New research has greatly added to our understanding of human behavioral propensities which many connect to the study of morality. Evolutionary approaches to human behavior readily acknowledge the existence of innate tendencies in the human species. Evolved psychological tendencies have been well documented in both biological and neuropsychological literatures, including the survival instinct, sex drive, nurturing capabilities towards young children, attraction to aesthetics, and a psychological connection to nature. Innate tendencies towards social bonding and cooperation have also been observed. These proclivities serve as motivational forces and continue to operate even when new learning occurs. Learning is thought to add to instinctual behavior, but cannot replace it. Rare exceptions to these observed tendencies can hardly be taken as evidence of the negation of these observed traits, and can be accounted for either in the evolutionary tendency towards mutation or variability, or other hereditary or environmental influences on the particular organism in question (Pinker 2003). Research suggests that a universal moral language may be part of the human condition.

Most sociologists today find the contents of the previous paragraph contentious. Though credible evidence from the natural sciences is incorporated into subfields like the Sociology of Health and Medicine or Biosociology (Hopcroft 2010). Sociology has demonstrated its overall resilience in rejecting or ignoring insights into human behavior from other disciplines. The reasons may be understandable, if not always excusable. Most of the outright rejection of information suggesting innate predispositions is motivated by politics rather than science. Of course, most researchers read studies in their own field, and Sociology is, after all, a field that focuses on society rather than biology. The bigger explanation, though, deals with the incredible dangers of using the authority of a scientific voice to justify racism, sexism, classism, and the like; ideologies of group superiority that have cost the lives of millions in the last 400 years of world history. Modern race-based slavery, the Nazi Holocaust, the subjugation of women, and the widespread sterilization of the infirm are contemporary examples of draconian movements who justified their activities by the selective and biased use of science. Though thorough critiques of past errors have been produced (Gould 1996; Tavris 1993), racism, sexism, and classism remain dangerous undercurrents in human societies. For some sociologists, validating any evidence of innate differences opens a pandora’s box of potential dangers. This, despite the fact that authors like Tavris (1993) draw on good quality studies to illustrate ways in which men and women are different but argue against the privileging of some traits over others.

If the dangers of overgeneralization or selective interpretation of natural science data are real, so too is the possibility that a sociological approach which ignores quality information from the natural sciences will render itself irrelevant and naïve. The rigor of a negativistic logic in science remains a primary defense against science in the service of ideology, along with interdisciplinary peer review. Negativistic logic begins with the premise that no patterns or causal connections exist until overwhelming evidence to the contrary renders that default position as untenable. Examining information outside of one’s field can assist in building more complex models of human behavior that provide a fuller account than those produced in academic silos. The trend towards convergence in science, described in Chap. 1, makes more immediate the challenge for sociologists to read work outside their field and to allow non-sociologists the opportunity to critique sociological work. Researchers outside of one’s discipline can be particularly adept at identifying implicit assumptions in behavioral models that need to be made explicit.

I review in this chapter but a small sample of scientific research which appears to demonstrate certain innate human tendencies defined as moral in almost all societies; at least as it pertains to in-group members in good standing with the community. I will avoid committing the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting that what is innate is necessarily good, since certain social situations can also stimulate natural aggressive instincts many would define as bad or dangerous. I simply demonstrate that the themes of equality and cooperation so often finding expression in new social movements are far from random. Such proclivities find their origins deep within the human condition. The process of attributing value to innate tendencies of cooperation over aggression in moral systems may indeed be the result of social processes, but they are far from arbitrary. In Evolution and Human Behavior, Cartwright (2008: 353) articulates a Darwinian approach in defining morality as “…a set of procedures to help humans, in the face of limited sympathies, personal diversity and competitive instincts, to secure the fruits of cooperation and arrange their equitable distribution.” Far more than aggression, cooperation and resource-sharing tendencies among in-group members is what produces a sustainable, cohesive, and rich society.

It is not difficult to see that, across societies, cooperation between in-group members is valued over aggression, and most certainly when it comes to physical aggression. Societies of all sorts have mechanisms in place to limit physical aggression against other in-group members, to allow its expression only in limited circumstances, and to channel it into approved social outlets such as games where the possibility of doing harm to others is limited. The evidence presented here implies certain behavioral tendencies in human beings; evidence that renders as naïve the negativistic assumption that, because moral systems are social constructions, any expression of morality is an equally likely outcome. Theorists must either render an account of the evidence reviewed herein, or resort to a defensive position within the critiques of positivism that imply that science itself is only, and completely, a social construction.