I. INTRODUCTION

There are seven main traits exhibited by moral beings. The extent to which an individual exhibits these traits coincides with one's level of moral intelligence. These seven traits are inhibitory control, empathy, consistency, fairness, responsibility, cooperation, and logic. Research has revealed that humans are born with a certain instinctual guideline of morality and develop further moral intelligence during maturation. "Underlying the extensive cross-cultural variation we observe in our expressed social norms is a universal moral grammar that enables each child to grow a narrow range of possible moral systems. When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we do so instinctively, tapping in a system of unconsciously operative and inaccessible moral knowledge."[1]  And while even young children do not start off on even moral footing, a lifetime of experiences and cultural influence further develops and shapes individuals' depth and direction of moral understanding.

II. TRAITS

A. Inhibitory Control

We universally appreciate the value of patience and inhibitory control. In the absence of comfort and satisfaction, as time passes, one grows agitated, tempted, or impatient. Acting patiently, where long term benefits rest on the exercise of this discretion, can have a drastic impact on self and others. Although there is often much good that comes from patience, being patient is quite difficult for most, especially in the face of temptation. The virtue of self-control is directly linked to moral intelligence. “Moral systems ultimately rely on forward-looking individuals who can bypass, for self and other, the temptation to feed immediate self interest…The capacity to wait, exert patience, and fend off temptation is a core part of the support team associated with moral faculty.”[5]

Studies have showed that children who demonstrated patience to seek a larger reward by delaying short term gratification were more likely to cope with negative situations in adulthood, to achieve better job security, to obtain higher SAT scores, and to maintain stable, nonviolent romantic relationships. This suggests that the exercise of self control in children is an excellent predictor of success in adulthood.

B. Empathy

Empathy may motivate inhibitory control. This sacrifice has even been observed among non-human animals. Note the following experiment involving monkeys which mirrored a similar experiment involving rats: "An experimenter trained a rhesus monkey to pull one of two chains in order to obtain its daily ration of food. Subjects readily complied and fed themselves. Next, the experimenter introduced another rhesus monkey in the adjacent cage and, in parallel with the rat studies, hooked up one of the chains to a machine that would deliver a shock to the newly introduced neighbor. Mirroring the rats' behavior, rhesus also stopped pulling the chains.  But unlike the rats, most of the rhesus showed far greater restraint, far greater inhibitory control. Some individuals stopped puling for five to twelve days, functionally starving themselves. The extent to which rhesus refrained from pulling was related to two important factors: experience with shock and identity of the shockee. Individuals restrained from pulling for longer periods of time if they had the experience of being shocked, or if they were paired with a familiar group member as opposed to an unfamiliar member of another group, and, if they were paired with another rhesus monkey, as distinct from a rabbit."[6] "Although these experiments, and those on rats, do not yield clear interpretations, they raise the possibility...that recognition of another's emotional state may trigger an inhibitory response."[7]

"Emotions cause judgments of right and wrong. Sympathy triggers a judgment that helping is permissible, perhaps obligatory. Hatred triggers a judgment that harming is permissible.”[8] Control, moderation, and legitimacy of these emotions are qualities of moral intelligence.

1.     Obligation

Empathy triggers a sense of responsibility or obligation. A sense of community for others allows us to point our interest away from ourselves and recognize that we should take some responsibility for the well-being of others. As humans, our objective is one of survival. Taking full responsibility for the well-being of others would not suit this interest because people are best suited to take care of themselves as we each have the most information regarding our own needs. However, there are times when our survival or well being is dependent on others and empathy is the compelling force that facilitates that consideration.

Empathy may be so strong in some individuals that it even subconsciously manifests itself.  For example, yawning is contagious particularly among people who are compassionate.[9]

C. Consistency

The morally intelligent person has a well defined set of core values and applies them consistently. The core values prioritize equality. So, no matter what position in a given situation the morally intelligent person takes, his decision regarding the proposed action will be the same, because he will have taken everyone's perspective into account, looking beyond himself to find the just solution. 

D. Fairness

"The psychology of fairness in our own species is rich, including some ability to keep tabs, to place subjective values on different entities and actions, to judge when an inequity has transpired, to distinguish accidental from intentional giving and reneging, and to determine when an unfair act is worthy of retribution.[10]

It appears that all humans share a universal sense of distribution fairness. The political scientists Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer conducted a focus group with American college students in which he asked them to settle on a set of principles focused on distributive justice. The students said that under a veil of ignorance, in which they could end up being any member in society, they opted on a principle that maximized the overall resources of the group while preventing the worst off from dropping below some pre-established level of income. Such a system would provide a safety net for the disadvantaged and allocate extra benefits to those who contribute more to society. While we may generally agree on what is fair given a veil of ignorance, people react much differently - often negotiating fiercely - given their known positions. This is because we have inaccurate perspectives of other people's positions and often underestimate others’ contributions. Further, although most humans share basic principles regarding what is fair, some knowingly fight for more than their right, compelled more by self-interest than fairness.

Self-interested actions, such as actions motivated by greed or avoiding retribution are the product of lower-level moral intelligence than are fairness actions, decisions to do right based on a consciousness and aspiration for achieving justice.

E. Responsibility

“The child’s genome generally creates a style of engaging with the world that either internalizes or externalizes actions. Children presenting the internalist signature take greater personal responsibility for what happens.”[11] If someone gives them ice cream the child thinks it is because she was good and thus deserves the reward. The signature of an externalist is exactly opposite. When someone offers ice cream it is because the offeror is nice. When an experimenter tests these two personality types on the class delayed-gratification study, the internalists wait longer for the larger and more desirable reward. These same internalists are also less likely to violate their mothers’ prohibitions and less likely to cheat in a guessing game with an experimenter.  Thus the capacities to internalize actions, and take responsibility are highly correlated with moral behavior.[12]

F. Cooperation

"All societies have at least two norms of altruistic behavior: Help people who can't help themselves and return favors to those who have given in the past." The first represents a norm of social responsibility charged by a sense of empathy and heightened by familial alliance, the second a norm of reciprocity.[13]

                        1. Kinship/Friendliness

Cooperation may be premised upon kinship and friendliness toward another participating individual or group. An observation of over one hundred regurgitations among vampire bats showed that nearly 80% were between mother and infant. Even though blood is valuable and giving it represents a cost, mother bats have no expectation of reciprocation as they share half of their genes with their offspring.[14]

                    2. Reciprocation

Cooperation may also emerge as a by-product of selfish interests or when a calculated exchange has been deemed beneficial and the risks of exchange are low.  "Reciprocity is an act of self-interest because it is driven by the expectation of a fair return..."[15] "Although seemingly quite straightforward, reciprocity requires substantial psychological machinery, including the capacity to quantify costs and benefits, store these in memory, recall prior interactions, time the returns, detect and punish cheaters, and recognize the contingencies between giving and receiving."[16]

"We are the only animal that cooperates on a large scale with genetically unrelated individuals and that consistently shows stable reciprocity..."[17]  Humans are social beings. We rely on each other and are compelled to the advancement our species. Both social responsibility and reciprocation work toward achieving this goal. Other species are similarly driven. In Marc Bekoff's study of canids- dogs, coyotes, and wolves, individuals who violate the norms of play and leave their packs early experience a twofold increase in mortality over those who adhere to the norms.[18]

                    3. Utilizing Resources Prudently

While helping people who cannot help themselves is a matter of social responsibility, so is utilizing resources prudently. Where resources are fixed in value, moral responsibility demands of people to be conscious of the needs and rights of others.

G. Logic

Immoral behavior is bad because it results in a loss to society. Moral judgment involves calculating outcomes from one's actions and in deciding how to act or not act, placing relevance on the impact one's action has on others. "Moral intelligence is pro-active. The morally intelligent person also takes into account success probability.  We evaluate our actions through the consequences of prior decisions, which is why a person's moral intelligence usually increases with age. However, that is not to say that older people are necessarily more morally intelligent than younger people. In order to effectively determine how our current decision will create consequences, we must have made a thorough and fair evaluation of how our prior decisions impacted its consequences, determined an accurate rule for the action - consequence, and consider how the present situation differs from the prior experience. People who are reflective are more morally intelligent than those who are not."[19] All too often a bad consequence is the outcome of a good intention. Intentions are thus only secondarily justifying. A morally intelligent person forms accurate predictions of consequences and thus unifies their intention with its consequence.

III. DEVELOPMENT

"Like language, the specifically expressed and culturally variable moral systems are learned in the sense that the detailed contents of particular social norms are acquired by exposure to the local culture; the abstract principles and parameters are innate."[20]

Morality does not have a universal standard, however there are qualities of morality that are commonly shared. People start off at different levels of moral intelligence and through education, experience, and culture, develop a more conscious and powerful moral intuition.

          A. Nature

To compute fairness, one must take into account costs and benefits. Due to their limited number capacity, young children cannot compute equalities with large numbers. With the exception of relatively gross inequities, if fair translates to equal exchange and thus a precise quantification system is necessary to measure the value of items exchanged, then children cannot judge whether a transaction is fair.[21] However, "...children's sense of fairness is in play as early as four years old, probably earlier. Their sense of fairness is intuitive, based on an internal logic that they are only dimly aware of but that computes the payoffs of an exchange and then generates a permissibility judgment."[22] "As children develop, they place greater emphasis on a recipient's need and merit.[23]

"...[M]any of the principles underlying our moral judgments are inaccessible to conscious reflection."[24] To date there is no evidence that there is a uniquely dedicated moral organ found in the brain which makes strictly moral judgments as opposed to moral and nonmoral judgments. Nonetheless, moral judgments are made.[25]

 For biological reasons, adults are better able to exhibit inhibitory control than are children. Young children and people with damage to their frontal lobes are more vulnerable to immediate temptation than are healthy adults. Humans can wait for much longer than animals before submitting to immediate temptation. Our larger and architecturally different frontal lobes play a central role in inhibitory control.[26] Still, while some people may more naturally be patient than others, patience as a skill can be improved by practice and discipline.

            B. Nurture

Studies of how aggressive rhesus monkeys who were swapped to be raised in peaceful macaque colonies had displayed macaque peaceful behavior to reconcile differences even after returning to aggressive rhesus colonies would indicate that nurture at least for some species is a greater force to shaping an individual's reconciliation behavior than is nature.

IV. LAW

The effectiveness of norms lies in their unconscious operation, and their power to create conformity. However, although social norms often exert an unconscious hand of control, we do sometimes violate them which usually leads to feelings of guilt by those who violate the norms and feelings of anger by those against whom a norm has been violated.

Norms emerge spontaneously in different societies and ultimately cross-over boundaries with a more formal legal body. The legal scholar Eric Posner described this process:

“In a world with no law and rudimentary government, order of some sort would exist. So much is clear from anthropological studies. The order would appear as routine compliance with social norms and collective infliction of sanctions on those who violate them, including, stigmatization of the deviant and ostracism of the incorrigible. People would make symbolic commitments to the community in order to avoid suspicions about their loyalty. Also, people would cooperate frequently. They would keep and rely on promises, refrain from injuring their neighbors, contribute effort to public-spirited projects, make gifts to the poor, render assistance to those in danger, and join marches and rallies. But it is also the case that people would sometimes breach promised and cause injury. They would discriminate against people who, through no fault of their own, have become walking symbols of practices that a group rejects. They would have disputes, sometimes violent disputes. Feuds would arise and might never end. The community might split into factions. The order, with all its benefits, would come at a cost. Robust in times of peace, it would reveal its precariousness at moments of crisis.[27]

If everyone was morally intelligent of the highest order and shared a common set of ideals, laws would not be necessary. However, people have different levels of moral intelligence, and therefore, punishment is necessary to deter some from violating norms. In an ideal world, we would have a universal minimum standard and allow for a small range of variation among cultures. The problem with a straight cultural relativist model is that within groups people are not homogenous and mobility between groups is restricted. Knowing that through education, practice, and discipline we can improve our moral intelligence, we should strive to teach our children the core values discussed above.

V. CONCLUSION

"That animals take care of others who require such care is one thing. It is something else altogether to feel the weight of obligation, cognizant of the consequences of breaking a commitment to help. ...[T]he cooperative actions of animals are merely coordinated social behaviors. What they lack is the explicit recognition of why there are rules for cooperation and why there must be a group-level acknowledgement and adherence to such rules."[28] Humans are gifted with an extraordinary ability to reason. Flowing from their logic they may skillfully coordinate utility maximizing acts, improving life and prolonging survival for all society.

Although our emotions are the first reasonable assessment of an act or circumstance, as the utilitarian moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham suggests is the case: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do…They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think,” it should not be the only impetus driving action or thought, with infallible faithfulness, the virtues characterizing moral intelligence --inhibitory control, empathy, consistency, fairness, responsibility, cooperation, and logic must follow.

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