The Evolution of Morality

This interdisciplinary collection presents novel theories, includes provocative re-workings of longstanding arguments, and offers a healthy cross-pollination of ideas to the morality literature. Structures, functions, and content of morality are reconsidered as cultural, religious, and political components are added to the standard biological/environmental mix. Innovative concepts such as the Periodic Table of Ethics and evidence for morality in non-human species illuminate areas for further discussion and research. And some of the book’s contributors question premises we hold dear, such as morality as a product of reason, the existence of moral truths, and the motto “life is good.”

Highlights of the coverage:

• The tripartite theory of Machiavellian morality: judgment, influence, and conscience as distinct moral adaptations.
• Prosocial morality from a biological, cultural, and developmental perspective.
• The containment problem and the evolutionary debunking of morality.
• A comparative perspective on the evolution of moral behavior.
• A moral guide to depravity: religiously-motivated violence and sexual selection.
• Game theory and the strategic logic of moral intuitions.

The Evolution of Morality makes a stimulating supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the evolutionary sciences, particularly in psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, religious studies, and philosophy

• cannibalism
• compassion in animals
• economic systems
• evolution of empathy in rats
• evolution of morality
• evolution of morality in nonhuman primates
• evolution of sexuality morality
• evolution of the mind
• evolutionary sciences
• free will
• illusion of free will
• law and morality
• moral development
• morality
• morality and economics
• neuroscience of morality
• psychiatric disorders
• science of morality

• Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, USA

  Todd K. Shackelford, Ranald D. Hansen

Todd K. Shackelford received his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology in 1997 from the University of Texas at Austin, his M.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1995, and his B.A. in psychology from the University of New Mexico in 1993. Since 2010, he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Oakland University (http://www.oakland.edu/psychology) in Rochester, Michigan, where he is Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab (www.ToddKShackelford.com). He led the founding of new Ph.D. and M.S. programs (http://www.oakland.edu/psychology/grad/), which launched in 2012. Shackelford has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has edited 14 volumes, and his work has been cited over 11,000 times. Much of Shackelford’s research addresses sexual conflict between men and women, with a special focus on testing hypotheses derived from sperm competition theory. Since 2006, Shackelford has served as editor of the journal Evolutionary Psychology (www.epjournal.net), and he recently founded the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science (http://www.springer.com/psychology/personality+%26+social+psychology/journal/40806) as Editor-in-Chief.

Ranald D. Hansen was a Professor of Psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also served as the CEO of Innovation Emporium, Inc., a company focused onknowledge management, creating sustainable industry-university partnerships, and educational environment optimization. His research in cognitive science and psychophysiology has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. A significant portion of this work was directed toward developing a model derived from an evolutionary science perspective for integrating emotive and cognitive processes. In the past decade he has participated in creating multiple regional innovation drivers, including technology accelerators and innovation zones. Sadly, Dr. Hansen passed unexpectedly in December 2014. He is survived by his wife.

Policies and ethics