• Question: Why (scientifically speaking) do we all have a natural conscience?

    Asked by altomo101 to David, Luna, Mark, Melanie, Probash on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      I have no idea – one for Melanie and Luna?

    • Photo: Melanie Stefan

      Melanie Stefan answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Humans seem to have a natural inhibition against killing (or even harming) other humans. This is probably to do with our capacity for empathy, i.e. recognising how others are feeling. If you think that early humans lived in small groups where individuals depended on each other (e.g. for communal mammoth-hunting), this has obvious evolutionary advantages. However, I think that a lot of our conscience is actually learned as we grow up, rather than natural predisposition. But I’m sure Luna knows more about that kind of stuff …

    • Photo: Luna Munoz

      Luna Munoz answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      We most likely have a conscience to aid in social relationships. As social creatures, it would be adaptive for us to experience guilt after harming someone else. This experience of guilt would make us make amends and try to fix our relationships; that way we maintain our social connections. This is an evolutionary perspective that seems to make sense if we lived in small social communities.

      Of course, our upbringing matters too. We know that children who are more anxious are also more willing to make amends when they do something wrong. Scientists have found that these children develop a conscience quite easily by parents being warm and supportive (and not being too dominating). However, children who are more outgoing and have little anxieties are more difficult to socialize; they don’t develop a conscience easily. For these children, scientists have found that parents may need to be more assertive to aid in their feelings of guilt or feeling that they should make amends.

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