Responsibility and obligation to others
You and I agree to do X together. We thereby become collaborative partners. Because of the inherent mutual risk, we subject each other to partner control, and if the other does not measure up sufficiently, to partner choice, as one or both of us may seek another partner.
We each stake our good name on keeping the commitment.
Partner control is where I attempt to turn a failing partner into a good one, through such means as respectful protest, punishment, or the threat of partner choice. Partner choice is where I might select a different partner.
The agreement confers legitimacy on the subsequent collaborative activities.
In an attitude of partner control, I legitimately demand that you treat me with respect and act like an ideal collaborative partner in our collaboration. If you do not, I may legitimately hold you to account.
Because, as my collaborative partner, you are equally respected and deserving as myself, I feel a responsibility, that I owe it to you, to treat you with respect and to be an ideal collaborative partner for you (Tomasello, 2016, 2019).
Responsibility is derived from collaboration:
Endorsement, responsibility, and obligation
Moral principles are methods of achieving the goal of mutual fitness. As such, if a moral principle is endorsed by the moral agent as an acceptable course of action, it is a goal in itself – something valued: a value.
If I feel a responsibility to do X, it means that I experience normative pressure to do X and I endorse this course of action. A sense of responsibility can be so strong as to become an obligation: it is unthinkable to do otherwise.
Another form of obligation is the threat of undesirable consequences if I do not do X. Undesirable consequences can include threats to my good name and to my moral identity or conscience.
If responsibility is a “should” or “ought”, then obligation is a “must”.
Mutual value, equal status
Each partner has value for the other, because each is helping the other to achieve their goals. My knowledge of my instrumental value to you as a partner enables me to demand respect from you.
The present claim is that value in partner A engenders the deservingness of and respect for partner A in partner B.
Each partner has equal status with the other, because of self-
The present claim is that equal status between partner A and partner B, together with their mutual value for each other, engenders equal deservingness and respect between partner A and partner B.
Self-
Most basically, as children participate in joint intentional collaboration, they
see that: (1) both participants are equal causal forces in producing the mutually
intended outcome; (2) both partners could switch roles as needed; and, most crucially,
(3) the standards of performance for each role (so-
Michael Tomasello (2019:6) – “The moral psychology of obligation”
… the human sense of obligation is intimately connected developmentally with the
formation of a shared agent “we,” which not only directs collaborative efforts but
also self-
Michael Tomasello (2019:1) – “The moral psychology of obligation”
... our intuition [is] that the sense of obligation is a feeling of owing someone something (we even describe an obligation as being in someone’s debt).
Michael Tomasello (2019:2) – “The moral psychology of obligation”
What we are looking for is the mutually respectful behavior toward partners characteristic
of second-
Michael Tomasello (2019:4) – “The moral psychology of obligation”
The reciprocal normativity of deserving and owing
Reciprocity seems to be widespread in primates, in the form of trading grooming for
more grooming or other favours or support (Schino and Aureli, 2007). In macaques
at least, levels of give-
The current proposal is that a feeling of owing in response to a feeling of deservingness is derived from the norm of reciprocity. This norm may be endorsed so strongly by the moral agent as to subjectively feel like an obligation.
If I am a monkey, what does it mean to say that I feel that another monkey in my group is deserving? It means they have given me some benefit or service. Why should I pay them back, or want to? I have some kind of relationship with every monkey in the group. Other monkeys are either my competitors or allies. I am required to maintain my beneficial relationships through exchanging favours, which often take the form of grooming.
It is in my interest to pay back my supporters and allies when they offer grooming and other services, so that they will continue to support and ally with me. Owing is a sense that I should pay someone what they deserve, possibly in kind and not necessarily, exactly, like for like.
The fact that paying back those who benefit me is in my interest provides a natural selection mechanism for the evolution of psychology that supports it. In other words, it makes adaptive sense for me to owe those who are deserving.
“The norm of reciprocity is universal.” If we do a favor, we expect one in return. If we receive a favor we cannot return, we are distressed.
Donald W Pfaff, PhD – “The Neuroscience of Fair Play”
Male-
Macaques form strong and stable bonds with specific individuals selected based on attributes such as kinship and social status … . These friendships and alliances, in part built and maintained through reciprocal grooming, enable mutual support to gain access to limited resources or fend off threats … .
Testard et al. (2024:1…2) – “Neural signatures of natural behaviour in socializing macaques”
Warneken and Tomasello (2013) find that 2½ year-
The current proposal is that deserving and owing is an element of reciprocal prosociality that is also present in the psychology of responsibility and obligation to others.
... young children reliably help and share, and even if the partner does not return the favor, young children continue to act prosocially with the partner. It is not until 3.5 years of age that reciprocity begins to play a role for costly sharing.
... Overall, the results seem to best fit the reciprocity is secondary model, which predicts a progression from naive to selective prosociality ... . Specifically, a large body of work has shown that during the second and third years of life, children help and share with others. The current data replicate the finding that young children are willing to help spontaneously and that they are willing to share a valuable resource with a social partner in an experimentally controlled setting. It is not until 3.5 years of age that they modulate their sharing contingent on the partner’s antecedent behavior. Thus, children seem to develop prosocial tendencies first, which then become mediated by reciprocal strategies later in development.
... Ultimately, a mature human possesses both ... prosocial tendencies and the safety
measures to modulate them, but ‘‘Mother Nature’’ kick-
Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello (2013:347..349) – “The emergence of contingent reciprocity in young children”
The normative pressure of we > me
When you and I voluntarily place our fate in one another’s hands in interdependent
collaboration – scaled up to our lives together in an interdependent cultural group
– this transforms the instrumental pressure that individuals feel when pursuing individual
goals into the pressure that “we” put on me (who needs to preserve my cooperative
identity in this “we”) to live up to our shared expectations: a we > me self-
Michael Tomasello (2019:1) – “The moral psychology of obligation”
The dual-
The joint agent “we” governs “you” and “I” in the direction of cooperating towards
our agreed-
References
Schino, Gabriele; and Filippo Aureli (2007) – “Grooming reciprocation among female
primates: a meta-
Testard, Camille; Sébastien Tremblay; Felipe Parodi; Ron W DiTullio; Arianna Acevedo-
Tomasello, Michael (2016) – “A Natural History of Human Morality”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA
Tomasello, Michael (2018) – “The Normative Turn in Early Moral Development”; Human
Development 2018;61:248-
Tomasello, Michael (2019) – “The moral psychology of obligation”; Behavioral and
Brain Sciences 43, e56: 1-
Warneken, Felix; and Michael Tomasello (2013) – “The emergence of contingent reciprocity
in young children”; Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116 338-