The philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist Joshua Greene has argued that many deontological convictions are rooted in primitive intuitions of tribalism, purity, revulsion, and social norms, whereas utilitarian conclusions emerge from rational cogitation… Greene also argues that when people from diverse cultural backgrounds have to agree upon a moral code, they tend to do utilitarian. That explains why certain reform movements, such as legal equality for women and gay marriage, overturned centuries of precedent astonishingly quickly: with nothing but custom and intuition behind it, the status quo crumbled in the face of utilitarian arguments.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, pp. 417-418