Moral sentiments are economic

Article by Stoelhorst.

"Ever since Adam Smith, economists have recognized that our self-interest is bounded by moral sentiments. Nevertheless, the dominant narrative in economics holds that human welfare is optimized in a system that maximally exploits our self-interest. [...] But on an evolutionary view of human nature, it is immediately clear that this cannot be the whole story of our welfare. The fundamental flaw of the economic narrative is that it discounts the central role of our ability to solve social dilemmas in explaining our welfare."

"Yet, empirical evidence from both the lab and the field demonstrates that we often do solve them. Evolutionary social science explains this discrepancy. It explains how the cognitive mechanisms that help us solve social dilemmas evolved – moral sentiments such as empathy, indignation and shame. These sentiments are the result of an evolutionary dynamic in which a combination of multi-level selection and gene-culture co-evolution conferred fitness advantages to members of groups in which these sentiments became more widespread."