‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!’
This chilling chant comes from a dramatic scene in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, when English schoolboys, marooned on a desert island, work themselves into a blood-lust frenzy before they descend on the innocent boy Simon, beating him to death with sticks.1 It is a tale about the inherent evil of mankind because, far away from the confines of civilization, Golding thought children would descend into savagery. He wrote the book based on what he thought was the true nature of humans after witnessing the atrocities of World War II. Prior to the war, Golding believed that man was inherently good but afterwards would later lament,
I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.2
The true nature of man is a question that has preoccupied thinkers for centuries. Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, believed that children were born selfish and needed to be taught how to become useful members of society. In the West, this view of the lawless child prevailed up until the last 100 years and it was thought that the best way to parent was through a regime of strict discipline, since only harsh schooling would instruct children how to behave in society. Children, according to this view, lacked a moral compass and, left to their own devices, would run amok and descend into an animalistic battle for survival as captured in Golding’s nightmarish vision.
In contrast, the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought the inherent disposition of man was good. In his natural state, man was a ‘noble savage’ and it was society that corrupted the individual – a moral perspective that would later underpin the justification for the French Revolution. If everyone had equal opportunities, societies would not become corrupted and despotic.
During the twentieth century there was a shift towards Rousseau’s vision, with less cruelty towards children, but even today many adults continue to believe that children require punishment in order to learn right from wrong. This view is especially common among those who tend to be more right-wing in their political outlooks – a world view fuelled by media stories of moral decline as our streets descend into a jungle, occupied by gangs of youths who have no sense of morality.3 However, the crime statistics suggest that life is improving as we move to a more humane society, despite the adoption of less punitive attitudes towards children.4 Even though we use less corporal punishment, and it is now outlawed in many countries, there is no evidence that children are becoming more lawless.
Hobbes’s and Rousseau’s polar positions are reminiscent of the nature and nurture division discussed earlier in the book when we talked about the biology of personality – are people born evil or do they become that way by experience? In this chapter, we will reach the same general conclusion in our discussion of morality – biology and experience always work together but in ways that are often surprising and counter-intuitive. Violence and aggression are not covered, even though these are indeed some of the most important aspects of our domestication. The reason is that experimental research on human aggression is sparse and, for obvious ethical concerns, there is even less work on children. Rather, here the focus is on moral conventions that vary culturally such as sharing, helping, honesty and generally how to behave in good company. To what extent are these learned and/or motivated by biological drives to become accepted by others?
The moral instinct
Every member of a society needs to know right from wrong. In general, our moral principles are based on the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Morals govern how we behave and all members are expected to abide by the rules if they wish to remain within the group and enjoy the same rights and opportunities as others. Some of these rules are enshrined in legal systems whereby transgressions are dealt with by punishment, whereas others are codes of conduct about how to behave in polite society. Being cruel to someone may not be illegal if it does not breach the law, but it is none the less morally wrong. Whether through law or social norms, adhering to the morals of the societies we live in is critical to becoming domesticated. But where do these rules come from and how do children learn them?
There are some universal morals, such as not killing members of your own family or harming the innocent. However, there remains considerable cultural variation about what is right or wrong for other practices that cover everything seemingly trivial, such as what to wear or eat, to what consenting adults can do behind closed doors. This variation is most obvious when there is a cultural clash between groups who differ in their moral judgements, most often reflecting religious views. For example, there are varying Islamic practices for maintaining the modesty of women that range from covering just the hair with a scarf to the full body cover of the burqa. This is part of the religious moral code of Islam, though even so, there is considerable variation about how it should be interpreted and implemented. In 2011 France outlawed the burqa in public on the grounds that it was an infringement of civil liberties, though ironically many Muslim women regarded the ban as a form of religious persecution.5
Other aspects of modern Western societies, such as gay marriage, legalized prostitution, pornography and drug use, are considered morally depraved by various religious and conservative groups. Not only do moral values differ but they also change over time. Up until 1967, when the law was finally changed, homosexuality was illegal in England. Since then, there have been progressive amendments, despite intense objection from many groups, to remove discrimination by providing equal rights.
These examples of cultural variation over time and between different groups show that morals are not cast in stone but rather reflect the histories and nuances of various groups, who maintain their identity by enforcing moral values. This might suggest that all morality is learned in the Hobbesian tradition. However, in the same way that infants are wired to acquire a language depending on where they are raised, they also seem pre-configured to adopt the morality espoused by the social groups they enter.6
This preparation for morality is reflected in the way young infants interpret others’ behaviours. Even before they are capable of understanding any instruction from an adult, babies can tell the difference between right and wrong. As we have seen, babies as young as twelve months interpret moving geometric shapes as having goals and intentions because they looked longer when the objects changed their behaviour from helping to hindering.7 Arguably they were simply telling the difference between the good and the bad guys. In an extension of this original discovery, infant psychologist Kiley Hamlin at the University of British Columbia wanted to know whether telling the difference translated into actual preferences. After watching a sequence of the helper and hinderer puppets, Hamlin offered babies the opportunity to play with either puppet. Four out of five twelve-month-old infants chose the puppet that had been seen to be helpful.8 In another scenario, a puppet dropped its ball, which rolled over to one of two other puppets. One puppet returned the ball to its owner, whereas the other puppet ran off with it. Again, when offered the choice, infants preferred to play with the helpful puppet. Babies are not simply demonstrating that they can tell the difference between behaviours in these puppet shows; they are expressing a preference to be with the one that helps.