Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T18:48:15.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The moral psychology of obligation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2019

Michael Tomasello Open the ORCID record for Michael Tomasello [Opens in a new window]
Michael Tomasello*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103Leipzig, Germany Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although psychologists have paid scant attention to the sense of obligation as a distinctly human motivation, moral philosophers have identified two of its key features: First, it has a peremptory, demanding force, with a kind of coercive quality, and second, it is often tied to agreement-like social interactions (e.g., promises) in which breaches prompt normative protest, on the one side, and apologies, excuses, justifications, and guilt on the other. Drawing on empirical research in comparative and developmental psychology, I provide here a psychological foundation for these unique features by showing that the human sense of obligation is intimately connected developmentally with the formation of a shared agent “we,” which not only directs collaborative efforts but also self-regulates them. Thus, children's sense of obligation is first evident inside, but not outside, of collaborative activities structured by joint agency with a partner, and it is later evident in attitudes toward in-group, but not out-group, members connected by collective agency. When you and I voluntarily place our fate in one another's hands in interdependent collaboration – scaled up to our lives together in an interdependent cultural group – this transforms the instrumental pressure that individuals feel when pursuing individual goals into the pressure that “we” put on me (who needs to preserve my cooperative identity in this “we”) to live up to our shared expectations: a we > me self-regulation. The human sense of obligation may therefore be seen as a kind of self-conscious motivation.

Keywords

cooperationfairnessmoralitymotivationnormativityobligationshared intentionality
Type
Target Article
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e56
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baumard, N., André, J. B. & Sperber, D. (2013) A mutualistic approach to morality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(1):59–122.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bratman, M. (1992) Shared co-operative activity. Philosophical Review 101(2):327–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bratman, M. E. (2014) Shared agency: A planning theory of acting together. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brosnan, S. F. & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003) Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature 425:297–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, L. & Markman, E. (2014) Preschoolers use pedagogical cues to guide radical reorganization of category knowledge. Cognition 130(1):116–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butler, L. P. and Tomasello, M. (2016) Two- and 3-year-olds integrate linguistic and pedagogical cues in guiding inductive generalization and exploration. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 145:64–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chalik, L. & Rhodes, M. (2015) The communication of naïve theories of the social world in parent–child conversation. Journal of Cognition and Development 16:719–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbit, J., McAuliffe, K., Callaghan, T. C., Blake, P. R. & Warneken, F. (2017) Children's collaboration induces fairness rather than generosity. Cognition 168:344–56. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.07.006.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2004) Social exchange: The evolutionary design of a neurocognitive system. In: The cognitive neurosciences III, ed. Gazzaniga, M. S., pp. 1295–1308. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13(4):148–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Darwall, S. (2006) The second-person standpoint: Morality, respect, and accountability. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Darwall, S. (2013a) “Bipolar obligation.” In: Morality, authority, and law: Essays in second-personal ethics I, ed. Darwall, S., pp. 20–39. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. (2013c) Morality, authority, and law: Essays in second-personal ethics I. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Waal, F. B. M. (2006b) Primates and philosophers: How morality evolved. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunham, Y. (2018) Mere membership. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22(9):780–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunham, Y., Baron, A. S. & Banaji, M. R. (2008) The development of implicit intergroup cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12(7):248–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Engelmann, J. M., Herrmann, E. & Tomasello, M. (2012) Five-year olds, but not chimpanzees, attempt to manage their reputations. PLOS ONE 7(10):e48433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelmann, J. M., Over, H., Herrmann, E. & Tomasello, M. (2013) Young children care more about their reputation with ingroup members and potential reciprocators. Developmental Science 16(6):952–58.Google ScholarPubMed
Engelmann, J. M., Rapp, D., Herrmann, E. & Tomasello, M. (2016) Young children (sometimes) do the right thing even when their peers do not. Cognitive Development 39:86–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelmann, J. M., Rapp, D., Herrmann, E. & Tomasello, M. (2018) Concern for group reputation increases prosociality in young children. Psychological Science 29:181–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelmann, J. M. & Tomasello, M. (2019) Children's sense of fairness as a sense of equal respect. Trends in the Cognitive Sciences 23(6):454–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E., Bernhard, H. & Rockenbach, B. (2008) Egalitarianism in young children. Nature 454(7208):1079–83. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilbert, M. (1990) Walking together: A paradigmatic social phenomenon. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 15(1):1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. (2014) Joint commitment: How we make the social world. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Göckeritz, S., Schmidt, M. F. H. & Tomasello, M. (2014) Young children's creation and transmission of social norms. Cognitive Development 30:81–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gräfenhain, M., Behne, T., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2009) Young children's understanding of joint commitments. Developmental Psychology 45(5):1430–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gräfenhain, M., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2013) Three-year-olds’ understanding of the consequences of joint commitments. PLOS ONE 8(9):e73039.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J. R., Hamann, K., Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2010) Chimpanzee helping in collaborative and noncollaborative contexts. Animal Behaviour 80(5):873–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grocke, P., Rossano, F. & Tomasello, M. (2015) Procedural justice in children: Preschoolers accept unequal resource distributions if the procedure provides equal opportunities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 140:197–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grocke, P., Rossano, F. & Tomasello, M. (2018) Young children are more willing to accept group decisions in which they have had a voice. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 166:67–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamann, K., Warneken, F., Greenberg, J. R. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Collaboration encourages equal sharing in children but not in chimpanzees. Nature 476(7360):328–31. doi:10.1038/nature10278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamann, K., Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2012) Children's developing commitments to joint goals. Child Development 83(1):137–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hardecker, S., Schmidt, M. & Tomasello, M. (2017) Children's developing understanding of the conventionality of rules. Cognition and Development 18(2):163–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haun, D. & Over, H. (2014) Like me: A homophily-based account of human culture. In: Cultural evolution, ed. Richerson, P. J. & Christiansen, M., pp. 75–85. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haun, D. B. M. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Conformity to peer pressure in preschool children. Child Development 82(6):1759–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hohfeld, W. N. (1923) Fundamental legal concepts as applied in judicial reasoning and legal essays. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
House, B. & Tomasello, M. (2018) Modeling social norms increasingly influences costly sharing in middle childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 171:84–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
House, B. R., Henrich, J., Brosnan, S. F. & Silk, J. B. (2012) The ontogeny of human prosociality: Behavioral experiments with children aged 3 to 8. Evolution and Human Behavior 33:291–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
House, B. R., Silk, J. B., Henrich, J., Barrett, H. C., Scelza, B. A., Boyette, A. H., Hewlett, B. S. & Laurence, S. (2013) Ontogeny of prosocial behavior across diverse societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:14586–591.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hume, D. (1751/1957) An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. Bobbs-Merrill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibbotson, P. (2014) Little dictators: A developmental meta-analysis of prosocial behavior. Current Anthropology 55(6):814–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, K., Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (2007) Chimpanzees are rational maximizers in an ultimatum game. Science 318(5847):107–09.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kachel, U., Svetlova, M. & Tomasello, M. (2018) Three-year-olds’ reactions to a partner's failure to perform her role in a joint commitment. Child Development 89:1691–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kachel, U., Svetlova, M. & Tomasello, M. (2019) Three- and 5-year-old children's understanding of how to dissolve a joint commitment. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 184:34–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kachel, U. & Tomasello, M. (2019) 3- and 5-year-old children's adherence to explicit and implicit joint commitments. Developmental Psychology 55(1):80–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanngeisser, P., Rossano, F. & Tomasello, M. (2019) Children, but not great apes, respect ownership. Developmental Science 23(1):e12842.Google Scholar
Keupp, S., Behne, T. & Rakoczy, H. (2013) Why do children over-imitate? Normativity is crucial. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116:392–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, C. (1996) The sources of normativity. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koymen, B., Schmidt, M., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. (2015) Teaching versus enforcing norms in preschoolers' peer interactions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 135:93–101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G. & Keil, F. C. (2007) The hidden structure of overimitation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(50):19751–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mamman, M., Koymen, B. & Tomasello, M. (2018) The reasons young children give to peers when explaining their judgments of moral and conventional rules. Developmental Psychology 54(2):254–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melis, A. P., Floedl, A. & Tomasello, M. (2015) Non-egalitarian allocations among preschool peers in a face-to-face bargaining task. PLOS ONE 10(3):e0120494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melis, A. P., Hare, B. & Tomasello, M. (2006) Engineering cooperation in chimpanzees: Tolerance constraints on cooperation. Animal Behaviour 72(2):275–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melis, A. P., Schneider, A.-C. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Chimpanzees share food in the same way after collaborative and individual food acquisition. Animal Behaviour 82(3):485–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misch, A., Over, H. & Carpenter, M. (2014, October) Stick with your group: Young children's attitudes about group loyalty. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 126:19–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.02.008.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nagel, T. (1970b) The possibility of altruism. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Noyes, A. & Dunham, Y. (2017) Mutual intentions as a causal framework for social groups. Cognition 162:133–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Over, H. (2018, April) The influence of group membership on young children's prosocial behaviour. Current Opinion in Psychology 20:17–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Over, H., Vaish, A. & Tomasello, M. (2016, Oct.–Dec.) Do young children accept responsibility for the negative actions of ingroup members? Cognitive Development 40:24–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.08.004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piaget, J. (1932) Moral judgment of the child. Free Press. (1965; original work published in 1932).Google Scholar
Rakoczy, H., Kaufman, M. & Lohse, K. (2016) Young children understand the normative force of standards of equal resource distribution. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 150:396–403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rakoczy, H., Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2008) The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games. Developmental Psychology 44(3):875–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rekers, Y., Haun, D. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Children, but not chimpanzees, prefer to forage collaboratively. Current Biology 21:1756–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, M. (2012) Naïve theories of social groups. Child Development 83(6):1900–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01835.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rhodes, M. (2014) Children's explanations as a window into their intuitive theories of the social world. Cognitive Science 38:1687–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rhodes, M. & Chalik, L. (2013) Social categories as markers of intrinsic interpersonal obligations. Psychological Science 24(6):999–1006. doi:10.1177/0956797612466267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rhodes, M. & Wellman, H. M. (2017, October) Moral learning as intuitive theory revision. Cognition 167:191–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scanlon, T. (1998) What we owe to each other. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schaefer, M., Haun, D. & Tomasello, M. (2015) Fair is not fair everywhere. Psychological Science 26:1252–1260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, M. F. H., Butler, L. P., Heinz, J. & Tomasello, M. (2016a) Young children see a single action and infer a social norm. Psychological Science 27:1360–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, M. F. H., Cabrera, I. & Tomasello, M. (2017) Children's developing metaethical judgments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 164:163–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, M. F. H., Rakoczy, H. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Young children attribute normativity to novel actions without pedagogy or normative language. Developmental Science 14:530–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, M. F. H., Rakoczy, H. & Tomasello, M. (2012) Young children enforce social norms selectively depending on the violator's group affiliation. Cognition 124(3):325–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, M. F. H., Rakoczy, H. & Tomasello, M. (2016b) Young children understand the role of agreement in establishing arbitrary norms – but unanimity is key. Child Development 87(2):612–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, M. F. H. & Tomasello, M. (2012) Young children enforce social norms. Current Directions in Psychological Science 21(4):232–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1995a) The construction of social reality. Free Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (2010) Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, A. & Olson, K. (2014) Fairness as partiality aversion: The development of procedural justice. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 119:40–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siposova, B., Tomasello, M. & Carpenter, M. (2018) Communicative eye contact signals a commitment to cooperate for young children. Cognition 179:192–201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, A. (2013) Moral blame and moral protest. In: Blame: Its nature and norms, ed. Coates, D. J. & Tognazzini, N. A., pp. 27–48. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (1962) Freedom and resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy 48:1–25.Google Scholar
Thompson, M. (2004) What is it to wrong someone?: A puzzle about justice. In: Reason and value: Themes from the philosophy of Joseph Raz, ed. Wallace, J., Pettit, P., Scheffler, S. & Smith, M.. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2014a) A natural history of human thinking. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2016a) A natural history of human morality. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2018) The normative turn in early moral development. Human Development (Special Issue) 61:248–63.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2019) Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674988651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T. & Moll, H. (2005) Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(5):675–91. doi:10.1017/s0140525X05000129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Turiel, E. (2007) The development of morality. In: Handbook of child psychology, vol. 3: Social, emotional, and personality development, ed. Damon, W., Lerner, R. M., & Eisenberg, N., pp. 789–857. Wiley. doi:10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0313 [aMT]Google Scholar
Ulber, J. & Tomasello, M. (2017) Young children, but not chimpanzees, are averse to disadvantageous and advantageous inequities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 155:48–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaish, A., Carpenter, M. & Tomasello, M. (2016) The early emergence of guilt-motivated prosocial behavior. Child Development 87:1772–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallace, J. (2019) The moral nexus. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, R. J. (1994) Responsibility and the moral sentiments. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Warneken, F., Chen, F. & Tomasello, M. (2006) Cooperative Activities in Young Children and Chimpanzees. Child Development 77(3):640–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warneken, F., Gräfenhain, M. & Tomasello, M. (2012) Collaborative partner or social tool? New evidence for young children's understanding of joint intentions in collaborative activities. Developmental Science 15:54–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warneken, F., Lohse, K., Melis, A. P. & Tomasello, M. (2011) Young children share the spoils after collaboration. Psychological Science 22(2):267–73. doi:10.1177/0956797610395392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2013) The emergence of contingent reciprocity in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116:338–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wittig, M., Jensen, K. & Tomasello, M. (2013) 5-year-olds understand fair as equal in a mini-ultimatum game. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116(2):324–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar