Triune Ethics Theory (TET; Narvaez, 2008) is a meta-theory that draws together the findings of multiple research programs to propose three foundational ethical motivations. The three ethics – Security, Engagement, and Imagination – formed from evolved strata of the brain, are manifest in the moral lives of individuals and groups. The higher levels of moral functioning, Engagement and Imagination, depend on early nurturing for their optimal development. In this chapter, I describe the theory and its relation to moral personality, including how dispositions can be formed around one of the ethics, and situations can influence which ethic is activated.

Grounding Three Ethics

Triune Ethics Theory (TET) identifies three types of orientations that underlie human morality and that emerged from biological propensities in human evolution. Deriving its name and inspiration from MacLean's (1990) Triune Brain theory, Triune Ethics Theory identifies moral orientations that reflect in some sense MacLean's three evolutionary strata that resulted from “relatively long periods of stability in vertebrate brain evolution” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 43). Each stratum retains an identifiable mark on the brain and human behavior. TET notes their engineering of moral behavior in terms of cognitive and emotional propensities.

Emotion underlies basic functions in the brain. Emotional systems guide the animal in forming adaptive solutions to environmental demands. These systems involve “psychobehavioral potentials that are genetically ingrained in brain development” as “evolutionary operants” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 55).