Thread by @nicholaraihani

Let's talk about this quote by @JDVance . Turns out that psychologists have studied this tension in the 'scope of moral regard' for some time - and we understand something about where it comes from. 🧵

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1884795801739710691

The scope of moral regard is a way of describing how we perceive our moral obligations to others - are our moral obligations only to our family and close friends, or do we also have moral obligations to people in our community, our country, and elsewhere?

At risk of stating the obvious, almost everyone agrees that a person's primary moral obligation is to their family - in fact people find it deeply suspect and weird when people prioritise strangers at the expense of family members. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

But people differ in the extent to which they perceive their obligation extends beyond this narrow boundary. Asking people e.g. "is it your obligation to hire a family member over a well-qualified external candidate?"

Or whether it is "moral to lie in court to exonerate a relative" will get you very different answers from different people. Broadly speaking, more politically conservative people tend to believe that moral obligations are primarily to family and close friends.

And political liberals tend to believe that their moral obligations extend beyond this circle. Look at Obama's 2009 statement that America is a 'friend of each nation' vs Trump's retraction of aid spending and promise to put 'America first'. and this: nature.com/articles/s4146…

But, both perspectives can be defended: you might condemn someone who 'only helps their friends' or someone who 'doesn't even help their friends'.

Because this tension is essentially about how to distribute finite resources, there are no objective or easy answers.

Culture - not just ideology - also predicts these views. In collectivist societies, the family is the organising unit. People in more collectivist societies often have reduced scope of moral regard.

e.g. Blood donations are lower in (more collectivist) south of Italy compared to the (more individualist) north. Tendency to return a lost wallet to a stranger is lower in collectivist countries, compared to individualist ones. science.org/doi/full/10.11…

To me, the interesting question is why do people differ so markedly in how they view their moral obligations to others? I think a huge part of the answer to this lies in material security. What's this?

Material security is the ability to meet your basic needs. Food. Safety. Shelter. Health. For most humans who have ever lived on this planet, the way we have buffered the risk of low material security has been *each other*. Friendships, networks, family helped us to survive.

But modern societies are vastly different to savannahs. We have banks, hospitals, fridges & shops. Being part of a functioning, market-based society means that many of us can buffer these risks ourselves. A consequence is that we don't need each other as much as we used to.

This increased security means we can loosen our social circles & extend cooperation and trust to more distant others. A wider scope of moral regard is therefore a *luxury* that comes from being able to reliably meet our basic needs.

People experiencing low material security cannot always afford this luxury. Low material security means you will rely more on your close social contacts and ask more of them. It is understandable that the scope of moral obligation will correspondingly shrink.

In fact, we saw this happen at a global scale during COVID-19, where a global threat to security resulted in hyper-local (often street-level) cooperation networks springing up. None of us are immune to these tendencies to shrink our networks in response to threat.

To come back to @JDVance 's comment, governments are not just observers of this phenomenon - they can drive these attitudes. not just with rhetoric but with policies.

If the state can ensure that basic needs are met – by enforcing rule of law, by providing basic healthcare and income assurances (etc), we can foster an expansive scope of moral regard. This expansive mindset is more productive and beneficial than internecine conflict.

It is what we need to solve the global challenges we now face. It is also the bedrock of modern democratic society.

If you are interested in this and want to read more, the last chapter of my book The Social Instinct is an accessible overview. amazon.com/Social-Instinc…