The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress

Warner, Jonathan

doi:10.1080/10848770.2014.898963

Cited by 14 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Language directed towards marginalized others has shifted to such a degree that it is now indistinguishable from language directed towards ingroups. This result is consistent with perspectives which view moral progress in terms of reductions in parochialism and improvements in the rights and welfare of those on the margins, such as might be brought about by collective social action and the reasoned extension of concern beyond close kin (Dixon et al, 2012;Singer, 1981).…”

Section: Growing Expressions Of Concern For People Animals and The En...supporting

confidence: 89%

Word embeddings reveal growing moral concern for people, animals and the environment

Leach

Kitchin²,

Sutton

2023

British J Social Psychol

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The Enlightenment idea of historical moral progress asserts that civil societies become more moral over time. This is often understood as an expanding moral circle and is argued to be tightly linked with language use, with some suggesting that shifts in how we express concern for others can be considered an important indicator of moral progress. Our research explores these notions by examining historical trends in natural language use during the 19th and 20th centuries. We found that the associations between words denoting moral concern and words referring to people, animals, and the environment grew stronger over time. The findings support widely‐held views about the nature of moral progress by showing that language has changed in a way that reflects greater concern for others.

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Section: Growing Expressions Of Concern For People Animals and The En...supporting

confidence: 89%

Word embeddings reveal growing moral concern for people, animals and the environment

Leach

Kitchin²,

Sutton

2023

British J Social Psychol

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“…Captured in the opening quote by Singer (1981), a second relevant trait is moral expansiveness and its relatives universalism (Schwartz et al, 2012) and (low) ENLIGHTENED COMPASSION generalised prejudice (Crawford & Brandt, 2019). Moral expansiveness refers to the scope of one's moral boundaries, in terms of the number and range of entities to which one ascribes moral worth.…”

Section: Enlightened Compassionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where the Head Meets the Heart: ‘Enlightened’ Compassion Lies Between Big Five Openness/Intellect and Agreeableness

Lawn¹,

Laham²,

Zhao³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Enlightened compassion is a morally significant personality trait describing the tendency to show regard for others in an open-minded (vs. rigid or parochial) manner. We examine this trait through a “bottom-up” lens, asking: where is enlightened compassion located within the Big Five (B5) taxonomy? Across three studies comprising seven samples (total N = 2,522), we measure enlightened compassion as an interstitial facet lying between the Compassion aspect of B5 Agreeableness and the Openness aspect of B5 Openness/Intellect. The Enlightened Compassion Scale (EC Scale) has solid structural and content validity, converging strongly with Compassion and Openness (Study 1). Consistent with the bandwidth-fidelity trade-off in hierarchical models of personality traits, enlightened compassion demonstrates incremental validity over-and-above these B5 aspects when predicting theoretically relevant traits (e.g., moral imagination and moral expansiveness; Study 2) and behaviour (expansive charitable donation; Study 3). By locating enlightened compassion and its correlates within the organising framework of the B5, our work serves to deepen and integrate accumulated knowledge on this morally salient feature of personality .

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“…Often, these are very open people and are easier to connect with than you think. They may not have time to invest in a deep friendship with you, but they like to know more interesting people to add to their circle (Warner 2014).…”

Section: Implications To Expand the Social Circlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…At one time, he explained, "philanthropic affection only embraces the family, soon in the expansion of the circle first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, feel its effects is done." (Warner 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding Circle, The

Gupta

2020

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Word embeddings reveal growing moral concern for people, animals and the environment

Word embeddings reveal growing moral concern for people, animals and the environment

Where the Head Meets the Heart: ‘Enlightened’ Compassion Lies Between Big Five Openness/Intellect and Agreeableness

Expanding Circle, The

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