Barrett, H.C., Bolyanatz, A., Crittenden, A.N. et al. (12 more authors) (2016) Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (17). pp. 4688-4693.
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 The Author(s). Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. |
Keywords: | cognition; culture; human universals; intentions; morality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL (AHRC) 119413 HANG SENG BANK (HONG KONG) NONE |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 Aug 2016 14:12 |
Last Modified: | 23 May 2017 09:13 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1522070113 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | National Academy of Sciences |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1073/pnas.1522070113 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:101219 |