moral instruction, we suggested that moral discourse itself is dependent on
evolved traits. In the framework of multi-modal evolutionary theory (see
Chapter 2), we can understand explicit moral codes as recipes for behavior.
Moral codes will be influenced by cultural evolution: they can be selected for
or against both on account of their effects on people’sfitness as well as their
other memetic qualities that are independent of their contribution tofitness.
The New Testament contains explicit moral instructions in many forms,
including Jesus’moral teaching in the gospels, Paul’s discussions of moral
topics, lists of recommended and prohibited behavior cited in his letters, the
household codes of the deutero-Pauline and catholic epistles, and other types
of instructions. Knowledge of the cognitive mechanisms discussed in this
chapter, including empathy, moral emotions, altruism, and extortion, can be
applied to the exegesis of many of these passages. In this section, I will suggest
another form of moral instruction, that is, the imitation of moral examples.
Cultural inheritance allows human societies to accumulate large bodies of
knowledge and an extensive behavioral repertoire over time. We are dependent
on cultural transmission to a substantial degree because it saves us the cost of
stumbling through life by trial and error. This advantage of culture, however,
comes at the price of inheriting incorrect information, as well. A side-effect of
our reliance on culture is that transmission is opaque with regard to the truth-
value of the content learned. We cannot try out every piece of wisdom or test
every behavior before adopting it, as it would mean practically a fallback on trial
and error. For example, we take it for granted that the food our parents give us is
not poison and continue eating similar food throughout our lives. Even if
modern education encourages students (at least in theory) to be critical thinkers,
we accept much information we learn at school or from textbooks on authority.
There is simply no way for each of us to measure the distance between Earth and
the Sun, or to derive the laws of psychics from scratch.
Is there a way to make sure we learn things that help us while minimizing
the amount of false beliefs and harmful habits we acquire? Humans solve this
problem by learning from a selected group of people with much more likeli-
hood than from others. We select models for cultural learning in four par-
ticular ways (Shennan, 2002; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Henrich, 2009). First,
we imitate the majority: what works for most people cannot be wrong. (Of
course, this means that many people can be wrong together and mistakes
can be fatal on large scale.) Second, we learn from members of the cultural
in-group (parents and other people like us), which results in the development
of divergent cultural traditions in the long run. Third, we imitate individuals
of high status (called theprestige bias), because some of that behavior might
help us achieve such status, too. Fourth, we pay close attention to costly or
hard-to-fake signals that prove the credibility of what people say (so-called
credibility-enhancing displays). To put it simply, people who practice what
they preach are more credible than people who do not.
Morality 183