PSYC 3350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Ethical Dilemma, Evolutionism, Relativism
13 May 2018
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March 8th, Morality and Religion
• The deadline for the paper will be extended by at least a week.
• How can we judge what is moral in other cultures?
o we have been socialized to respect a certain set of moral values.
o Different cultures emphasize different alues. But it’s ot just differet ultures, it’s
different groups of people within the cultures. There are differences within countries
based on SES for example, in terms of what is normal. Or relationship between political
orientation and morality.
o How can we judge these without being ethnocentric?
▪ What morals are universal then?
• Some moral violations are universally viewed with scorn such as incest.
• Some other moral codes are socialized within own culture, eg: the idea of nudity in some
contexts and not in other contexts. These will change culturally. Also change based on
geography (hot climates) and evolution.
o “oe ultures are ore proe to this: i saudi araia it’s er uaeptale to e ude
for both genders. In germany, both sexes can be nude in the saunas.
• Universality: the idea is that people from different cultures are largely the same including their
morality.
o Cultural variations are superficial, deeper analyses will reveal the same underlying
principles.
• Relativism: cultural diversity is the result of differet ultures iflueig oe’s psholog.
o Cultural differences reflect genuinely different psychological processes.
• Evolutionism: mixtures of universalism and relativism.
o Cultural differences reflect genuine differences in psychological processes (relativism).
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