Anchor & Sail Quarterly Musings

When I started my graduate thesis, I wasn’t trying to write a book, no masterpiece, nor magnum opus (ok, maybe a little). I just wanted to answer a question that I had been pondering for years:

How do our early childhood experiences shape the way we see right and wrong?

We often assume morality is a cognitive affair, something learned and taught through school, faith, or philosophy. But moral beliefs always seemed more basic than that to me. Maybe morality is written into our emotional lives long before we ever read a moral code or debate abstract ethics. If this were true, then what was the metaphorical pen to that moral-emotional blueprint? Two prominent moral psychology researchers, Darcia Narvaez and Jonathan Haidt, hinted at the answer.

For centuries, morality was seen as a product of reason. But psychologists like Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind, 2012) argued that moral judgments come first from intuition and feeling, with reasoning doing its cognitive work by justifying our intuited beliefs after the fact. Hundreds of studies with thousands of participants across many cultures largely validated Haidt's bold ideas.

But where do these emotive intuitions originate? Darcia Narvaez, an innovative moral psychologist out of the University of Notre Dame, suggested that our moral sense is rooted in our evolved nervous system and brain structure. Drawing from Paul MacLean's (1990) famed Triune Brain Theory (TBT), which indicated that our brains evolved from the bottom-up, Narvaez (2008) developed Triune Ethics Theory (TET), that mapped three distinct moral orientations onto MacLean's three major brain regions: The R-Complex, the limbic system, and the neocortex.

The moral orientations of TET include the safety ethic, the engagement ethic, and the imagination ethic. The safety ethic maps on to MacLean's R-complex and is associated with fear, fight-or-flight, and self-preservation. The engagement ethic activates the limbic system, a brain region responsible for attachment, emotion, and memory, and promotes a relationship-focused morality that is linked to moral emotions such as empathy, care, and compassion. Finally, the imagination ethic is associated with the "thinking brain"  unique to humans, involving abstract reasoning and future-and community-focused

principles and ideals.

Narvaez emphasized that the different moral orientations are formed in early childhood through emotional and neurobiological processes in response to our caregiving environment. If we are raised in an environment of uncertainty, fear, or isolation, we are likely inclined toward the survival instinct endemic to safety and self-preservation ethics. Alternatively, if we are nurtured, secure, and embraced with positive childhood experiences, we are more likely to endorse ethics of relationship, engagement, and virtuous ideals.

This made me wonder: What do adverse childhood experiences do to one's broader Moral Foundations?

 What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?

The concept of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) was derived from a landmark study in the late 1990s (Felitti et al., 1998), which found that childhood adversity, like abuse, neglect, household chaos, or parental substance use, was strongly linked to mental and physical health problems in adulthood.

Since then, research has consistently shown that ACEs predict:

Higher risks of depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Hughes et al., 2017).

Physical conditions like heart disease and autoimmune disorders (Merrick et al., 2018).

Social and relational struggles throughout life, including increased risk of domestic violence (Anda et al., 2006).

But here’s the question my research explored: Do ACEs also leave an imprint on morality itself?

Narvaez's (2008) TET, along with adjacent neuroscience of emotions research suggest as much. Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience identified primary emotional systems—CARE, PLAY, SEEKING,FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS—that are hardwired into the brain (Panksepp, 1998).

CARE → empathy and compassion.

PLAY → fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity.

FEAR and ANGER → defense and survival.

These systems are the emotional soil out of which moral life grows. If our primary emotional systems form the building blocks of our personalities, then moral emotions must emerge from these systems. We know from ACE research that childhood adversity plays a role in shaping our emotional and relational lives, but how do nurturing environments interact with such processes?

Why Caregiving Environments Matter

Humans evolved to expect very specific caregiving conditions. These conditions are known as the Evolved Developmental Niche (EDN), according to Narvaez (2014). Such necessities include responsive parents, physical affection, safe communities, and plenty of play.

When caregiving is strong: CARE and PLAY thrive → morality tilts toward compassion, community, ingroup loyalty, and fairness.

When adversity is high: FEAR and ANGER dominate → morality leans more toward defensiveness, self-preservation, and harm avoidance.

Neither path is “bad,” but adversity can make morality more defensive and rigid.

What My Research Found

In my thesis study (376 adults), participants completed measures of ACEs, caregiving, emotional tendencies, and moral foundations.

Findings:

1. ACEs shifted morality. High ACE scores predicted stronger individualizing values (harm, fairness) and weaker binding ones (loyalty, authority, purity). Low-and no-ACE score participants were more likely to demonstrate a more evenly distributed moral profile, with heightened emphasis on both individual and binding moral foundations.
2. Emotions explained the link. Negative personality systems (FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS) carried ACE effects into individualizing, self-and other-protecting morality, while CARE, PLAY, and SEEKING (the positive personality dimensions) positively influenced both socially binding and individualizing moral foundations.
3. Nurturing is Key. The higher the score the on the positive childhood nurturing environment measure, the stronger the relationship was with increases in positive emotional personality traits, as well as ALL moral foundations.

In short: morality isn’t simply cognitive nor cultural—it’s rooted in emotional development shaped by early caregiving environments.

Why This Matters

This perspective helps us understand others with more compassion:

• Someone clinging to rules may have learned early that structure equals safety.
• An oppositional child in the classroom may have experienced abuse that affects trust in authority.
• Someone struggling with trust may have had FEAR wired in early.
• Someone who struggles with empathy may have had their CARE system stunted by neglect.

This doesn’t excuse harmful choices—but it reframes morality as adaptation, not defect. And it opens the door to growth: our emotional systems can be reshaped through healing relationships and community.

From Thesis to Kindle

After defending my thesis, I realized these insights shouldn’t stay buried in a university archive. So I structured the project into a Kindle book:

👉 Trauma, Care, and Morality: Emotions as the Link Between Childhood Adversity and Moral Foundations

I didn’t water it down—I wanted to keep the research intact while making it readable for curious readers, therapists, and educators.

Final Takeaway

If there’s one thing to remember, it’s this:

Morality grows out of the emotional soil of childhood. And even if that soil was rocky, it can still be nourished.

Our moral lives are not fixed. With therapy, safe relationships, and supportive environments, our CARE and PLAY systems can flourish again. Healing isn’t just about reducing pain, it’s about reclaiming compassion, fairness, and joy.

That’s the story my thesis told. That’s the story I put into a book. And it’s the story I’ll keep sharing, because trauma and morality aren’t abstract—they’re lived, embodied, and human.

References

• Felitti, V. J., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.
• Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon.
• Hughes, K., et al. (2017). The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Public Health, 2(8), e356–e366.
• MacLean, P. D. (1990). The triune brain in evolution: Role in paleocerebral functions. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6704-4
  
• Merrick, M. T., Ports, K. A., Ford, D. C., & Guinn, A. S. (2018).Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences from the 2011–2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 23 states. JAMA Pediatrics, 172(11), 1038.
• Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Oxford University Press.