
There are a few hypothesis that predict this behavior:
1) Food leads to the perception of a zero-sum game rather than an opportunity to
share. Therefore, the chimp’s goal is to avoid giving food to the competitor.
2) Explicit requests are required to generate prosocial behavior in chimps.
Humans respond more strongly to inequity that is caused by another human directly
than to inequity resulting from chance. Non-human species “respond very differently to
inequity which results from following a task than to that which is due to free handouts”
(Brosnan, 2010). In other words, primates will respond to inequity when the reward is
payment, rather than a gift. No primates show response to inequity without a task. Why is
this the case? One possible reason is that subjects only respond to inequity in tasks that
required effort.
In non-human species, such as primates, there is a behavior responses to inequity,
which supports the hypothesis that behavior relevant to at least one moral behavior, the
sense of justice, does exist in species other than humans (Brosnan, 2010). How did these
inequity responses evolve? Researchers predict four steps:
1) Notice inequity – this may have been a byproduct of another behavior to forced
individuals to pay attention to conspecifics
2) Respond negatively to inequity – cease interaction with inequity-givers and make
new relationships with beneficial people (which would enhance the individual’s
fitness)
3) Understand that they have received less and actively take steps to rectify inequity –
in humans, punish individuals who aren’t fair. In animals, they cease to cooperate
4) Responding with advantageous inequity – acting against their own short-term self
interest, giving up rewards to benefit partners (may have a long-term benefit)
In conclusion, humans’ irrational behaviors are not unique. They were probably present
in our evolutionary past and at some point, they were beneficial to us. With the four steps
of the inequity response, and other similar research, we have a glimpse into better
understanding the evolution of our moral behaviors. In examining our moral behaviors, we
see a connection between our behaviors and the behaviors of non-human species.
Critical Review of An Evolutionary Perspective on Morality by S.F. Brosnan
This article raised some significant questions on the evolution of morality.
Specifically, are the observable moral traits in animals such as primates and social insects
today a result of convergent evolution (such as the eye) or a result of a beneficial trait
inherited by an ancestor of these species? This article seemed to support the convergent
evolution theory because of mixed results within and between many different studies.
When different species of primates are tested for moral traits (e.g. reaction to inequitable
outcomes), these primates do not all behave the same. Differences are also noted inside the
specific species; wild animals react differently to animals raised in captivity. This article
argued that if reaction to inequality was a homologous trait inherited from a distant
ancestor, the reactions that primates display should be at least comparable given
differences for their environments.
The article ultimately concluded that there must be a weak moral framework that
the species who inherit it build upon to their own needs. The article then split this
framework into 4 stages:
 The first stage is the ability to notice inequality.
 The second stage is to respond negatively to noticed inequality (many social
insects operate at this level as well as most non-human primates).
 The third stage is to understand that an individual has received less and to
take steps to fix the inequality. This would include punishing social partners
who do not share a payoff. This stage has been witnessed, in limited
experiments, in capuchins as well as bonobo chimpanzees
 The fourth stage is to respond negatively when an individual is advantaged
by an inequality and to fix this inequality. The fact that this stage has rarely
been witnessed in non-human species may be a sign that prosocial behaviors
such as a very strong sense of reciprocity were extremely important in
human evolution
The four stages above are presented as the stages of moral framework that species
have to build upon. According to the article, the reason humans respond negatively even
when advantaged by inequality is that prosocial behaviors like an abnormally strong sense
of reciprocity were very important during human evolution. This conclusion would make
sense as cooperative breeders such as humans and primates are known to exhibit higher
levels of prosocial behavior between non-kin.
Works Cited
Brosnan, S.F. (2010) An evolutionary perspective on morality. Journal of Economic Behavior
& Organization, 77(1), 23-30.
Cooperation and Fairness: Moral Behavior in Monkeys (Video file). Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePgC91kcmN0
Spiegel, A. (2010). Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196