The integrative framework for the behavioural sciences has already been discovered, and it is the adaptationist approach

The adaptationist framework is necessary and sufficient for unifying the social and natural sciences. Gintis’s “beliefs, preferences, and constraints” (BPC) model compares unfavorably to this framework because it lacks criteria for determining special design, incorrectly assumes that standard evolutionary theory predicts individual rationality maximisation, does not adequately recognize the impact of psychological mechanisms on culture, and is mute on the behavioural implications of intragenomic conflict

Religious pro-sociality? Experimental evidence from a sample of 766 Spaniards

This study explores the relationship between several personal religion-related variables and social behaviour, using three paradigmatic economic games: the dictator (DG), ultimatum (UG), and trust (TG) games. A large carefully designed sample of the urban adult population in Granada (Spain) is employed (N = 766). From participants' decisions in these games we obtain measures of altruism, bargaining behaviour and sense of fairness/equality, trust, and positive reciprocity. Three dimensions of religiosity are examined: (i) religious denomination; (ii) intensity of religiosity, measured by active participation at church services; and (iii) conversion out into a different denomination than the one raised in. The major results are: (i) individuals with “no religion” made decisions closer to rational selfish behaviour in the DG and the UG compared to those who affiliate with a “standard” religious denomination; (ii) among Catholics, intensity of religiosity is the key variable that affects social behaviour insofar as religiously-active individuals are generally more pro-social than non-active ones; and (iii) the religion raised in seems to have no effect on pro-sociality, beyond the effect of the current measures of religiosity. Importantly, behaviour in the TG is not predicted by any of the religion-related variables we analyse. While the results partially support the notion of religious pro-sociality, on the other hand, they also highlight the importance of closely examining the multidimensional nature of both religiosity and pro-social behaviour

Differences in the semantics of prosocial words: an exploration of compassion and kindness

The study of prosocial behaviour has accelerated greatly in the last 20 years. Researchers are exploring different domains of prosocial behaviour such as compassion, kindness, caring, cooperation, empathy, sympathy, love, altruism and morality. While these constructs can overlap, and are sometimes used interchangeably, they also have distinctive features that require careful elucidation. This paper discusses some of the controversies and complexities of describing different (prosocial) mental states, followed by a study investigating the differences between two related prosocial concepts: compassion and kindness. For the study, a scenario-based questionnaire was developed to assess the degree to which a student (N = 222) and a community (N = 112) sample judged scenarios in terms of compassion or kindness. Subsequently, participants rated emotions (e.g. sadness, anxiety, anger, disgust, joy) associated with each scenario. Both groups clearly distinguished kindness from compassion in the scenarios on the basis of suffering. In addition, participants rated compassion-based scenarios as significantly higher on sadness, anger, anxiety and disgust, whereas kindness-based scenarios had higher levels of joy. As a follow-up, a further sample (29 male, 63 female) also rated compassionate scenarios as involving significantly more suffering compared to the kindness scenarios. Although overlapping concepts, compassion and kindness are clearly understood as different processes with different foci, competencies and emotion textures. This has implications for research in prosocial behaviour, and the cultivation of kindness and compassion for psychotherapy and in general.N/

Strong, bold, and kind : Self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas

Financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), from Formas through the program Human Cooperation to Manage Natural Resources (COMMONS), and the Ideenfonds of the University of Munich is gratefully acknowledged.We develop a model that relates self-control to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas, and we test the model in a laboratory public goods experiment. As predicted, we find a robust association between stronger self-control and higher levels of cooperation, and the association is at its strongest when the decision maker’s risk aversion is low and the cooperation levels of others high. We interpret the pattern as evidence for the notion that individuals may experience an impulse to act in self-interest—and that cooperative behavior benefits from self-control. Free-riders differ from other contributor types only in their tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the first place.PostprintPeer reviewe

Activation of Human Monocytes by Live Borrelia burgdorferi Generates TLR2-Dependent and -Independent Responses Which Include Induction of IFN-β

It is widely believed that innate immune responses to Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) are primarily triggered by the spirochete's outer membrane lipoproteins signaling through cell surface TLR1/2. We recently challenged this notion by demonstrating that phagocytosis of live Bb by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) elicited greater production of proinflammatory cytokines than did equivalent bacterial lysates. Using whole genome microarrays, we show herein that, compared to lysates, live spirochetes elicited a more intense and much broader transcriptional response involving genes associated with diverse cellular processes; among these were IFN-β and a number of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs), which are not known to result from TLR2 signaling. Using isolated monocytes, we demonstrated that cell activation signals elicited by live Bb result from cell surface interactions and uptake and degradation of organisms within phagosomes. As with PBCMs, live Bb induced markedly greater transcription and secretion of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-10 and IL-1β in monocytes than did lysates. Secreted IL-18, which, like IL-1β, also requires cleavage by activated caspase-1, was generated only in response to live Bb. Pro-inflammatory cytokine production by TLR2-deficient murine macrophages was only moderately diminished in response to live Bb but was drastically impaired against lysates; TLR2 deficiency had no significant effect on uptake and degradation of spirochetes. As with PBMCs, live Bb was a much more potent inducer of IFN-β and ISGs in isolated monocytes than were lysates or a synthetic TLR2 agonist. Collectively, our results indicate that the enhanced innate immune responses of monocytes following phagocytosis of live Bb have both TLR2-dependent and -independent components and that the latter induce transcription of type I IFNs and ISGs

Morality as cooperation: A problem-centred approach

Your country is under attack and you are preparing to join the fight to defend it. Just then, your mother calls and tells you she is seriously ill and needs your help. Do you take care of your mother, or do you abandon her to fi ght for your country? You are a member of a sports team that always loses to a rival team. You have an opportunity to join that rival team. Do you take it? You borrow £10 from a wealthy friend. The friend forgets all about it. Do you give him the £10 back? You and another friend are walking along the street when you spot a £20 note on the ground. You bend down and pick it up. Do you offer to share it with your friend? In most people, these scenarios evoke a range of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and intuitions about what to do, what is the right thing to do, what one ought to do—what is the moralthing to do. What are these moral thoughts and feelings, where do they come from, how do they work, and what are they for? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia, and for many people the nature of morality is so baffling that they assume it must have a supernatural origin. The good news is that we now have a scientific answer to these questions. Previous approaches have noticed that morality has something to do with cooperation (see Table 1). But now it is possible to use the mathematical theory of cooperation—the theory of nonzero-sum games—to transform this commonplace into a precise and comprehensive theory, capable of making specific testable predictions about the nature of morality. In this chapter, I use game theory to identify the fundamental problems of human social life, and show how—in principle and in practice—they are solved. I argue hat it is the solutions to these problems that philosophers and others have called ‘morality’. Thus, morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. I show how this theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ incorporates the best elements of previous theories, and moves beyond them to create a principled taxonomy of moral values of unprecedented depth and breadth. I derive from this theory testable predictions about the structure and content of moral thought and outline how they differ from those of rival theories. And I conclude that, because the debate between these theories can be resolved using standard scientifi c method, the study of morality has at last become a branch of science. </p

Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies

What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of “morality-as-cooperation” argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. Morality-as-cooperation draws on the theory of non-zero-sum games to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, and it predicts that specific forms of cooperative behavior—including helping kin, helping your group, reciprocating, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing disputed resources, and respecting prior possession—will be considered morally good wherever they arise, in all cultures. To test these predictions, we investigate the moral valence of these seven cooperative behaviors in the ethnographic records of 60 societies. We find that the moral valence of these behaviors is uniformly positive, and the majority of these cooperative morals are observed in the majority of cultures, with equal frequency across all regions of the world. We conclude that these seven cooperative behaviors are plausible candidates for universal moral rules, and that morality-as-cooperation could provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked

Morality as cooperation: A problem-centred approach

Your country is under attack and you are preparing to join the fight to defend it. Just then, your mother calls and tells you she is seriously ill and needs your help. Do you take care of your mother, or do you abandon her to fi ght for your country? You are a member of a sports team that always loses to a rival team. You have an opportunity to join that rival team. Do you take it? You borrow £10 from a wealthy friend. The friend forgets all about it. Do you give him the £10 back? You and another friend are walking along the street when you spot a £20 note on the ground. You bend down and pick it up. Do you offer to share it with your friend? In most people, these scenarios evoke a range of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and intuitions about what to do, what is the right thing to do, what one ought to do—what is the moralthing to do. What are these moral thoughts and feelings, where do they come from, how do they work, and what are they for? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia, and for many people the nature of morality is so baffling that they assume it must have a supernatural origin. The good news is that we now have a scientific answer to these questions. Previous approaches have noticed that morality has something to do with cooperation (see Table 1). But now it is possible to use the mathematical theory of cooperation—the theory of nonzero-sum games—to transform this commonplace into a precise and comprehensive theory, capable of making specific testable predictions about the nature of morality. In this chapter, I use game theory to identify the fundamental problems of human social life, and show how—in principle and in practice—they are solved. I argue hat it is the solutions to these problems that philosophers and others have called ‘morality’. Thus, morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. I show how this theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ incorporates the best elements of previous theories, and moves beyond them to create a principled taxonomy of moral values of unprecedented depth and breadth. I derive from this theory testable predictions about the structure and content of moral thought and outline how they differ from those of rival theories. And I conclude that, because the debate between these theories can be resolved using standard scientifi c method, the study of morality has at last become a branch of science. </p

Mapping morality with a compass: testing the theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ with a new questionnaire

Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) is the theory that morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC uses game theory to identify distinct types of cooperation, and predicts that each will be considered morally relevant, and each will give rise to a distinct moral domain. Here we test MAC's predictions by developing a new self-report measure of morality, the Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q), and comparing its psychometric properties to those of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). Over four studies, the results support MAC's seven-factor model of morality, but not the MFQ's five-factor model. Thus MAC emerges as the best available compass with which to explore the moral landscape