Source
Tomasello (2019), LIT-125 (Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e56, issue 2020), read in NOTE-185 with 4 of its 32 commentaries in full.
What was actually shown
Definition (§3). The sense of obligation is “the internalized social/rational pressure from a joint or collective self-regulating agent ‘we’ … to do what ‘we’ expect me to”. Guilt (“we” think of me) is set against shame (“they” think of me).
Joint commitment at about age three (§2.1.2.1). With a joint commitment, 3-year-olds resist a bribe to defect more than when playing side by side (Kachel & Tomasello 2019). They wait for, repair for and take over a partner’s role (Gräfenhain et al. 2013). They protest a partner’s knowing failure but not an ignorant one, in generic normative language (Kachel et al. 2018). They “take leave” when lured away, which 2-year-olds do not (Gräfenhain et al. 2009).
Sharing (§2.1.2.2). 3-year-olds give a peer about one item in four in dictator games, but split collaborative spoils about equally. The lucky child equalizes about three-quarters of the time after collaboration and almost never without it (Hamann et al. 2011). Chimpanzees rarely share equally, inside or outside collaboration (Melis et al. 2006, 2011).
Group-minded obligation, 3–5 years (§2.2.2). In-group favouritism, conformity overriding preference, protest at norm violations, and enforcement of self-created norms only on those who agreed to them (Schmidt et al. 2016b).
Against reciprocity (§3). Children who fail to reciprocate do not apologize (Warneken & Tomasello 2013): tit-for-tat yields gratitude, not obligation.
What could have come out otherwise. Children could have behaved the same toward partners and non-partners, or chimpanzees could have shared equally after collaboration. Neither happened.
What this does not say
- What anyone ought to do. The response concedes that “no explanation of obligation, scientific or otherwise, can tell us what we ought to do” (R4). It is an account of the sense of obligation.
- That the behaviours are felt obligation. The alternatives, enhanced prosociality, conformity to adult framing and learned scripts, are argued against (§2.1.3), not excluded by experiment.
- That commitment, rather than its surrounding assurances, is the cause. Bratman’s commentary (e62) notes that the causal role of commitment is not isolated from the “web of assurances”.
- That the sequence is universal. The samples are WEIRD, as §2.2.2.4 concedes, and data on cultural differences before age three largely do not exist.
- That obligation is limited to the in-group. That scoping is contested by Killen & Dahl and by Darwall, and by the paper’s own account it describes an ancestral psychology.
- That reciprocity cannot generate obligation. One developmental observation and an argument; the author conceded in 2016 that the tie is culturally contingent (note 4).
Connections
- Morality-as-cooperation (THEORY-468) cites Tomasello only through Tomasello & Vaish (2013). This is the proximate story of why cooperative obligations feel binding, which that account does not give.
- It describes how obligation between peers arises, which is the shape of QUESTION-007’s question. QUESTION-007 asks what grounds such normativity, and this account, by its author’s concession, does not answer that.