Our instincts don't always serve us well. Moral psychologist Joshua Greene tells Tiffany O'Callaghan why, in the modern world, we need to figure out when to put our sense of right and wrong in manual mode
You say morality is more than it evolved to be. What do you mean?
Morality is essentially a suite of psychological mechanisms that enable us to cooperate. But, biologically at least, we only evolved to cooperate in a tribal way. Individuals who were more moral – more cooperative with those around them – could outcompete others who were not. However, we have the capacity to take a step back from this and ask what a more global morality would look like. Why are the lives of people on the other side of the world worth any less than those in my immediate community? Going through that reasoning process can allow our moral thinking to do ...
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