Culture, morality and individual differences: comparability and incomparability across species.

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary Psychology
• Comparative Psychology
• Behavioral Ecology

Background:

• Current methods for identifying individual differences across species, such as behavioral patterns and neurophysiology, show limited convergence.
• Human variation includes unique, recently evolved traits shaped by culture, such as social norms and moral systems.
• Existing personality models like the Big-Five taxonomy may not fully capture human-specific differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify dimensions of human variation that are least applicable to non-human species.
• To differentiate human-specific individual differences of recent evolutionary origin from those shared across species.
• To refine the study of individual differences by isolating human-specific traits.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of behavioral patterns and neurophysiological data across species.
• Examination of human culture, focusing on learned social-norm systems and their symbolic reinforcement.
• Analysis of language to identify the role of moral censure, gossip, and sanctions in human evolution.

Main Results:

• Human culture, particularly moral codes and social norms, represents a significant dimension of individual differences not directly analogous in other species.
• Ethics and moral codes are deeply embedded in human language and culture, exerting a stronger influence than commonly studied personality traits.
• Apparent morality-relevant traits in other species (e.g., chimpanzees) lack the human-analogue sanctioning systems.

Conclusions:

• Removing human-specific manifestations like morality and religion may facilitate the identification of individual differences more universally shared across species.
• Understanding human-specific evolved traits, such as moral regulation of behavior, is crucial for a comprehensive taxonomy of individual differences.
• This approach aids in partitioning evolutionary distinct human variations from conserved cross-species traits.