Teaching the Evolution of Morality: Status and Resources

Table 1 Analysis of biology textbook content on evolution of morality

Textbook	Innate/learned distinction	Relevance of learningto morality	Kin selection	Reciprocal altruism	Cultural evolution	Nature/nurture caveat	Emergent properties	Reductionistic bias
Majors
Campbell et al. (2008)	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔
Russell et al. (2008)^a	✔		✔	✔		✔		✔
Sadava et al. (2008)	✔		✔		✔
Solomon et al. (2008)	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Starr et al. (2009)^b	✔		✔			✔		✔
Non-majors
Alters and Alters (2006)^c	✔							✔
Audesirk et al. (2008)^d	✔		✔		✔			✔
Cain et al. (2009)	✔		✔		✔?		?
Hoefnagels (2009)^e	✔		✔		✔
Mader (2009)^f	✔		✔	✔	✔			✔
Pruitt and Underwood (2006)	✔		✔		✔
Secondary
BSCS (2006)	✔		✔					✔?
De Salle and Heithaus (2008)^g	✔					✔		✔
Postlethwait and Hopson (2009)	✔		✔
Miller and Levine (2008)	✔		✔

^aPresents child abuse in reconstituted human families as biological
^bEmphasizes reproductive success; chapter opens with “My Pheremones Made Me Do It” about honeybees, followed by section on “How Genes Affect Behavior”
^cEmphasizes reproductive fitness; profiles evolutionary psychology; characterizes social behavior as “a form of communication”
^dEmphasizes individual cases more than concepts
^eOpens chapter with examples of risk-taking helping behavior
^fOpens with case of naked mole rats to frame questions
^gEmphasizes reproductive success; characterizes cooperation as mutual selfishness

ISSN: 1936-6434