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Market exposure and human morality

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  • Benjamin Enke

    (Harvard University
    National Bureau of Economic Research)

Abstract

According to evolutionary theories, markets may foster an internalized and universalist prosociality because it supports market-based cooperation. This paper uses the cultural folklore of 943 pre-industrial ethnolinguistic groups to show that a society’s degree of market interactions, proxied by the presence of intercommunity trade and money, is associated with the cultural salience of (1) prosocial behaviour, (2) interpersonal trust, (3) universalist moral values and (4) moral emotions of guilt, shame and anger. To provide tentative evidence that a part of this correlation reflects a causal effect of market interactions, the analysis leverages both fine-grained geographic variation across neighbouring historical societies and plausibly exogenous variation in the presence of markets that arises through proximity to historical trade routes or the local degree of ecological diversity. The results suggest that the coevolutionary process involving markets and morality partly consists of economic markets shaping a moral system of a universalist and internalized prosociality.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Enke, 2023. "Market exposure and human morality," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 134-141, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:7:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41562-022-01480-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01480-x
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    Cited by:

    1. Pies, Ingo, 2023. "Folk Economics und Folk Ethics als moralisches Problem: Ordonomische Anregungen zur Business Ethics," Discussion Papers 2023-12, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Chair of Economic Ethics.
    2. Choi, Ginny Seung & Storr, Virgil Henry, 2023. "The morality of markets in theory and empirics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 590-607.
    3. Roberto A. Weber & Sili Zhang, 2023. "What Money Can Buy: How Market Exchange Promotes Values," CESifo Working Paper Series 10809, CESifo.
    4. Jetter, Michael, 2024. "On the Post-Enlightenment Evolution of Moral Universalism," IZA Discussion Papers 16947, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Pies, Ingo, 2023. "Folk economics and folk ethics as problems of moral reasoning: Ordonomic inspirations for business ethics," Discussion Papers 2023-13, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Chair of Economic Ethics.

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