By Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal online Some scientists find inspiration in the lab. Others trek into the field. Laurie Santos likes the local coffee house. The 36-year-old runs Yale University's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, which examines the origins of the human mind by studying...

By Ferris Jabr, Scientific American An excerpt: The English language is not especially kind to rats. We say we "smell a rat" when something doesn't feel right, refer to stressful competition as the "rat race," and scorn traitors who "rat on" friends. But rats don't...

By Jenny Mardner, The Rundown- PBS/Science Nation Summary: What can one baby, three puppets and a tricky Tupperware lid tell us about the roots of morality? Can infants distinguish between good and bad at such a young age? NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on research being conducted...

By Daisy Grewal, Scientific American Mind 4/5/11 An excerpt: Psychologists have long known that many people are prejudiced towards others based on group affiliations, be they racial, ethnic, religious, or even political. However, we know far less about why people are prone to prejudice in the first place...

By David Brooks, The New Yorker 1/17/11 Harold and Erica got their first glimpse of each other in front of a Barnes & Noble. They smiled broadly as they approached, and a deep, primeval process kicked in. Harold liked what he saw, from the waist-to-hip ratio to the clear skin, all indicative of health...

By Katherine Harmon | Scientific American "If love is said to come from the heart, what about hate? Along with music, religion, irony and a host of other complex concepts, researchers are on the hunt for the neurological underpinnings of hatred. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun...

By Edward O. Wilson from The Atlantic "ENTURIES of debate on the origin of ethics come down to this: Either ethical principles, such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience, or they are human inventions. The distinction is more than an exercise for academic philosophers...

Considering morality from viewpoints other than philosophy is becoming more and more common. This article from The Economist describes a panel discussion focusing on what biology has to offer in the debate about morality. Source: The Economist "Whence morality? That is a question which has troubled...

This Washington Post editorial uses information from various fields to argue that moral virtue does not have its origins in religion. Source: The Washington Post A growing sector of world civilization is secular; that is, it emphasizes worldly rather than religious values. This is especially true of...

Abstract: Moral evolution theories have emphasized kinship, reciprocity, group selection, and equilibrium selection. Yet, moral virtues are also sexually attractive. Darwin suggested that sexual attractiveness may explain many aspects of human morality. This paper updates his argument by integrating...

Abstract: Social animals are provisioned with prosocial orientations that operate to transcend self-interest. Morality , as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the...

Abstract: Kin-recognition systems have been hypothesized to exist in humans, and adaptively to regulate altruism and incest avoidance among close genetic kin. This latter function allows the architecture of the kin recognition system to be mapped by quantitatively matching individual variation in opposition...

Abstract: The ethical and moral behavior of Homo sapiens is no longer the exclusive domain of religion and philosophy because we recognize that such behavior affects the reproductive success of individuals within the species. We are a social species and therefore our survival is influenced by our capacity...

Abstract: To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human...