ArticleeLife2019
Evolution of empathetic moral evaluation.
Article in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- How large language models judge and influence human cooperation.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Institutions of public judgment established by social contract and taxation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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- Evolution of indirect reciprocity under emotion expression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Unleashing leadership potential in unprecedented times: Lessons learned from an evaluation of a virtual cohort-based adaptive leadership program for public health executives.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Indirect reciprocity under opinion synchronization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Article
- Computational evolution of social norms in well-mixed and group-structured populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- A mechanistic model of gossip, reputations, and cooperation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Resolving selfish and spiteful interdependent conflict.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Indirect reciprocity with Bayesian reasoning and biases.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- When do stereotypes undermine indirect reciprocity?PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Indirect reciprocity with stochastic and dual reputation updates.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Evolution of norms for judging social behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Evolutionary stability of cooperation in indirect reciprocity under noisy and private assessment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Quantitative assessment can stabilize indirect reciprocity under imperfect information.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Trust based attachment.PloS one · 2023Article
- Empathy as a crucial skill in disrupting disparities in global brain health.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Article
- Changes in Attitudes toward People with Substance Use Disorder: A Comparative Study of the General Population in Mexico.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
Social norms can promote cooperation by assigning reputations to individuals based on their past actions. A good reputation indicates that an individual is likely to reciprocate. A large body of research has established norms of moral assessment that promote cooperation, assuming reputations are objective. But without a centralized institution to provide objective evaluation, opinions about an individual's reputation may differ across a population. In this setting we study the role of empathy-the capacity to form moral evaluations from another person's perspective. We show that empathy tends to foster cooperation by reducing the rate of unjustified defection. The norms of moral evaluation previously considered most socially beneficial depend on high levels of empathy, whereas different norms maximize social welfare in populations incapable of empathy. Finally, we show that empathy itself can evolve through social contagion. We conclude that a capacity for empathy is a key component for sustaining cooperation in societies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.