Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.

A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.

Humans are born with a hard-wired morality: a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. I know this claim might sound outlandish, but it's supported now by research in several laboratories.

I want to convince you that humans are, to some extent, natural born essentialists. What I mean by this is we don't just respond to things as we see them or feel them or hear them. Rather, our response is conditioned on our beliefs, about what they really are, what they came from, what they're made of, what their hidden nature is.