Christopher Boehm – Three Emotions that are Basic to Moralistic Social Control [videolecture]

For individuals the essential moral emotion is shame, with social-blushing, but political sentiments also are involved—as when groups punish. These emotions are shared by bonobos, chimpanzees, and by inference by our last common ancestor. In addition to the angry dominance and fearful submission that go with living hierarchically, in all these species there is also resentment over being dominated, which can be expressed actively as gang-attacks within the group. Earlier, this rebellious hostility provided an important pre-adaptation, which eventually led to moralistic Late-Pleistocene human groups engaging in capital punishment moralistically. An analysis of gang-attacks in all four species clarifies the action of a social-selection force that was basic to moral evolution, and contributed to human autodomestication.