Back to Topics │Motivation│ Start: Relativity & Reaction
– Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Seven Deadly Sins – Internal vs External
Endnotes — Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Seven Deadly Sins – Internal vs External
1. Origins of the Seven Deadly Sins
The earliest form appears in Praktikos by Evagrius Ponticus (4th century CE) as eight “evil thoughts,” later condensed by Pope Gregory the Great (6th century CE) into seven. Thomas Aquinas refined their philosophical meaning in the Summa Theologica.1
2. Emotion as Adaptive Mechanism
Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) established that human emotions serve survival functions rather than purely moral roles—a key shift from sin to signal.2
3. Social Control of Behaviour
Sociologists such as Émile Durkheim and philosophers like Michel Foucault described morality as a system for maintaining cohesion and power—turning inner emotion into outer regulation.3
4. The Dark Triad Framework
Psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams (2002) identified three interlocking personality traits—Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy—that parallel many “sinful” behaviours when exaggerated.4
5. Emotional Universality
Paul Ekman’s cross-cultural studies (2003) confirmed that basic emotional expressions—anger, fear, disgust, joy, sadness—are biologically universal, supporting the idea that “sins” arise from shared human wiring rather than moral defect.5
6. Moral Emotion and Group Stability
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (2012) demonstrates that moral feelings evolved to bind groups and regulate fairness, echoing the function once served by the concept of sin.6
7. Religion as Early Psychology
Patrick McNamara’s The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (2009) argues that ritual and moral teaching act as social technologies to shape emotional behaviour—a scientific analogue to medieval doctrine.7
8. Self-Deception and Moral Narratives
Robert Trivers (2011) explored how self-deception stabilises social systems by aligning inner belief with outer compliance, explaining why “sin awareness” can coexist with persistent misconduct.8
9. Morality as Evolutionary Adaptation
Frans de Waal (2013) and Steven Pinker (2011) both frame morality as an emergent adaptation that reduces conflict and enables cooperation—sin thus becomes a primitive form of behavioural governance.9
10. The Modern Counterbalance: Virtues
Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson (2004) proposed Character Strengths and Virtues as the positive counterpart to the Seven Deadly Sins, re-centring moral thought on psychological growth rather than repression.10
📖 Series Roadmap
- Forward: A Little Background
- Introduction: Action, Reaction, and the Human Paradox (16.09.2025)
- Looking Back in Time: The Development of the Human Brain (23.09.2025)
- Abstract Senses: Enhancing the way we see the world outside (30.09.2025)
- Bias as a Concept & Climbing the Stairs: Pattern Recognition & Everyday Tasks (07.10.2025)
- Abstract Feelings and Abstract Senses (14.10.2025)
- Motivation (04.11.2025)
- The Social Knowledge Base (11.11.2025)
- Potential (18.11.2025)
- The Subliminal Way We Go Through Life (26.11.2025)
- Taking Responsibility (02.12.2025)
- Fishing for Complements (22.12.2025)
- Peter and Fermi (22.12.2025)
🔗 R&R Navigation
Back to Topics │Motivation│ Start: Relativity & Reaction
– Nerd Cheat Sheet: The Seven Deadly Sins – Internal vs External
Take a Second Thought 
Leave a comment