Correlates of dichotomous moral perception

Abstract

The perception of good and evil as dichotomous categories is found to exist in humans. This is reflected in popular literature where majority of characters are painted and/or perceived as either good or evil. Whether this dichotomy is a literary construct (extrinsic origin) or a fundamental human nature that is reflected in literature (intrinsic origin) has not been addressed by psychologists so far. We propose two alternative adaptive paradigms respectively for the intrinsic and extrinsic origins of such a dichotomy and suggest testable predictions of each. In order to test the predictions, we defined an index of dichotomy based on a questionnaire where respondents were asked to categorize a given diverse set of characters into good, bad or intermediate categories. The results imply that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors influenced dichotomy but the intrinsic factors were stronger than extrinsic factors in moral evaluation among the population sampled. Variance for the index was greater across respondents than across characters supporting intrinsic origin of dichotomous perception. Possible evolutionary or historical roots of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors leading to a dichotomy of perception are discussed.