Market exposure and human morality

• Published in: Nature human behaviour 2023-01, Vol.7 (1), p.134-141
• Main Author: Enke, Benjamin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 4014/159; 4014/477/2811; Behavioral Sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cooperation; Emotions; Ethnolinguistic groups; Evolutionary theories; Experimental Psychology; Folklore; Guilt; Humans; Internalization; Interpersonal Relations; Life Sciences; Markets; Microeconomics; Money; Morality; Morals; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Neurosciences; Personality and Social Psychology; Prosocial behavior; Proximity; Shame
• ISSN: 2397-3374; 2397-3374
• DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01480-x

According to evolutionary theories, markets may foster an internalized and universalist prosociality because it supports market-based cooperation. This paper uses the cultural folklore of 943 pre-industrial ethnolinguistic groups to show that a society’s degree of market interactions, proxied by the presence of intercommunity trade and money, is associated with the cultural salience of (1) prosocial behaviour, (2) interpersonal trust, (3) universalist moral values and (4) moral emotions of guilt, shame and anger. To provide tentative evidence that a part of this correlation reflects a causal effect of market interactions, the analysis leverages both fine-grained geographic variation across neighbouring historical societies and plausibly exogenous variation in the presence of markets that arises through proximity to historical trade routes or the local degree of ecological diversity. The results suggest that the coevolutionary process involving markets and morality partly consists of economic markets shaping a moral system of a universalist and internalized prosociality. This paper uses historical folklore to show that a society’s degree of market interactions is strongly associated with the cultural salience of prosocial behaviour, interpersonal trust, universalist moral values, and emotions of guilt and shame.