Prospective research

ORCID: 0000-0002-6523-5471

The Role of Metaethical Attitudes in the Evolution of Human Cooperation

Many evolutionary approaches see morality as an adaptation for cooperation.^1–7 Philosophers and psychologists often assume that people are metaethical objectivists who believe that moral truths are independent of subjective opinion.^8–11 This assumption seems supported by psychological evidence^12,13 and is a widely held view among philosophers.^14,15 However, the impact of metaethical attitudes on cooperation is poorly understood, rendering evolutionary explanations incomplete. Normative disagreement is known to erode cooperation by generating coordination failures and distrust.^16–18 This problem escalates when disagreements are seen as objective disputes since empirical evidence suggests that objectivist attitudes drive intolerance and in-group preferences,^19–22 suggesting that metaethical objectivism might impair cooperation despite evolutionary theory indicating that morality evolved as an adaptation for cooperation.

Models generally do not directly address the evolution of folk metaethical attitudes but assume people are metaethical objectivists. A notable exception is Stanford’s evolutionary account of norm externalization.²³ This account proposes that folk moral objectivism increases individual fitness by protecting human cooperation from exploitation. However, this model has been criticized for neglecting evidence indicating that people do not objectify moral demands²⁴ and underestimating the negative effects of shunning and normative disagreement in small-scale societies.²⁵

The assumption that people are folk moral objectivists has important philosophical implications. A well-known philosophical argument, known as the ’evolutionary debunking argument of morality,’ suggests that evolution debunks morality because objective moral facts do not play an explanatory role in its evolution.^5,26,27 This argument maintains that our moral beliefs are shaped by evolutionary pressures aimed at enhancing survival and reproduction, rather than reflecting objective moral truths. In contrast, some philosophers argue that if morality is an adaptation for cooperation, evolution could partially vindicate the idea that at least some moral facts are objective facts about cooperation.⁴ They assert that moral beliefs facilitating cooperation might reflect genuine moral truths about cooperative behavior, thereby challenging the evolutionary debunking argument. However, the assumption of folk moral objectivism is premature. Gaps remain in the empirical literature. First, moral objectivism has been inferred mostly from first-order moral responses¹² rather than metaethical attitudes.²⁸ Second, results from studies on folk metaethics, including my own, reveal an effect of relativism of distance, where people’s confidence in moral objectivism decreases as sociocultural distance increases, leaning them towards non-objectivist relativist attitudes.^29,30 A comprehensive review of the empirical evidence supporting this view can be found in Pölzler and Wright.^31–33 Third, conclusions are predominantly drawn from Western samples, raising concerns about cross-cultural validity.^34,35 Fourth, while the influence of moral psychology and normative disagreement on cooperation has been studied,³⁶ the impact of relativism of distance on cooperation and its comparison with similar attitudes in other domains remain unexplored, making it difficult to infer whether the effect of relativism of distance is distinctive of the moral domain and whether it is an adaptation for cooperation.

Check the experimental procedure and some piloting results here.

References

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