Like our language-rule-processors we have other social-rule-processors that acquire our native cultures norms, either tacitly by social osmosis or explicitly by education. As with grammar, certain social rules are neither choosable nor easily changeable. An “impulse to follow rules…seems to be…innate” in humans, says Alison Gopnik. Toddlers “act in a genuinely moral way,” understanding that rules shouldn’t be broken, that causing harm is bad. Moralities, like languages, likely have an underlying universal structure. Jonathan Haidt reports six components that cultures, and subcultures, configure differently: fairness, care, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Darwin knew how deeply biologically baked social rules and their violation become, noting “the burning sense of shame…when calling to mind some accidental breach of a trifling…rule of etiquette.” Stronger self-generated punishments arise from ruptures of rules once more readily called moral. - blogs.scientificamerican.com