Why do people assume that a generous person should also be honest? Why do we even use words like "moral" and "immoral"? We explore these questions with a new model of how people perceive moral character. We propose that people vary in the extent to which they perceive moral character as "localized" (varying along many contextually embedded dimensions) versus "generalized" (varying along a single dimension from morally bad to morally good). This variation might be partly the product of cultural evolutionary adaptations to different kinds of social networks. As networks grow larger, perceptions of generalized morality are increasingly valuable for predicting cooperation during partner selection, especially in novel contexts. Our studies show that social network size correlates with perceptions of generalized morality in United States and international samples (Study 1) and that East African hunter-gatherers with greater exposure outside their local region perceive morality as more generalized compared to those who have remained in their local region (Study 2). We support the adaptive value of generalized morality in large and unfamiliar social networks with an agent-based model (Study 3), and in experiments where we manipulate partner unfamiliarity (Study 4). Our final study shows that perceptions of morality have become more generalized over the last 200 years of English-language history, which suggests that it may be coevolving with rising social complexity and anonymity in the English-speaking world (Study 5). We discuss the implications of this theory for the cultural evolution of political systems, religion, and taxonomical theories of morality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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广义道德在文化上演变为大型社交网络中的适应性启发式。

为什么人们认为慷慨的人也应该诚实？为什么我们要用“道德”和“不道德”这样的词？我们用人们如何看待道德品质的新模型来探索这些问题。我们认为，人们对道德品质的感知程度存在差异，即“局部”（沿着许多上下文嵌入的维度变化）与“普遍”（沿着从道德不良到道德良好的单一维度变化）。这种差异可能部分是文化进化适应不同类型社交网络的产物。随着网络变得越来越大，广义道德观念对于预测合作伙伴选择过程中的合作越来越有价值，尤其是在新的环境中。我们的研究表明，社交网络规模与美国和国际样本中的普遍道德观念相关（研究 1），并且与那些留在当地的人相比，更多地接触到当地以外地区的东非狩猎采集者认为道德更加普遍。当地区域（研究 2）。我们通过基于代理的模型（研究 3）以及在我们操纵合作伙伴不熟悉度的实验中（研究 4）支持广义道德在大型且不熟悉的社交网络中的适应性价值。我们的最终研究表明，在过去 200 年的英语历史中，道德观念变得更加普遍，这表明道德观念可能与英语世界日益增长的社会复杂性和匿名性共同演变（研究 5）。我们讨论这一理论对政治制度、宗教和道德分类理论的文化演变的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。