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Guiding the evolution of the evolutionary sciences
of religion: a discussion
Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Martin Lang, Joseph Henrich & Ara Norenzayan
To cite this article: Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Martin Lang, Joseph Henrich & Ara Norenzayan
(2022) Guiding the evolution of the evolutionary sciences of religion: a discussion, Religion, Brain
& Behavior, 12:1-2, 226-232, DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2021.2021552
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References
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RESPONSE
Guiding the evolution of the evolutionary sciences of religion: a
discussion
Benjamin Grant Purzycki
a
, Martin Lang
b
, Joseph Henrich
c
, and Ara Norenzayan
d
a
Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark;
b
LEVYNA Laboratory for the
Experimental Research of Religion, Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia;
c
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA;
d
Department of
Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
We warmly thank the commentators on our article for their candid, constructive, and critical
remarks. Indeed, rather than merely replies to our introductory article, the commentaries are an
important part of an ongoing conversation about what we can know about ourselves and how to
go about learning it. We organize our replies into the following issues: conceptual, methodological,
and sociological.
Conceptual
One of the central concepts of our study was moralistic supernatural punishment.We dened it
operationally as a deity that cares more and knows more about immoral behavior than other locally
important deities and that punishes immoral behavior. Moralityreferred to pro- or anti-social
norms with a direct benet or cost toward others (e.g., theft, murder, generosity, sharing) (Bendixen
et al., 2021a; Purzycki, Pisor, et al., 2018). In our view, this construct is more targeted and more
theory-relevant than the high godconstruct that many studies have relied on for so long (Botero
et al., 2014; Johnson, 2005; Murdock & White, 1969; Peoples & Marlowe, 2012; Snarey, 1996; Swan-
son, 1960; cf. Nichols et al., 2021). We actively resisted using the latter construct because, as Jackson
observes, it is too restricted; high gods are creator deities. This is neither a theoretically useful nor
pragmatically feasible limitation (see Purzycki, Henrich, et al. 2018; Purzycki & Watts, 2018). As far
as we know, general moralistic supernatural punishment is far more widespread in the ethno-
graphic world than morally punitive high gods are (Beheim et al., 2021; Bendixen et al., 2021b;
Boehm, 2008; Swanson, 1960; Watts et al., 2015).
We were quite candid throughout our shared works about how recent the direct inquiry of what
it meant to have a moralistic god(of any type) was; to the best of our knowledge, the rst case of
directly asking people if their spirits knew and cared about morality was Purzyckis work in Siberia
(Purzycki, 2011,2013), but the inquiry has grown to include this (see Purzycki et al., 2022) and
other projects (e.g., Singh et al., 2021; White et al., 2021; Willard et al., 2020). As such, we did
not seek to explain high godsubiquity or role in human cooperation. And, pace Richert, it was acci-
dental that mostnot allof the moralistic gods in our sample were the Christian god. Rather, we
CONTACT Benjamin Grant Purzycki bgpurzycki@gmail.com
226 B. G. PURZYCKI ET AL.
sought to examine moralistic supernatural punishments role in the expansion of potential coopera-
tive networks. There is much about this and related constructs that we still do not know and future
studies would do well to look before uncritically leaping to foregone conclusions. The points are
part of the larger emphasis that threads through our project on the importance of theory in guiding
research (Muthukrishna & Henrich, 2019).
Methodological
Fischer points out that cross-cultural psychology has wrestled with many points that we made and
raises a few specic issues with our methods. We appreciated the alternative resources for future
researchers to study. However, at this point, it is a truism that if any researcher discussed things
with more diverse individuals and consulted previous attempts, he or she might have missed some-
thing. Alas, we are nite beings. We workshopped the design of the Wave 1 project with our inter-
disciplinary team and revised and expanded the project for Wave 2. Recall that the project was both
ethnographic and experimental, and anthropological as much as (if not more than) it was psycho-
logical, behavioral and cognitivetwo of authors of this piece are trained anthropologists and eth-
nographers. It wasnt clear to us what we would have done dierently had we consulted the
materials provided by Fischer.
We were surprised by Fischers and Richerts concerns about our treatment of local cultural con-
texts, since we consider attentiveness to local contexts as one of the strengths of our methodology,
goals, and infrastructure. The greater project included considerable space for site-specic contextua-
lizations, caveats, contradictory results, and other observations relevant to data interpretation in a
locally meaningful way. Our rst special issue included seven site-specic papers (Apicella, 2018;
Atkinson, 2018; Cohen et al., 2018; McNamara & Henrich, 2018; Purzycki & Kulundary, 2018; Will-
ard, 2018; Xygalatas et al., 2018) and the present special issue oers seven more (Bolyanatz; Kundtová
Klocová, et al.; Placek and Lightner; Soler et al.; Stagnaro et al.; Vardy & Atkinson; Weigel). Each oers
an abundance of qualications and caveats for the project and future research. This would be exactly
the place to go for the questions Fischer and Richert raise (indeed, two are devoted to eld sites in
Brazilian contexts, a place to which Fischer appeals). The point we and the commentators raised stands
however; how each sites uniqueness contributes to the greater conversation about religionscontri-
bution to cooperation remains an important area awaiting future work (see Bendixen et al., 2021a).
There are countless ways to further attend to locally specic aspects of religiosity and, as we
noted, an even bigger task is to account for that variation. One of our main goals was to test a dis-
crete set of hypotheses and examine its utility and applicability cross-culturally and assess how local
context within the connes of a specic protocol and ethnographic insight can inform results. As
Luhrmann notes, juggling methodological consistency across sites and catering to site-specic con-
tingencies is no trivial task. With the clarity of hindsight, we can see that there were ways in which
we could have done a little more, but we are also condent that it could have been much worse had
we not anticipated many other issues early in the design stage.
Take, for example, Fischers speculation about the problems associated with participants and can-
didate participants swapping information about details of the experiments. This is a good reminder of
a standard concern (Sosis, 2005) that has been addressed systematically in several similar projects
(e.g., Ensminger & Henrich, 2014; Hruschka et al., 2014). Following standard practice, we corralled
participants in ways that they could not participate if given the opportunity to inform other candi-
dates about the nature of the games. Uninvited participants were turned away, players were not
allowed to interact with individuals who hadntplayed yet, and so forth. This is necessary to prevent
collusion.
Virtually all of the other interesting issues the commentators raise reect a dierent focus or
dimension of a target construction (e.g., not nding consensus because of highly personal relation-
ships with spirits). Others raised issues that are detailed and operationalized elsewhere (e.g., what
is a moralistic god vs a local god?; just how omniscientare the gods? what are the locally
RELIGION, BRAIN & BEHAVIOR 227
relevant group distinctions?); our methods protocols are explicitly detailed in a host of venues (e.g.,
Lang et al., 2019; Purzycki et al., 2016a,2016b, 2018). Projects that have specic questions to ask
have to operationally dene such constructs. Our protocols dene the relevant groups in order to
comparably test the same hypotheses. The protocols operationally dene things like omniscience
or moral interest.These will vary both emically and etically, and as they are high-inference vari-
ables, they are multi-dimensional. At the design stage, then, we therefore had to sacrice addressing
many important dimensions of these constructs that the commentators raised. This is inevitable in
social science. In order to modestly curb some of these issues at the analytical stage, however, we
carried out many of the methodological recommendations van de Vijver and Leung (2000, hence-
forth, V&L) suggest, some of which Fischer refers to, such as: the use of multilevel modeling, testing
alternative explanations of our ndings, looking for convergent evidence using multiple methods,
etc., and ongoing eorts using the data should embrace these forms of robustness checking and
attend to the manifold processes that contributed to the generation of data (see Dener et al.,
2021), including the clustering factors (sociodemographic or otherwise) to which Sterelny points.
However, we also note that our study does not easily conform to V&Ls taxonomy of cross-cultural
studies (See Tables 1 & 2 on p. 4041). Contrary to Fischer, this was not a generalizability study
which is designed to test whether a certain psychological construct or phenomenon is cross culturally
universal. Rather, our study tested a theory-driven hypothesis that predicted an association between
two variables that vary systematically across cultures. Unlike generalizability studies in V&Ls taxon-
omy, we had a whole array of contextual factors measured based on detailed ethnographic interviews,
but we werent comparing means across populations. Our study is closest to what V&L would call a
theory-driven study.There are nevertheless endless varieties of important sources of contextual
inputs to which we could have attended. Finally, we note some concerns with V&Ls taxonomy:
e.g., generalizabilty studies are a kind of theory-driven study in which a theoryimplicitly or expli-
citlypredicts that some empirical pattern will reappear across diverse samples.
Sterelny raises the common worry of whether or not we can tell if participants are actually telling
us what they think or what they want us to think (on the problem of measuring belief, see Steadman
& Palmer, 2008). As he notes, people may have dierent incentives that drive their answers, and
these incentives need not be related just to self-presentation biases. To the extent that participants
tell us the kinds of things they want others to think as well, this might actually be an asset. Consen-
sus modeling (Oravecz et al., 2014; Romney et al., 1986) would allow us to at least get a metric of
how much an individual deviates from the commonly held cultural model, but wouldnt necessarily
tap into the motivations or causes behind those deviations. Furthermore, at least in our study, if it
were the case that conveyed beliefs really werentprivate beliefs, the fact that they oered more to
distant individuals is also interesting. It would be a little odd, however, to behaviorally signal in this
way too, particularly when recipients were anonymous. This is one of many good reasons for care-
fully modeling posited causal eects early, thinking through how to address dicultif not imposs-
ibleto adequately measure constructs like beliefor culture,and sticking to a set of competing
causal models that incorporate unmeasured factors.
But future projects can also methodologically attend to these issues. While simply asking partici-
pants a survey question is fast and cheap, it may skew data in various directions in dierent popu-
lations. Finding a balance between feasibility and high validity of data on beliefs in supernatural
agents requires novel approaches such as using third-party reports when possible (Shaver et al.,
2021) or free-list data that ask people to list their thoughts about a particular deity without imposing
specic questions (Bendixen et al., 2021a). For instance, in the current special issue, Kundtová Klocová
et al. use free-list data to probe participantssorcery beliefs and practices that are illegal in Mauritius.
Another possibility is to shift the focus more towards religious behavior. The eld needs it; as an
organized kind of inquiry, the behavioral ecology of religion (see Reynolds & Tanner, 1995; Sosis &
Bulbulia, 2011) barely exists (for exceptions, see Power, 2017,2018; Shaver, 2015; Shaver et al., 2020;
Strassmann et al., 2012). We anticipate that this kind of inquiry, however, really requires site-
specic protocols rather than unied and streamlined methods that are applicable cross-culturally.
228 B. G. PURZYCKI ET AL.
Sociological
Luhrmann rightly notes that within-team trust is essential for success. Just as rapport with partici-
pants is essential for success in the eld, good rapport with a team is critical. Such projects run the
risk of functioning more like private companies than participatory democratic organizations and
can therefore suck the enjoyment out of the eort. That said, a close second to trust is eective com-
munication. Generating a culture of clear expectationsand living up to themis important for
both morale and organization. This is essential in crafting the type of cross-disciplinary teams
that Richert and to some extent Jackson envisionteams that would help us go further beyond
the Christian notion of a moralistic god.
Who should manage these projects and what are their future prospects? Luhrmann suggests hiring
a team of specialists in subdisciplines. They may have an easier transition out of the project if devel-
oping their specic skill (e.g., database management) and not be stigmatized for working on projects
that are strange to hiring committees in some elds. However, we worry that having two or three
people with very specic skills may preclude their fruitful collaboration and mutual understanding.
In our experience, despite the best will, facilitating discussions between ethnographers and data
scientists has many barriers that are challenging (but not impossible) to overcome. Another model
that we opted for was to have a one-for-all post-doc who gathered all the relevant expertise in one
person. While Purzycki contributed to design, Purzycki and Langs overlapping duties included.
.managing team communication and consensus
.organizing data audits
.cleaning and correcting data sets
.analyzing data
.managing public data storage and documentation
.leading paper-writing and editing of special issues
One advantage here is that organization and communication are centralized. However, aside
from the long hours and the rarity of candidates with enough experience in all domains, the obvious
disadvantage here is that the proverbial jack of all trades, master of nonemight be less employ-
able, as Sterelny suggests. Of course, a convoluted mess of causal factors big and small go into
todays job market. And, perhaps with the exception of psychology, it remains bleak. So bleak, in
fact, that it is probably safe to adopt failure as the default and then take the time to explain successes.
If, however, we consider restructuring incentives from the ground-up, we can contribute to the
chances that new generations of researchers are motivated by quality, technical aptitude, and intel-
lectual versatility. As academic workloads increase, selecting a quieter, more pensive candidate
might take a little more patience and engagement than hiring a condent candidate with brand sen-
sibilities. As sellingonesproductis increasingly the focus of job market preparation in a world
where sexy venues and headlines trump nuance, care, and diligence (see Smaldino & McElreath,
2016), it often appears that salesmanship, marketing, and grants are more important drivers of
the eld than careful attention to the landscape of possible caveats that plague our knowledge.
Nevertheless, the many currents pushing social science in more credible and transparent directions
are promising (Hardwicke et al., 2020; Minocher et al., 2020).
It behooves those of us who are in positions of decision-making power to change the culture as
much as we can at all levels we can reach. We can start by redening scientic deliverables,
rewarding diligence and training, and engaging in the kinds of interdisciplinarity that are essential
for such projects. Indeed, despite the general ill incentives, the proverbial jacks of all tradesare a
necessary glue in interdisciplinary teams for they can provide general vision, build theories from
the bottom up (scaling up from cultural diversity to generality), and generate creative ideas across
disciplines. Only by building interdisciplinary groups comprising individuals across the
RELIGION, BRAIN & BEHAVIOR 229
humanities and the sciences can we start understanding complex cultural phenomena such as reli-
gious systems.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number FL 2013].
ORCID
Benjamin Grant Purzycki http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9595-7360
Martin Lang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2231-1059
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232 B. G. PURZYCKI ET AL.
... The experimental assessment further presupposes a network of researchers able to run the same experiments across multiple field sites as well as supportive research infrastructure managing the team, logistics, finances, and methodological and theoretical oversight (Purzycki et al., 2022b). In the specific example of belief in different types of supernatural agents, it took various scientific teams more than a decade to generate the necessary empirical tests (Purzycki et al., 2022a). ...
... For example, frequent, reasonless escalations and attacks with killing or injuring others would dissolve any group. Authors [1] refer to morality as pro-or anti-social norms with direct benefit or cost to others (e.g., theft, murder, generosity, sharing). ...
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... For example, frequent, reasonless escalations and attacks with killing or injuring others would dissolve any group. Purzycki et al., 2022 refer to morality as pro-or anti-social norms with direct benefit or cost to others (e.g., theft, murder, generosity, sharing). Throughout human history, significant technological and cultural advancements have occured in several last millennia. ...
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