What you called “behave morally”, I tend to think of in PD terms as ‘being nice’: not being the first to defect.
As a first thought, using honor as a virtue seems to be a way of replacing the ordinary set of rewards with a new scoring system—that is, valuing the honor of not being a thief over stealing a bunch of gold coins from an unlocked chest. I’m not entirely sure how to look at that in the evo-psych manner, how such an idea would arise, spread, and develop over time; but it seems like a workable alternative, for whatever portion of the population can be convinced being honorable is more important than the rewards from dishonorable behaviour.
I suspect that honor-like traits evolve in pack animals, like a wolf who won a dominance fight being unable to attack the loser in a submissive position [citation needed].
What you called “behave morally”, I tend to think of in PD terms as ‘being nice’: not being the first to defect.
As a first thought, using honor as a virtue seems to be a way of replacing the ordinary set of rewards with a new scoring system—that is, valuing the honor of not being a thief over stealing a bunch of gold coins from an unlocked chest. I’m not entirely sure how to look at that in the evo-psych manner, how such an idea would arise, spread, and develop over time; but it seems like a workable alternative, for whatever portion of the population can be convinced being honorable is more important than the rewards from dishonorable behaviour.
I suspect that honor-like traits evolve in pack animals, like a wolf who won a dominance fight being unable to attack the loser in a submissive position [citation needed].