Culture and Moral Behavior

Culture

• Culture reflects moral values and ethical norms.
• It governs how people should behave and interact.
• Culture includes the outlook, attitude, values, goals, and practices shared by a group, organization, or society.
• Cultural norms vary over time and between countries, geographic regions, groups, and organizations.

Moral Behavior

• Moral behavior involves actions that produce positive outcomes for individuals within a community or society, even globally.
• Schuman defines moral behavior as actions intended to produce kind and fair outcomes.
• Moral behavior aligns with one's moral values and standards.
• Children display moral behavior through sharing, helping, cooperating, communicating, and showing care.

Factors Influencing Moral Behavior

• Family, community, religion, school, and social media influence a person's moral behavior.

Family

• Family is the basic unit of society.
• It includes biological or adoptive family.
• Family provides basic needs to help members survive and develop into significant members of society.

School

• School includes formal or non-formal education.
• It provides a child's learning needs.

Church

• Church determines what is considered right or wrong.
• It is composed of believers in the same faith.

Mass Media

• Mass media agencies entertain, inform, and educate through channels like radio, television, and printed materials.

Cultural Norms

• Cultural norms are shared, sanctioned, integrated systems of beliefs and practices.
• These are passed down through generations and characterize a cultural group.

Norms

• Norms provide reliable guidelines for daily living.
• They contribute to a culture's health and well-being.
• Norms prescribe correct and moral behavior.
• They provide meaning and coherence to life and foster a sense of integrity, safety, and belonging.
• Normative beliefs, cultural values, and rituals impose order and control, making life less chaotic.

Culture and Ethics

• Culture intersects with ethics, influencing interpretations of what is moral.
• Differing cultural norms could render what one group deems ethical as unethical to another.

Cultural Behavior

• Cultures vary substantially in moral judgments and behaviors.
• Morality within societies can differ as much as morality between societies.
• Cultural factors contributing to this variation include religion, social ecology, and regulatory social institutions.
• Social ecology includes elements like weather, crop conditions, population density, pathogen prevalence and residential mobility.

Examples of Cultural Behavior

• Studies of cultural differences on morality reveals differences, that are as substantial and important as cross-societal differences.
• Cultures vary substantially in their promotion and transmission of moral judgments and behaviors, whether between or within nations and societies.
• Cultural behavior is exhibited by humans and some other species and is extrasomatic or extragenetic, meaning it is learned.

Instinct vs Learned Behavior

• Ants building ant nests is instinctive, part of the ant's built-in behavior mechanisms, and not cultural.
• Some animals, like dogs and cats, can learn behaviors.
• Dogs can be taught not to urinate or defecate indoors.
• A dog's acquisition of a behavior satisfies one of the requirements of culture and fulfills another.
• Generalizing a learned behavior showcases a sign of understanding.

Cultural Behavior and Artifacts

• Cultural behavior must involve the use of artifacts.
• Termite sticks are an example of tool use in the animal world.
• Chimps do not genetically pass on the skill.
• Using tools involves understanding the termites’ behavior and how to exploit it, and involves using an artifact (the stick).

Cultural Relativism

• Cultural relativism states ethical systems and cultural beliefs vary from one culture to another.
• These are of equal validity and relevance.
• The idea originates from the concept that moral standards are produced by society.
• This philosophical principle was originally conceptualized by the Greek philosopher Protagoras Of Abdera.

Protagoras of Abdera

• Protagoras of Abdera was born in Abdera, a town on the Aegean Sea.
• Protagoras was considered the oldest and most influential of the sophists who came to Athens.
• He spent his life traveling throughout Greece, teaching for a fee.
• He was the first Greek to earn money in higher education.
• He was notorious for his high fees.
• His students were mainly wealthy men from Athens' social and commercial elite.

Protagoras' Claims

• Protagoras is known for three claims: man is the measure of all things, he could make the worse argument appear better, and one could not tell if the Gods existed.
• Protagoras believed knowledge is limited to individual perceptions, and that man’s knowledge is measured by what he perceived.

Moral Relativism

• Moral relativism suggests there is no universal or absolute set of moral principles.
• It promotes "to each her own" and "who am I to judge?"
• Protagoras believed that the young should accept and support their society's traditions to create a stable society.

Doctrine of Ethical Relativism

• It's the ideas that laws and moral rules are based upon convention instead of nature.
• Moral Relativists see Protagoras' ideas as standards of right and wrong which are relative to a particular culture.
• There are no universal norms that can be criticized, as whether an action is right or wrong depends on the society judging it.
• Different sets of moral principles are of equal worth, and no one can claim their beliefs are better than others.
• Ethical relativism appears self-contradictory as it cannot insist its theory is universally accepted as truth is believed relative to cultures which is therefore contradictory.
• A sense of thoughtfulness one feels towards an accident victim doesn't depend on socio-cultural factors.
• It is almost a part of every person to have the desire to serve those in need, where one seems obliged to help, whether they are Christian or Muslim.
• It is not correct to suggest ethical relativism is applicable in all cases.

Asian and Filipino Moral Behavior

• Moral behavior includes acting according to one’s moral values and standards.
• Children demonstrate prosocial and moral behavior through sharing, helping, cooperating, communicating, sympathizing, and demonstrating the ability to care.

Norms

• Norms are expectations, not requirements, of proper behavior.
• These are also what individuals expect people to act in a given situation.
• Norms are considered what social behavior is normal (what is correct or incorrect) within a particular group or social unit.

Types of Norms

• Formal social norms, based on laws, are created so society can live in peace.
• Informal social norms stem from culture and social interactions, and vary among society and cultures depending on social identity and group belonging.

Types of Informal Norms

• Mores are moral norms or customs from generally accepted practices, rather than written laws.
• Folkways are customs or beliefs within a culture or society.

Values

• Values are collective representations that constitute a good life or society.
• Values are important, lasting beliefs or ideals shared about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
• Values influence attitude and behavior and guide actions in all situations.

Filipino Core Values

• Respect for elders (Paggalang sa nakatatanda)
• Empathy (Pag-intindi sa nararamdaman ng iba)
• Deep regard for fellow humans (Pakikipagkapwa-tao)
• Patriotism (Pagiging makabayan)
• Cultural continuity (Pagpapatuloy sa kultura)

Belief

• Beliefs represent criteria of abstract thought that don't necessarily evoke actions.
• Beliefs may instigate or force a quest in the environment that coheres onto behavior in a certain manner.