Have you ever watched the Andy Griffith Show on TVLand? I never watched it when I was younger. Recently though, I've paused to watch a couple of shows because it seems so unusual. It represents a completely different cultural airspace from today's shows. It's saturated with Harmony Morality.
Sheriff Andy Griffith spends most of each show trying to figure out how to help someone or how not to hurt a person's feelings or sense of dignity. Humor is not about put downs but about the short-sightedness of one individual or another. Each show is about being sensitive towards others and their frailties. In my view, popular culture and everyday life has moved a great distance from Harmony Morality. The Andy Griffith Show represents a blast from the past.
The philosophers David Hume (1751/1998) and Adam Smith (1759/2002) considered concern for others to be fundamental to human character. They also had some awareness that empathy turns out to be highly influenced by one's upbringing. Parents and culture shape which moral emotions we dwell on and which morality we favor. Emphasizing anger, hate, fear, contempt leads to Bunker morality; emphasizing compassion, concern, love, forgiveness leads to Harmony morality.
Nurturing care during childhood and adolescence is essential for normal formation of brain circuitries necessary for Harmony morality (Greenspan & Shanker 1999; Panksepp 1998; Schore, 2003a). Under warm and responsive childrearing, concern for others develops naturally through the course of childhood and encouraged by inductive discipline (e.g., "think of how your sister felt when you took her toy" Hoffman, 2000). Children with responsive, caring caregivers develop more empathy and agreeableness, greater conscience and pro-social behavior (Thompson, 2009; Eisenberg, Fabes & Spinrad, 2006). With a supportive upbringing, Harmony morality develops fully and leads to adult values of compassion, tolerance and openness to others as a matter of habit (Eisler & Levine, 2002).
Parents cultivate in themselves and their children different intuitions by what they talk about, focus on, attend to, and mostly how they treat their children. Indeed, parenting practices can impede Harmony morality if caregivers display little empathy for infant distress or impose physical separation and early "independence" on infants (common in U.S. parenting practices). If caregivers are neglectful or abusive, Bunker morality is more likely to become habitual-- unless other interventions during sensitive periods occur (like a significant caring friend during early adolescence or emerging adulthood, or psychotherapy, or self-intervention).
Those who risked their lives to save the persecuted during World War II, the "rescuers," typically reported positive home environments (Oliner, 2002; Oliner & Oliner, 1988). Walker and Frimer (2009) found that caring exemplars reported a caring upbringing and caring mentors.
Some cultures promote Harmony morality more than others. The Amish are particularly skilled at fostering Harmony morality, living compassionately through an emphasis on virtuous living with principles such as submission and modesty but also with institutional practices of economic and social support for those in need, inside or outside the community. 2 When a neighbor took several children hostage and executed them in an Amish school (and then killed himself), the Amish elders went immediately to comfort the killer's wife (Kraybill, Nolt, & Weaver-Zercher, 2008).
Unfortunately, when a culture emphasizes machismo or hyper masculinity, as ours does through popular culture, it undermines the development of Harmony morality. As a child or adolescent, you aren't going to show empathy and sympathy if people are going to laugh at you for being "soft." So you practice keeping your feelings inside or suppress them entirely. Hello, Bunker morality.
There is another type of morality that is part of our evolved heritage. We discuss it next.
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References
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R.A., & Spinrad, T.L. (2006). Prosocial development. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) &. N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, 6th. ed. (pp.646-718). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Eisler, R.. & Levine, D.S. (2002). Nurture, nature, and caring: We are not prisoners of our genes. Brain and Mind, 3, 9-52.
Greenspan, S.I., & Shanker, S.I. (2004). The First idea. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Hoffman, M. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Hume (1751/1998). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
Kraybill, D.B., Nolt, S.M., & Weaver-Zercher, D.L. (2008). Amish grace: How forgiveness transcended tragedy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Matsuba, M.K., & Walker, L.J. (2004). Extraordinary moral commitment: Young adults involved in social organizations. Journal of Personality, 72 (2), 413-436.
Oliner, S.P., & Oliner, P.M. (1988). The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York: Free Press.
Smith (1759/2002). The theory of moral sentiments.
Thompson, R. (2009). Early Foundations: Conscience and the Development of Moral Character. In D. Narvaez & D. K. Lapsley, (Eds.) Personality, Identity, and Character: Explorations in Moral Psychology (pp. 159-184). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Walker, L.J., & Frimer, J. (2009). Moral Personality Exemplified. In D. Narvaez & D. K. Lapsley, (Eds.) Personality, Identity, and Character: Explorations in Moral Psychology (pp. 232-255). New York: Cambridge University Press.
