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A Natural History of Human Morality
Abstract
Michael Tomasello offers the most detailed account to date of the evolution of human moral psychology. Based on experimental data comparing great apes and human children, he reconstructs two key evolutionary steps whereby early humans gradually became an ultra-cooperative and, eventually, a moral species capable of acting as a plural agent “we”.
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“This general idea has been elaborated particularly clearly by Tomasello (2016), who presented an explanation for the evolution of morality that included a proposal for the reduction of aggressiveness in H. sapiens. Tomasello called it the “interdependence hypothesis.””
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“Selection favored a low propensity for male aggression because offspring were thereby better protected from the father’s potential violence.”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“The result was a new kind of interdependence, such that individuals who were collaborative and less selfish were favored: cooperators fed better, for instance, than those who were not chosen as foraging partners.”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“First, due to this ecological change, mid-Pleistocene Homo were forced to collaborate in the food quest, rather than foraging individually as they had until then.”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“Effective cooperation depended on a reduction in selfishness and aggressiveness, and on a concomitant increase in sympathy and shared intentionality.”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“According to the interdependence hypothesis the initial influence on the road to a human style of morality occurred around 400,000 years ago when there was a “disappearance of individually obtainable foods” (Tomasello, 2016: 136).”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
In the citing paper
“The ability to conduct planned executions means that the killers must share explicit intentions with each other, a capacity that is unique to humans (Tomasello, 2016).”
From Hypotheses for the Evolution of Reduced Reactive Aggression in the Context of Human Self-Domestication (2019) · cites this paper as Tomasello, 2016
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Metadata
- Authors
- Tomasello, M.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Tomasello, Michael
- ORCID
- Tomasello, Michael
- Venue
- Harvard University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Published
- 2016-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W791834320
- Cited by
- 924
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 71 · 2025: 78 · 2024: 95 · 2023: 94 · 2022: 117 · 2021: 151 · 2020: 88 · 2019: 89 · 2018: 65 · 2017: 63 · 2016: 11
- FWCI
- 39.50
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Harvard University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Keywords
- human morality, moral psychology, evolution of morality, great apes, children, cooperation, social cognition, comparative psychology
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