Survival Of The Virtuous

This book examines how virtuous behaviors evolved in humans and other species. The book argues that the key to solving puzzles of morality lies in figuring out what adaptive functions moral traits served in early human environments and how they are influenced by social learning, culture, and strategic social interactions in the modern world. In examining virtuous behaviors that enable individuals to advance their interests and the moral decision-making mechanisms that evolved with them, this book illuminates how "new brain" mechanisms work in conjunction with "old brain" mechanisms as we make moral choices in more emotionally intuitive ways. Survival of the Virtuous is accessibly written for academic, scholarly, and some educated lay readers interested in understanding how we retain the capacity to make mora judgments in primitive ways, via codes of ethics that emerged as a function of survival. Book jacket.