The evolution of a sense of justice (original) (raw)
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The Emerging Social Neuroscience of Justice Motivation
Humans from a very early age are deeply sensitive to issues of justice and fairness, both in their own lives and in the lives of others. Most people are highly motivated to pursue justice and condemn injustice. Where does this concern for justice come from? Here we integrate findings in evolution, development, psychology , behavioral economics, and social neuroscience to highlight multiple potential drivers of justice motivation. We argue that justice motivation arises from complementary rapid heuristics and deliberation, each utilizing distinct and interacting neural circuitry. This framework is useful for explaining observed symmetries and asymmetries in responses to experiencing or observing injustice and may help to explain why individuals vary in their responses to injustice.
Justice as a Natural Phenomenon
Think, 2009
This paper summarizes a theory of fairness that replaces the metaphysical foundations of the egalitarian theory of John Rawls and the utilitarian theory of John Harsanyi with evolutionary arguments. As such, it represents an attempt to realize John Mackie's call for a theory based on the data provided by anthroplogists and the propositions proved by game theorists. The basic claim is that fairness norms evolved as a device for selecting one of the infinity of efficient equilibria of the repeated game of life played by our prehuman ancestors.
The Origins and Development of Concepts of Justice
Journal of Social Issues, 1975
The origins and development of concepts of justice are examined from three theoretical points of view—learning theory, psychoanalysis, and cognitive developmental theory. Cognitive developmental theory and research, particularly the work of Piaget and Kohlberg, has contributed most to our understanding of children's ideas of justice and how these change and mature. Empirical data supporting the hypothesis that concepts of justice develop through a fixed and invariant sequence of stages is reviewed together with hypotheses and studies related to the process of transition from one stage to the next. Knowledge about the course of development needs to be supplemented, through systematic research, with information about aspects of the socialization process as antecedents of mature concepts of justice and of behavior consistent with these concepts.
Social dilemmas, institutions, and the evolution of cooperation
Recent research claims that criminal justice institutions have universal features that are rooted in psychological mechanisms shaped by human evolution. In this chapter, we review three core questions touching on this perspective: We examine the notion that our evolved psychology has led to cross-culturally shared intuitions about what constitutes a crime; we assess the extent to which arguments based on behavioral game theory and evolutionary psychology can account for the emergence of centralized punishment in complex societies; and examine procedural fairness as a pivotal normative element of criminal justice across the world. We show substantial cross-cultural variability in what is considered a crime, and propose a theoretical perspective that recognizes change in the normative bases of cooperative behavior. Also, we argue that seeing criminal justice primarily as a system that imposes costs on freeriders may be incomplete. In particular, we highlight fair procedure and legitimacy as core characteristics that distinguish institutionally anchored justice from mere punishment. 1 Introduction Wherever states emerged over the past 4,000 years, institutions developed that we easily recognize as 'criminal justice': arrangements to deal with wrongs and deliver punishment. Examples include Ancient China,
The evolution of moral intuitions and their feeling of rightness
Despite the wide use of the notion of moral intuition, its psychological features remain a matter of debate and it is unclear why humans evolved the capacity to experience it. We first survey standard accounts of moral intuition, pointing out their interesting and problematic aspects. Our proposal is a novel in-depth analysis of moral intuitions which captures their phenomenological, mechanistic and evolutionary features. Moral intuitions are composed of two elements: an evaluative mental state and a feeling of rightness (FOR). We illustrate the phenomenology of the FOR with examples of non-moral and moral cases and provide a biological and mechanistic account: the emergence of human reasoning capacities created a need for the co-evolution of a psychological system producing the feeling of rightness (the FORs). This system is triggered when we experience conflicting evaluations. The FORs renders evaluations resulting from rational deliberation less compelling than the evaluations produced by simple evolved systems. It thus facilitates optimal decision-making, preventing excessive interference by rational deliberation. Our account sheds light on why moral intuitions are so frequently experienced and why they are so compelling and resistant to argument. In addition, the account fuels interesting speculations about common metaethical intuitions.
An evolutionary account of reactions to a wrong
In this work, we propose an evolutionary account of reactions to a wrong as an integrated set. Unlike other theories, we are not interested in revenge, punishment or sanction per se, but in their coexistence. We posit that this variety of reactions is needed in order to achieve different goals, but it also implies an increase in cognitive costs that requires to be explained from an evolutionary perspective. Moving from the identification of the psychological traits that uniquely define each reaction, two concurrent hypotheses are suggested and discussed: either the richness of human social life requests a variety of reactions, or the benefits of single reactions at the psychological level allowed these reactions to be maintained in the social life.
Why do people care about justice? How do people reason about what is fair or unfair? To answer these questions, justice researchers have developed theories of justice reasoning based on their assumptions about people's needs, desires, and motivations. For example, theories of social exchange assume people are rationally self-interested and will evaluate fairness through the lens of maximizing rewards. Alternatively, theories of procedural fairness assume people fundamentally need to belong to groups and will focus on the fairness of procedures as an indication of their worth to the group. Moral theories of justice reasoning assume people have fundamental beliefs about right and wrong and that people evaluate fairness in accordance with these beliefs. This chapter reviews these three theoretical perspectives and integrates them into a contingency theory of justice. The contingency theory of justice posits that how people define fairness depends on the current perspective of the perceiver (material, social, or moral perspective). Specifically, we propose that the perspective and motivations of the perceiver impact the factors people use to decide whether something is fair or unfair. The contingency theory of justice can account for the complexity and flexibility of people's justice reasoning, and how justice judgments vary both between and within persons over time. Additionally, the theory suggests that an important area of future research inquiry is exploring how people cope with differences in their fairness judgments, and how they resolve conflicts and arrive at consensus that everyone can agree is fair.
The Evolution of Retribution: Intuitions Undermined
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2017
Recent empirical work suggests that emotions are responsible for deontological anti-consequentialist intuitions. For instance, anger places value on actions of revenge and retribution, value not derived from the consequences of these actions. As a result, it contributes to the development of retributive intuitions. I argue that if anger evolved to produce these retributive intuitions because of their biological consequences, then these intuitions are not a good indicator that punishment has value apart from its consequences. This severs the evidential connection between retributive intuitions and the retributive value of punishment. This argument may generalize to other deontological intuitions and theories.