ABSTRACT
Sociality defines our species. The need to belong through interpersonal attachments is a fundamental human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Fiske (1992) captures the essence of our sociality as he states that “throughout our lives we seek, make, sustain, repair, adjust, judge, construe, and sanction relationships” (p. 689). Although our social relations may take on a myriad of appearances, we do not engage in them in an arbitrary way. Instead, we tend to proceed according to a set of expectations, norms, and standards that help differentiate right from wrong and that are collectively referred to as morality. As Walker (1996) succinctly states: “Morality prescribes people’s activities, regulates social interactions, and arbitrates conflicts” (p. 174). In turn, the expectations, norms, and standards that prescribe our relations are linked to a small set of elementary relational forms that encompass sociality in all cultures and among all social primates. These elementary relational forms emerge spontaneously and sequentially during development (Fiske, 1992), as children appear universally predisposed to learn about relationships in certain ways (see Laursen & Hartup, 2002).
