Moral Tribes
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Moral Tribes Alexander Mackiel and Jeremy Weintraub Department of Psychology, State University of New York, New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA
Synonyms Altruism; Cooperation; Tribalism
Definition Moral tribes refers to a specifically value-based dimension of tribalism, which is a set of behaviors and cognitive mechanisms that lead individuals to favor themselves and the groups to which they identify. Groups that identify with a set of interests and values distinct from another set of interests and values constitute differing moral tribes.
Introduction Evolution by Darwinian natural selection appears to be an extremely selfish process by which individuals compete against other individuals in a contest for survival and reproduction. However, Hamilton (1964) showed, and Dawkins (1976) articulated, that “selfish genes” can lead to altruistic and cooperative behaviors at the level of individuals, especially if those individuals are
kin and therefore share genes with each other. When individuals are not kin, it can still ultimately favor the helper to aid strangers if it is done under the assumption that the stranger will repay the favor, or reciprocate (Trivers 1971). Cooperating in groups was likely favored by evolution for a variety of reasons including having greater access to resources, as well as protection from and ability to fight against threats (Greene 2013; Tooby and Cosmides 2010). From an evolutionary point of view, kin selection paired with processes related to and as a result of reciprocal altruism explains a large amount of ingroup activity, including social exchange, helping behavior, and parental care. These features of human social life likely form a large part of the human moral architecture (Curry 2016). The notion that ingroup activity forms a large part of human life is also supported by the fact that humans evolved in small-scale conditions in which they interacted with a relatively small number of individuals many of whom were kin and close acquaintances (Dunbar 1992). While reciprocal altruism is one biological mechanism that explains altruism and cooperative behaviors with people besides our kin, ingroup favoritism and cooperation between kin often limits the scope of altruism and cooperation. Greene (2013) argues that while morality evolved for cooperation, it primarily favors cooperation within groups and not necessarily between groups. In other words, people’s morality is geared towards favoring themselves first along
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Shackelford, V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2915-1
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with loved ones and personal acquaintances. However, it becomes a stretch to expand that sphere of morality to strangers. Greene (2013) views this conundrum of human social life as analogous to the Tragedy of the Commons, where the pursuit of individual self-interest leads to a result that is collectively worse off for everyone involved. He refers to this dilemma as the Tragedy of Commonsen
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