articleCurrent AnthropologyFeb 2, 2019Closed access

Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies

OSOliver Scott CurryDMDaniel MullinsHWHarvey Whitehouse
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Abstract

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…

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Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Morality
  • Social psychology
  • Sociology
  • Possession (linguistics)
  • Ethnography
  • Epistemology
  • Moral development
  • Psychology
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