PreprintPDF Available
Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.

Abstract

What explains the ubiquity and cultural success of prosocial religions? Leading accounts argue that prosocial religions evolved because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent evidence suggests that prosocial religious beliefs are not limited to large societies and might not have strong effects on cooperation. Here, we propose that prosocial religions, including beliefs in moralizing gods, develop because individuals shape supernatural beliefs to achieve their goals in within-group, strategic interactions. People have a fitness interest in controlling others' cooperation-either to extort benefits from others or to gain reputational benefits for protecting the public good. Moreover, they intuitively infer that other people could be deterred from cheating if they feared supernatural punishment. Thus, people endorse supernatural punishment beliefs to manipulate others into cooperating. Prosocial religions emerge from a dynamic of mutual monitoring, in which each individual, lacking confidence in the cooperativeness of conspecifics, attempts to incentivize their cooperation by endorsing beliefs in supernatural punishment. We show how variants of this incentive structure explain the variety of cultural attractors towards which supernatural punishment converges-including extractive religions that extort benefits from exploited individuals, prosocial religions geared toward mutual benefit, and moralized forms of prosocial religion where belief in moralizing gods is itself a moral duty. We review cross-disciplinary evidence for nine predictions of this account and use it to explain the decline of prosocial religions in modern societies. Prosocial religious beliefs seem endorsed as long as people believe them necessary to ensure other people's cooperation, regardless of their objective effectiveness in doing so.
This is an accepted manuscript. The published version may differ from it. Please cite as:
Fitouchi, L., Singh, M., André, JB., & Baumard, N. (forthcoming). Prosocial religions as folk-
technologies of mutual policing. Psychological Review.
1
Prosocial religions as folk-technologies of mutual policing
Léo Fitouchi1 *, Manvir Singh2, Jean-Baptiste André3, Nicolas Baumard3
1 Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse School of Economics,
University of Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France
2Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis
3 Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, PSL University, CNRS
*Corresponding author: leo.fitouchi@iast.fr
Abstract
Why do humans believe in moralizing gods? Leading accounts argue that these beliefs evolved
because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent evidence suggests that
beliefs in moralizing gods are not limited to large societies and might not have strong effects on
cooperation. Here, we propose that prosocial religions, including beliefs in moralizing gods, develop
because individuals shape supernatural beliefs to achieve their goals in within-group, strategic
interactions. People have a fitness interest in controlling others’ cooperation—either to extort
benefits from others or to gain reputational benefits for protecting the public good. Moreover, they
form the folk-psychological belief that people could be deterred from cheating if they feared
supernatural punishment. Thus, people endorse beliefs in moralizing gods to manipulate others into
cooperating. Prosocial religions emerge from a dynamic of mutual monitoring, in which each
individual, lacking confidence in the cooperativeness of conspecifics, attempts to incentivize their
cooperation by endorsing beliefs in supernatural punishment. We show how variations of this
dynamic explain the variety of cultural attractors towards which supernatural punishment converges,
including extractive religions that extort benefits from exploited individuals, prosocial religions
geared toward mutual benefit, and forms of prosocial religion where belief in moralizing gods is
itself a moral duty. We review evidence for nine predictions of this account and use it to explain the
decline of prosocial religions in modern societies. Supernatural punishment beliefs seem endorsed as
long as people believe them necessary to ensure others' cooperation, regardless of their objective
effectiveness in doing so.
Keywords: religion; supernatural punishment; moralizing gods; social control; evolutionary psychology;
cultural evolution
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
2
Prosocial Religions as Folk-Technologies of Mutual Policing
Across societies, spirits, gods, and karmic forces are believed to punish uncooperative
behaviors, such as theft, murder, adultery, and stinginess. They punish wrongdoers with disease,
premature death, or eternal damnation in hell, and reward cooperative behavior in this life or the
next (Bendixen, Lightner, & Purzycki, 2023). These beliefs, forming the cornerstone of prosocial
religions (Norenzayan et al., 2016), are often called beliefs inmoralizing gods(M. Lang et al.,
2019) ormoralistic supernatural punishment(Lightner et al., 2023). Following previous work, we
use these terms to mean beliefs in gods or supernatural forces that monitor and punish cheating in
human cooperative interactions1. This definition excludes the many supernatural forces which,
across cultures, do not care about cooperation between humans (Boyer, 2019) or punish behaviors
unrelated to cooperation, such as violations of taboos or magical rituals that do not exploit the
interests other human beings (Boehm, 2008; Liénard & Boyer, 2006; Singh & Henrich, 2020).
Moralistic supernatural punishment recurs across human groups. It’s a central component of
the major world religions, including Abrahamic traditions (e.g., Islam, Judaism, Christianity;
Bernstein & Katz, 2010), karmic religions (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism; Purzycki &
Holland, 2019; White, Norenzayan, et al., 2019), and Chinese and Japanese folk religions (Bellah,
2008; Bernstein & Katz, 2010; Clark & Winslett, 2011). Although moralistic supernatural
punishment was long assumed to be limited to large-scale societies (Baumard et al., 2015;
Norenzayan et al., 2016; Peoples et al., 2016; Roes & Raymond, 2003; Turchin et al., 2022; Tylor,
1871), this conclusion seems an artifact of datasets biased against detecting moralizing gods in
smaller societies (Bendixen, Lightner, & Purzycki, 2023; Lightner et al., 2023). Consistent with
longstanding emphases on the moralizing gods of small-scale societies (Evans-Pritchard, 1965;
Johnson, 2015, 2016; Lang, 1900; Malinowski, 1992), more recent research, including quantitative
ethnographies (Purzycki, 2016; Singh et al., 2021; Townsend et al., 2020), surveys of the
ethnographic record (Boehm, 2008; Watts et al., 2015), and experiments across fifteen field sites
(Bendixen, Apicella, Atkinson, et al., 2023; Purzycki, Willard, et al., 2022), show that beliefs in
moralizing gods appear in human societies of all scales.
1 Although not everyone uses this definition (see, e.g., Galen, 2012), this is the basic construct that
most cognitive and evolutionary researchers seek to explain, whether they call it “supernatural
punishment” Johnson, 2009, 2016), “broad supernatural punishment” (Watts et al., 2015),
“moralistic supernatural punishment” (Bendixen, Lightner, Apicella, et al., 2023; Turchin et al.,
2022), beliefs in “moralizing” or “moralistic” gods (M. Lang et al., 2019; Norenzayan et al., 2016;
Purzycki et al., 2016; Roes & Raymond, 2003), “moralizing religions” (Baumard et al., 2015; Turchin
et al., 2022), or “prosocial religions” (Norenzayan et al., 2016).
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
3
Among Mentawai horticulturalists in Indonesia, for example, people believe that a crocodile
spirit, Sikameinan, attacks people who fail to share meat within their clan (Singh et al., 2021).
Among Ik hunter-gatherers of Uganda, similarly, a majority of participants answered that Earth
spirits cause trouble to people who do not share with others (Townsend et al., 2020). Across fifteen
field sites, from the Tyva Republic to the Hadza of Tanzania, respondents were more likely than
not to answer that supernatural agents are concerned with sanctioning uncooperative behaviors such
as theft, murder, and deceit (Purzycki et al., 2022). Although these “small gods” often have weaker
powers, more limited knowledge, and a narrower moral jurisdiction than the “big gods” of world
religions (Boehm, 2008; Purzycki, 2013; Singh et al., 2021), their recurrence suggests that human
societies everywhere tend to develop beliefs in moralizing gods.
Why, then, do humans everywhere develop beliefs in gods that reward virtue and punish bad
people? This question is at the heart of a central debate in the evolution of religion that pits by-
product theories against theories based on cultural group selection.
Existing Theories Fail to Explain Prosocial Religion
According to “by-product” theories, beliefs in moralizing gods culturally evolve because they
are cognitively attractive (Baumard & Boyer, 2013b, 2013a; Boyer, 2001). People, the argument
goes, are predisposed to interpret misfortune as a retribution for past immoral behavior and good
fortune as a reward for moral behavior (Banerjee & Bloom, 2017; Baumard & Chevallier, 2012;
Callan et al., 2014). These intuitions about immanent justice may emerge as functionless by-
products of fairness intuitions, which evolved for rewarding cooperators and punishing cheaters in
everyday cooperative interactions (André et al., 2022; Baumard et al., 2013; Starmans et al., 2017).
By-product theorists contend that, as a useless by-product of this function, fairness intuitions make
it intuitive for people to think that supernatural forces reward virtue and sanction bad people
(Baumard & Boyer, 2013a; White et al., 2021; White & Norenzayan, 2019). This cognitive
attractiveness would fuel a process of cultural attraction by which people transform religious beliefs
into moralistic forms over the course of their cultural transmission (Baumard & Boyer, 2013a;
Sperber, 1996).
As researchers have noted, however, this by-product approach to religion faces several
problems (Norenzayan, 2015). Most strikingly, it doesn’t explain why prosocial religions exhibit
markers of functional design. By definition, a functionless by-product doesn’t serve any function. Yet
prosocial religions do seem functional: their recurrent features appear geared toward producing a
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
4
specific outcome, namely incentivizing cooperation (Johnson, 2016; Norenzayan et al., 2016;
Wilson, 2010). This functional design manifests in several features.
First, moralizing gods sanction free-riding with severe punishmentsfrom deadly illness to
eternal damnationwhich make wrongdoing sufficiently costly to counterbalance the benefits of
behaving badly (Johnson, 2016; Norenzayan, 2013). Second, moralizing gods can spot cheaters even
when humans would not (Purzycki et al., 2012), which conveniently fills the blind spots of secular
social control (Johnson, 2011, 2016; Norenzayan, 2013). Third, unlike human punishment, gods’
motivation to punish is not compromised by the second-order free-rider problemthe individual
temptation to let others pay the cost of punishment while not oneself contributing to curbing free-
riding (Johnson, 2016; Norenzayan, 2013; Yamagishi, 1986). Fourth, rituals prescribed by
moralizing gods seem well suited to cultivate prosocial motivations. They require believers to make
penance for their misdeeds (Coşgel & Miceli, 2018; Olivelle, 2011; Singh et al., 2021), to cultivate
virtuous character traits (Fitouchi et al., 2022; McCullough & Carter, 2013), and to engage in
collective rituals galvanizing group solidarity (Norenzayan et al., 2016). If prosocial religions are by-
products, why do they seem so functional?
Another family of theories, based on cultural group selection, takes this apparent
functionality seriously by proposing that prosocial religions are cultural adaptations for large-scale
cooperation (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Henrich & Muthukrishna, 2021; Norenzayan, 2013;
Norenzayan et al., 2016; Roes & Raymond, 2003). On this account, religious beliefs initially
emerge as by-products of cognitive biases (e.g., mentalizing, teleological thinking; Banerjee &
Bloom, 2014), with cultural group selection subsequently selecting the beliefs that provide group-
level benefits (Norenzayan et al., 2016). Because they feared divine punishments and felt monitored
by moralizing gods, this argument goes, groups with beliefs in moralizing gods would have
cooperated more. As a result, they would have expanded the scale of their cooperation beyond what
kin-altruism and reciprocity can sustain, and would have outcompeted less cooperative groups in
inter-group competition (Henrich & Muthukrishna, 2021; Norenzayan, 2013; Norenzayan et al.,
2016). Through processes such as warfare (see also Turchin, 2016; Turchin et al., 2022),
demographic expansion, and migration into successful groups, these groups and their culture would
have proliferated, leading to the spread of prosocial religions (Norenzayan et al., 2016).
While cultural group selection theories are consistent with the functional design of prosocial
religions, they assume that beliefs in moralizing gods are objectively effective for making people
more cooperative (Norenzayan, 2013; Norenzayan et al., 2016). However, evidence for this claim is
mixed and debated (for critical reviews, Bendixen et al., 2023; Bloom, 2012; Galen, 2012;
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
5
Hoffmann, 2013; Kavanagh et al., 2020; Oviedo, 2016; Tsang et al., 2021). A range of
psychological findings suggests prosocial effects of beliefs in moralizing gods (Kelly et al., 2024; M.
Lang et al., 2019; Pasek et al., 2023; Purzycki et al., 2016; Shariff, 2015; Shariff et al., 2016;
Townsend et al., 2020; White, Kelly, et al., 2019; Yilmaz & Bahçekapili, 2016). But key findings,
notably prosocial effects of religious primes in economic games, fail to replicate (Berniūnas et al.,
2020; Billingsley et al., 2018; Gomes & McCullough, 2015; Purzycki et al., 2018; Willard, 2018).
Along with other mixed results (Purzycki & Kulundary, 2018; Stagnaro et al., 2022; Vardy &
Atkinson, 2022), recent studies find small or null relationships between religious belief and
cooperation when controlling for relevant variables (Galen et al., 2015; Ge et al., 2019; Major-
Smith, 2023; Stagnaro et al., 2020), and both lab experiments and large-scale surveys (N > 200,000)
even find negative associations between religiosity and propensities for large-scale cooperation
(Galen et al., 2020; Jacquet et al., 2021). Most recently, pre-registered analyses of economic games
with more than 1,000 participants across 15 field sitesincluding Yasawa (Fiji), Pesqeiro (Brazil),
the Sursurunga (Papua New Guinea), and the Turkana (Northern Kenya)—conclude that “gods’
moral concerns do not play a direct, cross-culturally reliable role in motivating cooperative behavior
(Bendixen, Lightner, Apicella, et al., 2023, p. 1). While future research will shed light on this issue,
the mixed evidence so far warrants doubting a key assumption of cultural group selection theories
that religious beliefs enhance cooperation sufficiently to cause differential success in intergroup
competition. Accordingly, several researchers have recently called for a rethinking of the
relationship between religion and cooperation in cultural evolution (Bendixen, Lightner, &
Purzycki, 2023; Fitouchi & Singh, 2022; Jacquet et al., 2021; Kavanagh et al., 2020; Purzycki et al.,
2022; Saroglou & Craninx, 2021).
In what follows, we propose an alternative to both by-product and cultural group selection
theoriesthe mutual policing theory. Although compatible with the possibility that prosocial
religions might promote cooperation, our account does not require this premise to explain their
cultural evolution.
Introducing the Mutual Policing Theory
Both the pure by-product approach and cultural group selection theories seem to overlook
that people routinely use supernatural beliefs to achieve instrumental ends, often strategic ones.
Take a concrete example. Among the Selk’nam hunter-gatherers (Tierra del Fuego), the men told
the women that a punitive spirit, Shoort, punishes wives who disobey their husband (Chapman,
1982, pp. 113–114). To make women believe that Shoort’s punishment is a real threat, men
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
6
disguised themselves as Shoort during religious ceremonies and attacked “those women whose
behavior has not conformed to the model of subservient wife” (Chapman, 1982, p. 113). The man
disguised as Shoort may “frighten [a woman] by shaking her hut violently… But he may also stab
her with a stick, or even beat her and tear down her dwelling” (Chapman, 1982, p. 113). This
example captures two insights at the core of our model. First, beliefs in punitive gods don’t need
group competition to emerge or stabilize: They can arise because some people have a within-group
self-interest in communicating them. In this case, men have a fitness-interest in controlling
women’s behavior. Second, religious beliefs are more than by-products: they do serve a function, in
the sense that people use them to achieve instrumental goals. In this case, their function is to
encourage women to submit to men’s will.
Shoort isn’t a prosocial god: He doesn’t punish cheating behaviors such as theft, murder, or
stinginess, but rather polices women’s behavior for the exclusive benefit of men. But similar
mechanisms, we will argue, can also explain prosocial forms of punitive gods—gods that punish
cheating and enjoin charity, kindness, and other cooperative behaviors. People have fitness-interests
in incentivizing others to cooperate—either because this benefits them directly or because they gain
reputational benefits from doing so. Moreover, people believe, based on folk-psychological
inferences, that other people would be less likely to cheat if they felt watched over by punitive gods.
As a result, we argue, people endorse and communicate beliefs in moralizing gods to manipulate
others into cooperating. Prosocial religions emerge as the macro-level cultural products of these
micro-level strategic interactions, iterated over cultural evolution. As people cumulatively refine
religious culture to police each other’s behavior, they shape religious technologies that become
intuitively better at promoting cooperation. Prosocial religions end up with functional design-
features despite unclear evidence that they actually promote cooperation. What matters is that
people perceive them as useful for achieving their goals.
In the following, we unpack the foundations of the mutual policing theory at the biological,
psychological, and cultural evolutionary levels and derive key predictions from this account. We
then review historical, psychological, ethnographic, and cross-cultural evidence for these
predictions, showing the central role of policing motivations and folk-psychology in shaping
religious culture. We then use the mutual policing model to explain the decline of prosocial
religions in modern societies and conclude by considering implications for cultural evolution more
generally.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
7
The Mutual Policing Theory
Prosocial religions, we argue, culturally evolve as people design and selectively retain
supernatural beliefs they perceivebased on their folk-psychologyto be likely to manipulate
others into cooperating. This model assumes that people intuitively believe that, if other people
believe in the supernatural punishment of uncooperative behaviors, they will be more likely to
cooperate; that people, as a result, try to implant these beliefs in others’ mind to deter them from
cheating; and that recipients are motivated to endorse those beliefs to avoid reputational costs.
Because people can police both for their own self-interest or for mutual benefit, policing incentives
generate both extractive beliefs that serve selfish interests and prosocial beliefs that serve the
common good.
People Believe that Believing in Moralizing Gods makes People more Cooperative
While much of previous research has been guided by the idea that religion promotes
cooperation, we propose to turn the reasoning on its head. While scholars still debate whether
beliefs in moralizing gods objectively facilitate cooperation (see Introduction), a less contested
finding is that people believe that these beliefs motivate cooperation. Across 34 countries of 6
continents, survey data show that a median of 45% of people consider believing in god as “necessary
to be moral and have good values” (Tamir et al., 2020). Experimental evidence demonstrates that,
across 13 societies with Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and non-religious majorities, people
intuitively perceive religious believers to be less likely than atheists to commit immoral acts—such
as serial murder or animal torture—and perceive religious believers to be more likely to engage in
prosocial behavior (Gervais et al., 2017; Dayer et al., 2024; Gervais, 2013, 2014; see also Tan &
Vogel, 2008). Studies based on trust games, similarly, find that people are more likely to trust
believers in karmic punishment, despite a lack of an association between believing in karma and
actual trustworthiness (Ong et al., 2022).
This converges with historical and ethnographic evidence for the folk-psychological belief
that belief in moralizing gods motivates cooperation. Among Mentawai horticulturalists of
Indonesia, for example, respondents spontaneously suggested that fear of the local moralistic spirit,
Sikameinan, deters people from wrongdoing (Singh et al., 2021, p. 66). “Fear him who does not fear
God, but do not fear him who fears God,” a Kazakh proverb similarly taught (Grodekov, 2010, p.
239). And long before the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, Cicero (1st c. BCE) saw a social
utility in of beliefs in moralizing gods: “Who will deny that such beliefs are useful when he
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
8
remembers…how many persons are deterred from crime by fear of divine punishment”
(Liebeschuetz, 1989, p. 49).
This folk-psychological belief—that belief in moralizing gods encourages cooperation—is
likely to emerge from computations involved in theory of mind. To predict the behavior of others,
people instinctively employ a causal model in which the behavior of other people derives from their
beliefs and their desires (Ho et al., 2022; Jara-Ettinger et al., 2016). Specifically, theory of mind
represents other people as rational agents who make decisions which, they believe, will maximize
their expected utility—maximizing their rewards and minimizing their losses (Baker et al., 2017;
Bridgers et al., 2020; Jara-Ettinger, 2019; Jara-Ettinger et al., 2016, 2017). For example, if Bob
believes it’s raining outside and doesn’t want to get wet, you infer that he will likely take an
umbrella before stepping outside—to avoid the cost of getting wet. Similarly, we argue that people
intuitively expect that, if Bob believes that God punishes adultery with eternal torture in hell, he
will be less likely to cheat on his partner. Consistent with this idea, the relationship between
religiosity and perceived trustworthiness has been found to be mediated by participants’ belief that
“people behave better when they feel that God is monitoring their behavior” (Gervais et al., 2011).
In fact, people hold the folk-psychological intuition that people behave better not only when God is
monitoring their behavior, but when any entity capable of punishment, including secular authorities
and other people in general, monitors their behavior (Kelley & Michela, 1980; Kruglanski, 1970;
Miller et al., 2005; Strickland, 1958; Strickland et al., 1976).
In other words, our account does not assume that humans have evolved specific adaptations
to believe that supernatural punishment promotes cooperation. This belief develops from more
general theory of mind mechanisms that are not specific to religious belief. These mechanisms give
people the intuition that others will avoid behaviors that result in net costs to themselves—whether
those costs come from secular punishment, supernatural punishment, or any other process.
People Communicate Beliefs in Moralizing Gods to Control Conspecifics’ Behaviors
Because they benefit from others’ cooperation, humans benefit from monitoring,
punishment, and deterrence of others’ selfishness. Policing behaviors are adaptive when the
inclusive fitness benefits the policer gets from their partners’ increased cooperation outweighs the
costs of the policing that generates this increase in cooperation (El Mouden et al., 2010; Frank,
1995, 1996, 2003; Singh & Boomsma, 2015). Given these fitness benefits, policing behaviors evolve
in many social species, including social bacteria (Manhes & Velicer, 2011), eusocial insects
(Ratnieks & Wenseleers, 2005; Sun et al., 2020), mongooses (Cant et al., 2014), macaques (Beisner
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
9
& McCowan, 2013; Flack et al., 2005; Flack et al., 2006), and vervet monkeys (Arseneau-Robar et
al., 2016, 2018). A well-studied example is mutual policing among worker honeybees, which
prevent each other from reproducing at the expense of the colony by destroying worker-laid eggs or
aggressing reproducing workers (Ratnieks, 1988; Ratnieks & Visscher, 1989). Social scientists have
long noted that humans across cultures (Black, 1984; Boehm, 1999, 2000, 2012; Hechter, 1988)
and early in development (Yang et al., 2018; Yudkin et al., 2020) also attempt to increase their
conspecifics’ level of cooperation. This social control takes various forms, from the ostracism
(Boehm, 1999, 2012), public criticism (Boehm, 2012; Wiessner, 2005), and institutional regulation
of antisocial behaviors (Leeson, 2009; Lienard, 2014; Ostrom, 1990) to coordinated corporal
punishments going as far as execution (Boyd et al., 2010; Molleman et al., 2019; Wrangham, 2019).
Monitoring and punishing selfishness, however, is often highly costly to the policer, who
must invest time and energy in monitoring others and can experience retaliation and reputational
damages (Arai et al., 2022; Black, 2000; Guala, 2012; Raihani & Bshary, 2019; Wiessner, 2005).
By contrast, communicating beliefs in supernatural monitoring and punishment is less costly for at
least two reasons. First, telling a cheater that the gods will punish them is cheaper than spending
time and energy actually policing their behavior. Second, appealing to supernatural punishment
allows the policer to shirk responsibility for reproving the cheater’s behavior—“it’s god who
punishes you, not me!”. This makes retaliation by the cheater unjustifiable and allows the policer to
avoid the reputational damage that punishers sometimes experience (see Arai et al., 2022; Wiessner,
2005).
Because people believe that beliefs in supernatural punishment can make others more
cooperative, they likely perceive communicating these beliefs as a cost-effective strategy for policing,
allowing them to incentivize others’ cooperation while avoiding the costs of real-world policing.
Thus, we argue that beliefs that “God is watching you,” “selfishness brings bad karma,” and
“adulterers will burn in hell” stabilize in human populations because people perceive them (not
necessarily consciously) as likely to inspire cooperation in others by increasing the perceived cost of
free riding. They emerge from a dynamic of mutual policing, in which everyone, lacking confidence
in the spontaneous cooperation of conspecifics, attempts to incentivize their cooperation by
endorsing beliefs in supernatural punishment (Figure 1).
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
10
Figure 1. Policing interests stabilize beliefs in supernatural punishment in a population. (A) Mutual
policing through supernatural punishment in dyadic cooperation. (B) Mutual policing through supernatural
punishment in n-person collective action.
Three points are important here. First, our account assumes that people do not passively
acquire religious beliefs from others, but rather actively use and shape religious beliefs to advance
their fitness interests—in line with a growing body of research in the cognitive science of religion
(Boyer, 2020, 2021, 2022; Fitouchi & Singh, 2022; Moon, 2021; Moon et al., 2019, 2022). Take
how people used supernatural explanations of misfortune strategically in a village of Central Serbia
(Jerotijević, 2015). Jerotijević (2015) reports that when informants explained their own misfortunes,
such as their illness or money problems, they attributed them to attacks by witchcraft, implying that
“they did not deserve all the bad things that happened to them” (Jerotijević, 2015, p. 270)—a clearly
self-serving attribution. In contrast, “when something bad happened to someone else…people
believed that the person was being punished by God…Their aim is to ‘warn’ wrongdoers and cheats
that ‘this is what happens to sinners’” (Jerotijević, 2015, p. 270). In other words, people’s
endorsement of supernatural beliefs depends on their strategic interests.
Second, we do not assume that people have biologically evolved, domain-specific
adaptations for policing with supernatural punishment. Supernatural punishment is just one of the
many tools that people develop to achieve policing goals, many of these tools being secular. In fact,
people routinely attempt to manipulate others’ secular beliefs about the likelihood of detection and
punishment to encourage them to cooperate. Studies of “parenting by lying” show that parents in
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
11
various cultures regularly communicate false secular beliefs to their children—saying, for example,
that the police will come punish them—when other means of controlling children’s behavior prove
ineffective (Brown, 2002; Heyman et al., 2009, 2013). Across cultures, similarly, people narrate
stories that emphasize the dangerous consequences of behaving selfishly, and the long-term benefits
of behaving cooperatively, likely in the hope of encouraging prosocial behaviors in listeners (Du
Toit 1964; Dundes 1962; Smith et al. 2017; Thompson 1946; see also Wiessner 2014). Sometimes,
people use supernatural beliefs for the same goal, such as when parents they tell their children that
Santa Claus won’t bring them any present if they misbehave (Goldstein & Woolley, 2016; Heyman
et al., 2013). But there’s nothing specific to religion in our account. People simply select
supernatural punishment as one of the many beliefs they perceive, based on their theory of mind, as
likely to influence others’ behavior in desired directions.
Third, if supernatural punishment does not actually make people more cooperative (as
discussed in the Introduction), why should people think it works and use it for policing? Three
important factors seem to be the low cost of endorsing supernatural beliefs, the uncertainty about
their efficacy, and the high potential benefits. It is not easy to determine with certainty whether
supernatural punishment works; even professional social scientists remain uncertain on the matter!
(see Introduction). What people do know, however, is that the cost of communicating a belief is
low; it doesn’t cost much to say, “God will punish you!” Thus, people don’t lose much by
communicating the belief even if it doesn’t work. By contrast, if the belief happens to work, failing
to communicate it is very costly. It means missing an opportunity to discourage others from
cheating you. Given the low cost of communication, then, the rational strategy should be to
communicate the belief despite uncertainty about objective benefits. This aligns with the general
conclusion of error-management theory: In the face of uncertainty, the adaptive strategy is to bias
decision-making towards making the less costly form of error (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007; Foster &
Kokko, 2009; Haselton & Nettle, 2006; McKay & Dennett, 2009).
Why Should Recipients Accept the Beliefs?
Humans have evolved cognitive mechanisms of epistemic vigilance, by which they assess the
reliability of communicated beliefs to protect against manipulation (Mercier, 2017, 2020; Sperber et
al., 2010). They are less likely, for example, to adopt beliefs transmitted by people who have a self-
interest in deceiving them (Mills & Keil, 2005; Reyes-Jaquez & Echols, 2015; Street & Richardson,
2015). If people communicate supernatural punishment beliefs to manipulate others into
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
12
cooperating, why should recipients accept those beliefs rather than rejecting them to avoid being
manipulated, which could stop their cultural transmission?
Recipients need not accept the beliefs for them to seem widespread. One possibility is that
recipients don’t accept the beliefs. In many cases, beliefs in supernatural punishment might seem
widespread in a population despite nobody believing them. The appearance of belief can result from
policers endorsing the beliefs to manipulate recipients and from recipients pretending to accept the
beliefs to avoid being harmed by policers. Take again the Selk’nam foragers mentioned in the
introduction. Men told women that a punitive spirit, Shoort, “will punish them if they were
negligent wives or mothers” (Tierra del Fuego: Chapman, 1982, p. 114). Men invested time and
energy trying to convince women of the reality of this punishment. During religious ceremonies,
they disguised themselves as Shoort to “make his presence felt and to select for punishment those
women whose behavior has not conformed to the model of subservient wife” (Chapman, 1982, p.
113). To make the belief even more credible, they pretended that men, too, were punished by
Shoort. They faked being attacked by making scary noises and screams from the site of the ceremony
from which the women were kept away (Darmangeat, 2009, p. 132). Despite all these efforts,
according to anthropologist Anna Chapman, women were not naive and “knew the secret”—they
simply didn’t reveal “their knowledge of the secret to the men…for fear of arousing aggression”
(Chapman, 1982, p. 153; see also Bridges, 1948).
Beliefs in supernatural punishment provide hard-to-falsify explanations of misfortune. In many
cases, however, recipients might accept beliefs in supernatural punishment. We argue that this is
due to policers iteratively shaping, over cultural evolution, beliefs that they perceive as more likely to
bypass recipients’ epistemic vigilance, based on both trial-and-error and folk-understanding of
cognitive mechanisms in recipients (see Ho et al., 2022). Such winnowing explains several design-
features of supernatural punishment.
First, policers exploit uncertainties about the causes of misfortunes. Across cultures, people
are more likely to accept supernatural beliefs when trying to explain events that are fitness-
consequential (e.g., deadly illness) yet difficult to explain by natural causation or non-supernatural
agents (J. L. Barrett & Lanman, 2008; Gray & Wegner, 2010; Hong, 2024; Singh, 2021). This
includes explaining why someone suddenly became ill or why a fatal accident happened to this
particular person at this particular time (Boyer, 2019; Evans-Pritchard, 1937; Legare et al., 2012;
see also Jackson et al., 2023). When such misfortunes happen, people consider many cognitively
plausible explanations, several of which do not involve supernatural punishment (Singh et al., 2021).
If Maria is seriously ill, the reason may be that she has been attacked by sorcery (Singh, 2021) or
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
13
that she has violated a non-moral taboo (see Boehm, 2008; Hong, 2024) or that she has failed to
perform the appropriate sacrifices to some capricious ancestor spirit (see Boyer, 2022). Another
possible explanation, however, is that Maria’s illness is a supernatural retribution for her previous
failures to cooperate—an explanation which, as by-product theories put forward, accords with
immanent justice intuitions (Banerjee & Bloom, 2017; Baumard & Boyer, 2013; Baumard &
Chevallier, 2012; Callan et al., 2014).
In this context, we argue, policers exploit uncertainties about the causes of misfortunes, as
well as immanent justice intuitions, to push the moralistic explanation (supernatural punishment)
over the non-moralistic ones (e.g., violation of a non-moral taboo). Among the Yaghan foragers, for
example, “upon the death of an own child or a near relative, the neighbors point to the mourner
with the expression: ‘Watauinéwa is punishing him!’” (Tierra del Fuego: Gusinde & Schütze, 1937,
p. 961). Similarly, after the great fire of London, “preachers of every denomination exhorted
Londoners to repent for the many varieties of iniquity that had provoked God into torching the
city” (McCullough, 2020, p. 198; see Tinniswood, 2004). And among the Ojibwa, “any serious
illness is associated with some prior conduct which involved an infraction of moral rules… ‘Because
a person does bad things, that is where sickness…starts’, is the way one informant phrased it.”
(North America: Hallowell, 1961, p. 410).
A second way to circumvent epistemic vigilance is to make the belief unfalsifiable. As
Schneider put it, a supernatural sanction which “specifies that the criminal’s left arm will fall off at
noon on the third day following the crime cannot be maintained for long” (Schneider, 1957, pp.
798–799). That’s because if noon passes and nothing happens—which is most likely—the recipient
will downgrade their evaluation of the plausibility of supernatural punishment in light of the
countervailing evidence (for a formal analysis, see Leeson, 2014). By contrast, “a supernatural
sanction which specifies that someone will die can be maintained because the probability that
someone will die is equivalent to certainty” (Schneider, 1957, pp. 798–799). When death will
happen, there will be no way to know if it happened because of supernatural punishment or because
it would have happened anyway (see Leeson, 2014). People seem to understand that such vagueness
is useful for decreasing the risk of being disproven. Indeed, they prefer vague formulations when
lying to others in secular contexts (Deversi et al., 2021; Serra-Garcia et al., 2011; K.-K. Sun &
Papadokonstantaki, 2023). They may do the same, we suggest, when trying to manipulate others
with supernatural punishment. Another way to make supernatural punishment unfalsifiable is to
make it unobservable, such as by postponing it to the afterlife (Leeson, 2014). This explains why
beliefs in supernatural punishment take the form either of vague assertions about events that will
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
14
happen anyway (“cheaters will die or get sick!”) or of precise assertions about unobservable events
(“sinners will be thrown into a snake pit in hell!”).
Beliefs in supernatural punishment exploit threat-detection mechanisms. Third, policers can
exploit cognitive mechanisms of threat-detection in recipients. Beliefs about threats can bypass
epistemic vigilance because the cost of a false positive (accepting that the threat exists when in fact
it doesn’t) is greater than the cost of a false negative (rejecting that the threat exists when in fact it
does; Boyer, 2018, 2021; Johnson et al., 2013). Consistent with this logic, experimental evidence
shows that people intuitively ascribe a higher probability to threats than to positive predictions
(Fessler et al., 2014; Hilbig, 2009, 2012), are more willing to ask for additional information about
them (Blaine & Boyer, 2017), and perceive senders of those beliefs as more competent (Boyer &
Parren, 2015).
People seem to have a folk-understanding of this potential of threatening information to
bypass epistemic vigilance. Journalists have long understood that “if it bleeds, it leads”—the
intuition that stories about crime and bloodshed sell more newspapers than good news—and
accordingly report more bad news to attract consumer attention (Lengauer et al., 2012; Robertson
et al., 2023; Soroka et al., 2019). In transmission chain experiments, people prefer to transmit
threatening information over positive or neutral information on the same topic (Blaine & Boyer,
2017), possibly because they understand that threatening information is more likely to be accepted
(Boyer, 2021b). In economic games, people even pay costs to increase others’ perceptions of group
threats in order to manipulate their behavior (Barclay & Benard, 2013, 2020). Thus, when trying to
convince others of the reality of supernatural punishment, people may similarly tweak these beliefs
into more threatening form to increase plausibility. Consistent with this idea, beliefs in supernatural
punishment seem concocted to be threatening: They insist on the severity of the suffering that
awaits sinners, be it an awful death, fatal disease, or being tormented by demons for eternity.
Recipients endorse beliefs in supernatural punishment to avoid reputational costs.
Aside from these epistemic logics, we argue that acceptance of beliefs in supernatural punishment is
further facilitated by reputational incentives. These incentives emerge from the same folk-
psychological belief that makes supernatural punishment useful for policing others, namely the
belief that believing in supernatural punishment makes people more cooperative. Because people
believe that believing in supernatural punishment makes people more cooperative, individuals who
do not believe in supernatural punishment are perceived as more likely to cheat (Gervais, 2013;
Gervais et al., 2011, 2017; Ong et al., 2022; Tan & Vogel, 2008), and thus tend to be avoided as
cooperative partners (Abrams et al., 2020) and provided with fewer benefits in cooperative
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
15
interactions (McCullough et al., 2016; Ong et al., 2022). Thus, people who don’t endorse belief in
supernatural punishment run the risk of failing to attract other people’s cooperation. This further
compels recipients to adopt beliefs in supernatural punishment to secure a good reputation as a
cooperative partner.
At the proximate level, this is likely handled by mechanisms of reputation-management that
are not specific to religious belief. People have cognitive adaptations for learning which traits are
reputationally valued in their environment and strategically display them to attract others’ trust
(Asaba & Gweon, 2022; Heyman et al., 2021; see also Manrique et al., 2021). These mechanisms
likely apply to religious belief as they do for any trait, compelling people to endorse beliefs in
supernatural punishment to secure a good reputation. Does this mean that people only strategically
pretend to believe in supernatural punishment to protect their reputation? That may be the case in
some situations. Psychological and sociological evidence indicates that atheists often hide their lack
of belief through socially desirable responding (Gervais & Najle, 2018; Hadaway et al., 1993).
However, the ultimate, reputational function of believing in supernatural punishment is also
compatible with people genuinely believing at the proximate level. Genuinely believing in God, in
fact, might be the most efficient way to convince others that you believe in God—and thus that
you’re a trustworthy cooperative partner (see von Hippel & Trivers, 2011). In other words, as many
have noted, ultimately social incentives can translate into sincere epistemic states at the proximate
level (Funkhouser, 2017; Kurzban & Aktipis, 2007; Williams, 2021). Consistent with this idea,
meta-analytic evidence indicates that people who engage more in reputation-management exhibit
higher levels of intrinsic religiosity—a construct related to sincere religious belief and lifestyle
(Sedikides & Gebauer, 2010).
The Varieties of Religious Policing: From Extractive to Prosocial Religion
We can now refine the central tenet of the mutual policing model—that people endorse
supernatural punishment to police others’ behavior—by examining the specific strategic interests
driving this policing. In this section, we apply standard social evolution theory (West et al., 2007,
2011, 2021) to identify the incentive structures that lead people to police others. We argue that
these varying incentive structures account for the diverse forms of supernatural punishment
observed across contexts and cultures (see Figure 2).
What is commonly referred to as “beliefs in moralizing gods” or “moralistic supernatural
punishment” (D. Johnson, 2016; M. Lang et al., 2019; Lightner et al., 2023; Norenzayan et al.,
2016; Purzycki et al., 2016; Turchin et al., 2022) represents one specific type of supernatural
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
16
punishment found in human societies. We categorize this type as prosocial because it encourages
cooperative behavior by punishing cheating in cooperative interactions (e.g., theft, murder,
stinginess). In contrast, we term other forms extractive when supernatural punishment does not
target uncooperative behaviors such as theft or murder but rather punishes failures to serve the self-
interests of certain individuals (e.g., dominant individuals at the expense of subordinates).
Prosocial forms of supernatural punishment, we argue, emerge as a particular case of the use
of supernatural punishment to police others, where policers have an interest in incentivizing
behavior that favors the public good. Such a prosocial interest may reflect overlapping interests with
other group members, such as in a shared preference for social order, or reputational incentives,
such as when people gain a good reputation for policing for the common good. Extractive forms of
supernatural punishment, in contrast, emerge when policers have a self-interest in incentivizing
behavior that serves only their personal interests, such as when Selk’nam men used Shoort to
dominate women (Chapman, 1984).
Figure 2. Types of policing behaviors and their religious counterparts. (A) Selfish policing provides
exclusive benefits to the policer while imposing costs on the recipient and having neutral or negative
effects on by-standers. (B) Policing based on shared interests functions to benefit the policer yet
happens to benefit by-standers by incidentally increasing cooperation toward them as well. (C) In
reputation-based policing, individuals cooperate to police cooperation. Each individual pays a cost
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
17
to contribute to the policing effort to promote higher levels of mutually beneficial cooperation in
the group. When based on the promotion of beliefs in supernatural punishment, each of these
policing strategies generates a particular type of supernatural punishment belief documented in
human societies—here labelled “extractive belief” (A), “prosocial belief” (B), and “prosocial belief as
a moral duty” (C).
Selfish policing results in extractive supernatural punishment. A central distinction in social
evolution theory is that between selfish and cooperative behaviors (Hamilton, 1964; West et al.,
2007, 2011, 2021). Selfishness refers to any behavior that provides fitness benefits to the actor while
inflicting costs on the recipient (+/-) (Hamilton, 1964). Cooperation, by contrast, refers to any
behavior that provides benefits to an individual other than the actor (+/+ or -/+) (Hamilton, 1964;
West et al., 2007, 2011). Policing is selfish when it aims at providing exclusive benefits to the
policer while inflicting costs on the recipient and having neutral or negative effects on bystanders
(Figure 2A). This is the case, for example, when a slave owner punishes his slaves to ensure that
they work hard enough for him. Because people believe that supernatural punishment can influence
others’ behaviors, they should sometimes use those beliefs for selfish policing goals. This should
result in beliefs designed to exclusively benefit their promoters at the expense of other individuals.
In those beliefs, gods should be said to punish behavior that harm the promoter’s own self-interest,
rather than to punish uncooperative behaviors that harm the group at large.
Selfish policing helps to explain why, although punitive gods often encourage cooperative
behavior, they also often appear extractive in many contexts. In world religions, the very same gods
that prescribe charity, kindness, and turning the other cheek also have an extractive facet. The
Muslim god commands women to obey men (Dickemann, 1981; Strassmann et al., 2012); the
Hindu Law of Manu demands that a “virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god,
even if he behaves badly, freely indulges his lust and is devoid of any good qualities” (Doniger,
2014, p. 259); and the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” in medieval Europe held that any
opposition to the king was against God’s will (Bentzen & Gokmen, 2022; see also Cronk, 1994; de
Aguiar & Cronk, 2011).
In small-scale societies, too, supernatural punishment is often extractive. Among the Siriono
of Bolivia, young people were warned that they will get sick if they don’t “give their game and fish
to the old people” (Priest, 1966, p. 1246). Among the Hadza, women and children were warned
that they could suffer supernatural sanctions, such as serious illness, if they approached epeme
meat—the most prized parts of the largest animals and the exclusive privilege of adult males
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
18
(Marlowe, 2010, pp. 57–58; Woodburn, 1979, p. 254). Among the Enga of Papua New Guinea,
young men from around puberty were said to be married to a “spirit woman” who forbade them
from having sexual relations with human women (Wiessner & Pupu, 2021; Wiessner & Tumu,
1998). If they were to cheat on the spirit woman, she would punish them by inhibiting their growth
into beautiful and intelligent men (Wiessner & Pupu, 2021). By excluding young males from the
mating market, the belief seems conveniently designed to reserve women for the polygynous
marriages of older men (see Wiessner & Pupu, 2021).
Note that selfish policing can occur in the absence of power asymmetries. In the secular case,
when people deter neighbors from robbing them, for example by installing surveillance cameras in
their homes, they are protecting themselves from being attacked without incentivizing cooperation
in the group at large. The same holds in the religious case. On many Polynesian islands, families
placed taboos on their own fruit trees and vegetable gardens, thereby signaling to potential thieves
that supernatural forces would punish the theft of their property with illness, death, or shark attacks
(Williamson, 2013, pp. 134-136; see also Bell, 1953; Hogbin & Malinowski, 1934; Wright, 2009).
Such beliefs that supernatural forces punish, not theft in general but theft from the promoter of the
belief specifically, seem to originate in selfish policing.
Thus, a critical prediction of the mutual policing model is that beliefs in supernatural
punishment should emerge not only under prosocial forms that punish uncooperative behaviors, but
also under extractive forms that serve selfish interests. This contrasts with cultural group selection
theories, according to which punitive gods evolve because they increase cooperation, which predict
that punitive gods should mostly be concerned with group cooperation (Norenzayan et al., 2016; see
also Johnson, 2016). In our framework, prosocial supernatural punishment evolves as a particular
case of the use of supernatural punishment for policing others, where the policer benefits from
encouraging cooperation in the group at large.
Policing with shared interests results in prosocial supernatural punishment. As long noted by
social evolution theorists, policing often generates public good benefits for individuals other than
the policer (El Mouden et al., 2010; Singh & Boomsma, 2015; Q. Sun et al., 2020). This is the case
when, by monitoring and punishing a recipient, you induce the recipient to increase her level of
cooperation, not only towards you, but also toward other individuals. In pigtailed macaques, for
example, dominant individuals directly benefit from policing within-group conflicts yet thereby also
benefit other individuals as a by-product, by decreasing conflict rates (Flack, de Waal, et al., 2005;
Flack et al., 2006; Flack, Krakauer, et al., 2005). In these cases, policing is cooperative behavior in
the sense that it provides benefits to individuals other than the actor (West et al., 2007).
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
19
Among cooperative behaviors, however, one must distinguish between cooperation based on
shared interests (or “by-product cooperation”) and cooperation based on reciprocity and reputation
(West et al., 2007, 2011, 2021). Cooperation for shared interests refers to behaviors that benefit
other individuals only as a by-product of being already in the actor’s direct self-interest (Leimar &
Connor, 2003; Leimar & Hammerstein, 2010; West et al., 2011). Unlike reciprocal and reputation-
based cooperation, this form of cooperation does not imply a free-rider problem, since the benefits
that the actor receives from their cooperative behavior are not dependent on recipients or third
parties providing benefits to the actor in return.
Many policing behaviors belong to this category. The term “mutual policing” was originally
coined in the animal literature to refer to such policing behaviors that generate by-product benefits
for other individuals despite being in the direct self-interest of the policer (Cant et al., 2014; Frank,
1995; Ratnieks, 1988; Sun et al., 2020). For example, in the mutual policing of worker honeybees,
each worker has an inclusive fitness interest in preventing other workers from reproducing (El
Mouden et al., 2010). However, when a given worker W1 polices another worker W2, this happens
to benefit all the other workers (W3, W4, W5, ..., Wn) because they all have the same interest: none of
them wants W2 to reproduce (Ratnieks, 1988; Ratnieks & Visscher, 1989; Ratnieks & Wenseleers,
2005). All workers end up policing each other, with no incentive to free ride on each other’s
policing, because each worker’s contribution increases the benefit she receives from policing
sufficiently to be worth the cost regardless of whether other workers are also policing.
Beliefs in gods that punish uncooperative behaviors, we argue, can emerge from a similar
incentive structure where the policer’s interests align with the interests of other individuals. Take
the punitive spirit Sikameinan among the Mentawai horticulturalists, believed to attack people who
fail to share meat within their clan (Singh et al., 2021). Each clan-member has an interest in
incentivizing other clan-members to share meat with him or her. To this end, it is useful to
communicate the belief that Sikameinan will punish failure to share with clan members (“Share with
the clan or you’ll get sick!”). By appealing to Sikameinan, however, each individual generates by-
product benefits to other clan-members by increasing the probability that meat will be shared with
them as well (Figure 2B). All clan-members end up policing each other by appealing to Sikameinan,
with no incentive to free-ride on each other’s policing, because appealing to Sikameinan is cheap
enough to be worth the cost regardless of whether other individuals are also policing.
Similarly, among the Kiowa bison hunters (North America), killing or taking revenge on
someone after publicly reconciling with them was said to be followed by taido (Richardson, 1940).
Taido was a supernatural sanction “whereby the killer was pursued to the end of his days with bad
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
20
luck in hunting, herding and warfare, resulting in poverty, sickness and death” (Richardson, 1940,
pp. 36, 11, 61). Ethnographic evidence indicates that everyone among the Kiowa had a strong
shared interest in preventing cycles of killing and counter-killing (Fitouchi & Singh, 2023; Hoebel,
2009; Richardson, 1940). Indeed, these destructive cycles of revenge could end up harming
everyone in the group, not just the disputants themselves (Richardson, 1940). Thus, we suggest that
everyone had a shared interest in trying to deter intratribal killing and revenge by endorsing the
belief in taido, particularly given the low cost of communicating the belief.
In other words, beliefs in prosocial supernatural punishment—forces that by punish
uncooperative behaviors such as murder or stinginess—can arise from self-interested motivations to
police when the policers’ interests coincide with the common interest.
Reputation-based policing results in the moral duty to believe in prosocial supernatural
punishment. Humans also engage in forms of policing that are cooperative in a stronger sense.
Given their capacity for reciprocal and reputation-based cooperation (Clutton-Brock, 2009), they
engage in collective actions aimed at promoting cooperation in their group (Figure 2C), even when
the individual cost of participating in policing is greater than the marginal benefit each individual
receives from his participation (Lie-Panis et al., 2023; Yamagishi, 1986). Ostrom (1990), for
example, famously reviewed how many small-scale communities have collectively organized to
control free-riding by, for example, hiring specialized monitors to watch over common pool
resources (see also Greif, 1993; Greif et al., 1994). As they require costly contributions, these
cooperative interactions imply a second-order free-rider problem: individuals have an incentive to
benefit from the increased cooperation that policing generates without themselves paying the cost of
contributing to policing (Hechter, 1988; Heckathorn, 1989; Ostrom, 1990; Yamagishi, 1986).
Cooperative policing can be stabilized by social incentives such as reciprocal rewarding and
reputational dynamics, which allow individuals to overcome the second-order free-rider problem
(Ostrom, 1990; Ozono et al., 2016; Pal & Hilbe, 2022). Evolutionary models, experimental
evidence, and ethnographic data show that individuals are motivated to pay costs to police
cooperatively when they gain reputational benefits for doing so (Barclay, 2005; Glowacki & von
Rueden, 2015; Jordan et al., 2016; Lie-Panis et al., 2023; Ostrom, 1990; Pal & Hilbe, 2022). In the
communities surveyed by Ostrom (1990), for instance, “The individual who finds a rule-infractor
gains status and prestige for being a good protector of the commons” (Ostrom, 1990, p. 96).
Another mechanism to incentivize cooperative policing is to reward policers conditionally on
whether they police for the public interest (see also Ozono et al., 2016; Sasaki et al., 2015; Wang et
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
21
al., 2018). In Ostrom’s case studies, for instance, monitors were rewarded by payments if they did
their job well and fired by the community if discovered slacking off (Ostrom, 1990, pp. 88, 96).
Importantly, when policing is the object of such a collective action, it is treated cognitively as
any form of reciprocal cooperation. That is, people compute that everyone has a moral duty to
contribute to the policing effort (André et al., 2022). Taking the benefits of others’ costly
investments in policing, while not yourself paying the cost of policing (e.g., by cheating on the taxes
that pay for policemen), amounts to free riding on your cooperative partners—the typical kind of
behavior that people judge morally wrong (André et al., 2022; Curry et al., 2019; Graham et al.,
2013). Just as people moralize free-riding in other collective actions (Cubitt et al., 2011; Delton et
al., 2013; Levine et al., 2020; Mathew & Boyd, 2014), people who free-ride on others’
contributions to policing are perceived as moral violators (Mathew, 2017).
These collective actions for policing cooperation, we argue, also have a religious counterpart
(Figure 2C). When people perceive that the erosion of beliefs in supernatural punishment could
jeopardize people’s motivation to cooperate, resulting in social disorder (Israel, 1995, p. 373; Jones,
1980), the maintenance of religious belief in society is perceived as a public good to which everyone
has a moral duty to contribute. Everyone has a duty to pay costs to stabilize the belief in
supernatural punishment, to ensure that everyone will benefit from an acceptable level of
cooperation and social harmony. In this collective action, people have the moral duty to educate
their children religiously, to publicly support belief in the supernatural punishment of cheating, and
to abstain from behavior that might undermine other people’s faith, such as blasphemy, defamation
of religion, and public renunciation of faith (see Grim, 2012; Jones, 1980; Nash, 2007). And people
who cheat in the collective action for maintaining faith—apostates, blasphemers, and other
preachers of sacrilegious ideas—earn a bad moral reputation for threatening the stability of
cooperation in the group. In medieval and early modern Europe, for example, blasphemy was
condemned as a threat to the “public-order” and the “moral and material safety of the nation,”
because it could “alienate the mind of others from the love and reverence of God” (Nash, 2007, pp.
3–5; see also Jones, 1980). In the early years of the Dutch Republic (16th c.), similarly, political
thinkers feared that “if parents…fail to instill veneration for the Church and ‘fear of God’ into their
offspring, then morality, and with it the social order, would surely collapse” (Israel, 1995, p. 373).
This helps to explain why many prosocial religions not only feature beliefs in prosocial
supernatural punishment, but also make it a moral duty to endorse, spread, and protect these beliefs
(see also Dennett, 2007). The Christian Church, for example, requires people to publicly and
regularly profess their belief in heaven and the judgement of the dead in the afterlife (e.g., by
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
22
reciting the Apostles’ Creed: Cross & Livingstone, 2005; Lindbeck, 2020). More generally, as of
2014, about 26% of the world’s countries and territories had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and
13% had laws or policies sanctioning apostasy—the public renunciation of faith (Theodorou, 2016;
see also Grim, 2012). While these laws may be in part favored by the self-interest of rulers
(something we discuss below), psychological evidence shows that many ordinary people also see
atheism, blasphemy, and sacrilegious ideas as morally wrong (Ritter et al., 2016; Royzman et al.,
2014; Schein et al., 2016).
Finally, the notion that religious belief is an object of collective action also helps explain why
many prosocial religions institutionalize (see, e.g., Vlerick, 2020). By this, we mean that people
develop complex social organizations, such as clerical institutions, to organize their collective action
for promoting religious belief in society. In the secular case, collective policing often takes the form
of complex policing institutions with a division of labor in the collective action for policing—with
guards, policemen, and justice courts, each endowed with a special role in the policing of free-riding
(Ostrom, 1990). In the same way, collective policing based on religious beliefs takes the form of
complex clerical institutions—with priests, churches, and religious schools, each endowed with a
special role in the dissemination of supernatural punishment beliefs in society (Figure 2C). Just as
secular policing is entrusted to professional policemen, who are paid by the community to monitor
and punish free-riding, religious policing is entrusted to professional priests, who are paid by the
community to hold the Mass, teach the religious doctrine, preach prosocial commandments, and
remind everyone of the prospect of God’s punishment in the afterlife.
Interim summary. In sum, because mutual policing can be underpinned either by selfish
interests, shared interests, or reputation-based cooperation, it provides a unifying explanation for
why beliefs in supernatural punishment are sometimes extractive, sometimes prosocial, and
sometimes a moral duty (Figure 2). Of course, this typology only aims to capture ideal-typic design-
features of beliefs, not to classify existing religions (such as “Islam” or “Christianity”) into clear-cut
categories. Actual religions often mix many of these features, given the variety of incentive
structures from which they emerge. Medieval Christianity, for example, arguably mixes extractive
supernatural punishment (e.g., the divine right of kings), prosocial supernatural punishment (e.g.,
turning the other cheek), and the moral duty to endorse prosocial beliefs (e.g., profession of faith).
The Technological Evolution of Prosocial Religions
While religious culture is often seen as fundamentally different from technological culture (Jagiello
et al., 2022), we argue that religious evolution can be understood as a special case of technological
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
23
evolution. When developing technical artifacts (e.g., hammers), people design variants that they
perceive, based on technical reasoning, as efficient for achieving a given goal (e.g., hammering nails)
(Osiurak et al., 2021, 2022; Osiurak & Reynaud, 2020). After observing the effectiveness of
different variants, people iteratively tweak existing variants to increase their efficiency, and retain
those they perceive—potentially wrongly—as the most efficient (Singh, 2022).
Recent work suggests that many religious traditions are no different and are best understood
as serving instrumental goals (André et al., 2023; Hong & Henrich, 2021; Singh, 2022). Just as
people design effective-seeming hammers based on technical intuitions, they also design, based on
intuition and trial-and-error, supernatural practices that they perceive to be effective in achieving
some goal—such as making rain fall or warding off misfortune (Hong et al., 2021; Hong &
Henrich, 2021; Singh, 2021, 2022). They craft divination techniques to reveal inaccessible
information (Hong & Henrich, 2021); design shamanistic interactions with spirits as effective-
seeming ways to manage misfortune (Singh, 2018); and perform magical rituals to influence
otherwise uncontrollable outcomes, such as illness or crop failure (Hong et al., 2022; Singh, 2021).
Our account extends this approach to prosocial religions. Just as people craft magical
techniques for making rain fall (Hong et al., 2021), they selectively retain beliefs in supernatural
punishment they perceive—based on their folk-psychology—to be effective in influencing others’
behaviors. As with any cultural tool, people can tweak, improve, and elaborate on existing variants
to better satisfy their policing goals, driving the cultural evolution of prosocial religions. And just as
in technological evolution, this process can be cumulative when iterated over generations (Mesoudi
& Thornton, 2018). Individuals in one generation may inherit beliefs in supernatural punishment
from the previous generation. To better achieve their policing goal, they may tweak this belief into a
form that seems more effective at encouraging cooperation, such as by refining the gradation of
afterlife retribution. This might involve inventing a new place in the afterlife for intermediate levels
of punishment, such as purgatory (Le Goff, 1986), to convince moderate sinners that they’re not yet
condemned to hell and that it’s still worth behaving better.
This cumulative improvement in perceived efficiency helps explain why prosocial religions
end up with apparently functional design-features, intuitively well suited to promote cooperation,
despite unclear evidence that they have strong prosocial effects. In our model, the ultimate driver of
their cultural evolution is the folk-psychological intuition that they deter selfishness, not objective
adaptive benefits they provide by increasing cooperation. Of course, people’s subjective perception
of efficacy may stem from prosocial religions truly being effective. But it need not be: Often, people
(even professional policy-makers) are wrong when making causal inferences about human behavior
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
24
and design ineffective interventions when attempting to instill behavioral change (Cameron et al.,
2021; Hoffman et al., 2022; Ott & Santelli, 2007). In the same way that erroneous perceptions of
usefulness stabilize many ineffective public policies (Cameron et al., 2021), prosocial religions may
stabilize because people wrongly perceive them to be efficient social technologies. Just as ineffective
folk medicines develop the world over as people try to cure diseases (Miton et al., 2015), ineffective
folk social technologies may develop everywhere as people do their best to make each other more
cooperative.
Cross-Disciplinary Evidence
The mutual policing theory generates at least 9 predictions for the cultural design, cross-
cultural variations, inter-individual differences, and psychological mechanisms of prosocial religions
and beliefs in supernatural punishment. In this section, we derive these predictions and review
historical, psychological, cross-cultural, and ethnographic evidence that support them.
Prediction 1. People should invest more in supernatural punishment beliefs when they are
more motivated to police each other. We thus expect that:
Prediction 1a. Individuals who desire higher levels of social control should be more likely to
endorse supernatural punishment beliefs.
Prediction 1b. Lower trust in others should be associated with greater endorsement of
supernatural punishment beliefs
Prediction 1c. Societies with stricter social norms and greater disapproval of deviance (i.e.,
greater “cultural tightness”: Gelfand et al., 2017) should be more likely to exhibit
supernatural punishment beliefs.
Prediction 2. People should invest more in supernatural punishment beliefs when they perceive them
to be effective for motivating others to cooperate.
Prediction 3. People should invest more in supernatural punishment beliefs when they perceive an
added value of supernatural policing over secular means of policing others’ behaviors. We thus
expect that:
Prediction 3a. People should invest more in supernatural punishment beliefs when their
desired level of social control is harder to achieve by secular means.
Prediction 3b. Supernatural punishment beliefs should preferentially target behaviors that are
difficult to police by secular means.
Prediction 4. Supernatural punishment beliefs should preferentially target behaviors that people are
motivated to control in everyday life.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
25
Prediction 5. Supernatural punishment beliefs should emerge, not only in forms that promote
mutually beneficial cooperation, but also in more extractive forms that serve selfish interests.
Prediction 6. Aside from beliefs, the rituals promoted by prosocial religions should exhibit evidence
of deliberate design for policing purposes.
Prediction 1: People Invest More in Supernatural Punishment Beliefs When They Are More
Motivated to Police each Other
If supernatural punishment beliefs develop as cultural tools for individual policing strategies,
people should invest more in prosocial religions when they are more motivated to police others’
behavior. This prediction is specific to the mutual policing theory since it is the only theory to
assume that supernatural punishment originates in individual policing motivations (although see
Swanson, 1960, pp. 159–160 for a potentially similar logic). Other evolutionary theories, especially
cultural group selection, hold that supernatural punishment beliefs originate not in individuals’
policing strategies, but in the group-level benefits they provide by increasing cooperation
(Norenzayan et al., 2016; see also Johnson, 2016). Thus, these theories predict that holding
supernatural punishment beliefs should be associated with greater cooperativeness (Norenzayan et al.,
2016), rather than with greater motivations to police conspecifics’ behavior. Reliable evidence that
supernatural punishment beliefs are not associated with policing motivations would pose a
considerable challenge to the mutual policing theory.
Converging lines of evidence support prediction 1. First, individual-level religiosity is
associated with greater motivations to control others’ behaviors (Prediction 1a). Support for harsher
punishment of criminal behavior (e.g., death penalty, corporal punishment) and greater motivations
to punish norm violators predict endorsement of punitive religious beliefs (Bader et al., 2010; Bones
& Sabriseilabi, 2018; Grasmick et al., 1993; Jackson, Caluori, Abrams, et al., 2021a). Across dozens
of countries, individuals who report greater religiosity and stronger beliefs in supernatural
punishment tend to also support tighter restrictions on individuals behaviors, namely by rating
uncooperative and sexual behaviors as less justifiable (Atkinson & Bourrat, 2011; Jacquet et al.,
2021; Weeden & Kurzban, 2013).
Second, many studies find that religiosity and belief in punitive gods are associated with
lower social trust (Prediction 1b), not only across groups but also between individuals within a same
cultural group, and whether trust is measured by questionnaires (Berggren & Bjørnskov, 2011;
Jacquet et al., 2021; Mencken et al., 2009; Valente & Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2020; though see
Dilmaghani, 2017) or by Trust Games (Galen et al., 2020; see also Purzycki et al., 2020). This
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
26
makes sense if people invest in punitive religious beliefs as a means to police others’ behaviors, as
the less people trust that other people will spontaneously behave cooperatively, the more they
support or invest in policing others’ cooperation (Nettle & Saxe, 2021; Yamagishi, 1986, 1988).
Supporting this interpretation, in more than 295,000 individuals in more than 100 countries,
individual-level motivations to police others’ (in particular sexual) behaviors mediate the
relationship between low trust and religiosity (Jacquet et al., 2021).
Third, similar patterns emerge with society-level markers of policing motivations (Prediction
1c). In 86 non-industrial societies of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, societies with lower
tolerance of deviance and more restrictive social norms (i.e., greater “cultural tightness”) are more
likely to exhibit beliefs in moralizing high gods (Jackson et al., 2020). Across 33 contemporary
nations, tighter nations are more religious (Gelfand et al., 2011). Across more than 100 countries
covering more than 90% of the world’s population, low religiosity strongly correlates with
“individual-choice norms” that oppose strong social control of individual lifestyles (r = -0.77;
Inglehart, 2020). Within the United States, state-level cultural tightness predicts participants’
propensity to report believing in hell (Jackson et al., 2021a), and tighter Chinese provinces have
more Taoist and Buddhist temples, as well as churches and mosques (Chua et al., 2019). Moreover,
historical increases in linguistic markers of cultural tightness between 1800 and 2000 have been
found to predict, and to precede, historical increases in the punitiveness of religious beliefs,
suggesting that increases in cultural tightness—indicating greater policing motivations—caused
increased communication of punitive religious beliefs in the population (Jackson et al., 2021a).
Fourth, experimental evidence further suggests a causal role of policing motivations.
Experimentally increasing participants’ motivation to punish norm violators increases their
endorsement of punitive religious beliefs (Jackson et al., 2021a; see also Stanley & Kay, 2022).
Participants who experience a breach in trust––by being exploited by their partner in a Trust
Game—are more likely than controls to attribute to God more punitive attitudes toward greed
(Purzycki et al., 2020). Similarly, increasing people’s perceptions of the prevalence of conflict and
social disorder in their environment leads them to rate punitive gods as more important, this effect
being mediated by support for tighter controls of individual behaviors (Caluori et al., 2020).
Prediction 2: People Invest More in Supernatural Punishment Beliefs When They Perceive Them
to be Effective for Incentivizing Cooperation
According to our account, people promote supernatural punishment beliefs because they
hold the folk-psychological belief that, if others believed in supernatural punishment, they would be
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
27
more likely to cooperate (see section entitled “People Believe that Believing in Moralizing Gods
Makes People More Cooperative”). In other words, people should invest more in supernatural
punishment not only when they are more motivated to police others’ behaviors but also when they
perceive these beliefs to be effective for that end. Converging lines of evidence support this
prediction.
First, ethnographic and historical evidence indicates that people endorse beliefs in
supernatural punishment because they consider them efficient for inspiring cooperation in others.
Take, for example, the Yahgan hunter-gatherers of South America, who believed in a “Supreme
Being, who saw everything and who punish delinquents with shortened life and with the death of
their children” (Cooper, 1946, p. 99). Yaghan informants reported deliberately instilling fear of this
god in young people to scare them into cooperating:
It is good to implant the fear of him in the candidates! For now they will more faithfully
follow all the teachings and will live as good, industrious human beings. That is why they are
often threatened with this villain! (Gusinde & Schütze, 1937, p. 763).
In medieval China and Europe, similarly, “the state strove to propagate beliefs in divine
retribution after death as a means of preventing crime” (Bernstein & Katz, 2010, p. 241).
Charlemagne, King of the Franks and then Emperor (8-9th c.) and “came to consider hell as a
sanction that could reinforce his own imperial view of the cosmos and the political order”
(Bernstein & Katz, 2010, p. 222). Even the French revolutionaries (18th c.), who sought to weaken
the Christian Church’s influence on society, nonetheless recreated a prosocial religion from
scratch—the “Cult of the Supreme Being”—deemed necessary to ensure citizens’ compliance to
Republican virtue (Desmons, 2009; Smyth, 2016; Vovelle, 2002). As Robespierre put it: “The
concept of the Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul is a continuous call to justice,
which makes it both social and republican.” (Smyth, 2016, p. 22).
Second, using data from the World Value Surveys, Abrams et al., (2020) provide evidence
that nations with stronger beliefs that religion is necessary for moral behavior are less likely to
secularize over time. This supports the idea that the more people perceive religion as necessary for
encouraging cooperation, the more they invest in religion—in the sense, here, of not abandoning it.
Importantly, this relationship is also observed at the individual level. People who report a greater
belief that religion is necessary for moral behavior are less likely to abandon religion across their
lifespan (Abrams et al., 2020). Moreover, these people also tend to feel greater guilt over
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
28
abandoning religion (Abrams et al., 2020). Indeed, guilt is the emotion that people feel when they
perceive themselves to have violated a moral duty toward cooperation partners in reciprocal
cooperative interactions (Fitouchi et al., 2024; Tomasello, 2020). Thus, the fact that people also feel
guilty about abandoning religion suggests that they construe investment in religion itself as a moral
duty toward other people, consistent with our proposal that people sometimes perceive themselves
as engaged in a collective action to maintain religion in society.
Prediction 3: People Invest More in Supernatural Punishment Beliefs When They Perceive an
Added Value Over Secular Means of Policing
If people use religious beliefs for everyday policing, they should rely on them more when
they perceive them to add value beyond secular means of policing. Indeed, we expect people to
believe that threats of supernatural punishment are less effective for motivating cooperation than
threats of secular punishment, because threats of secular punishment are based on less mysterious
entities (e.g., police officers rather than invisible spirits) and are therefore likely to be more credible.
Thus, we expect people to use threats of supernatural punishment more to compensate for the
shortcomings of secular policing than to rely on supernatural punishment when secular policing is
already deemed sufficient. We thus expect the following patterns.
First, the more people trust that secular policing institutions (e.g., the state) are sufficient to
incentivize cooperation, the less they should rely on beliefs in supernatural punishment to deter
uncooperative behaviors (Prediction 3a). Supporting this prediction, data from the World Value
Surveys suggests that, across countries, religiosity decreases as societies develop stable and efficient
political institutions (Norris & Inglehart, 2004, 2011). Distrust of atheists, similarly, is lower in
countries with a strong secular rule of law (Norenzayan & Gervais, 2015). These group-level results
may also be consistent with cultural group selection theories, as it has been proposed that the
group-level selection pressures for religion to promote cooperation may weaken when societies
develop efficient political institutions (Norenzayan et al., 2016). However, compared to cultural
group selection theories, the mutual policing theory distinctively predicts that similar relationships
should also be found at the individual level, within the same cultural group. Consistent with this
prediction, studies suggest that experimentally increasing people’s perceptions of governmental
instability increase people’s endorsement of beliefs in a controlling God, with this effect being
mediated by participants’ “need for order and control” (Kay et al., 2010). These individual-level
patterns, as well as their group-level manifestations, are also predicted by existential insecurity
theory (Immerzeel & van Tubergen, 2013; Norris & Inglehart, 2011)—an account that we discuss
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
29
below (see section entitled “Explaining the Fall of Prosocial Religions”). A distinctive prediction of
mutual policing, however, is that similar effects should be observed for extractive forms of
supernatural punishment beliefs. In medieval Christianity, for example, communities of monks
appealed to supernatural punishment to protect their property against intruders especially when they
lacked the military means to do so and when government protection was unavailable (Leeson, 2014;
Little, 1993).
Second, supernatural punishment beliefs should target behaviors that people struggle to
police by secular means (Prediction 3b). As people reasoned in a draft of the Declaration of Rights of
Man, “Since the law cannot reach secret crimes, it must be supplemented by religion” (art. 16;
Edelstein, 2018, pp. 184–185). In line with this idea, world religions have been especially concerned
with policing private behaviors difficult to police by the state, such as “vicious habits” of drinking,
gambling, and fornication whose punishment in hell was described in great precision, as well as
“sinful thoughts” arising in the intimacy of individual conscience (e.g., lustful or violent thoughts),
which could be policed, for example, by confession to a priest (Cohen, 2003; Cohen & Rozin, 2001;
Fitouchi et al., 2022; Tentler, 2015; on confession, see also sect. 3.6.1). Also in line with this logic,
studies consistently find that individual-level religiosity across contemporary countries is more
strongly associated with the individual-level tendency to condemn private behaviors such as sexual
practices than with condemning uncooperative behaviors subject to legal enforcement, such as
cheating on taxes (Jacquet et al., 2021; Moon et al., 2019; Weeden & Kurzban, 2013, 2016; see also
Hone et al., 2020). In 17th century England, similarly, politicians explicitly appreciated this added
value of religion over secular social control: they thought that people “are governed by the pulpit
more than the sword in time of peace,” that “no temporal government could have a sure support
without a national church that adhered to it,” and that “[r]eligion it is that keeps the subjects in
obedience” (Hill, 2002, p. 76). This is not specific to world religions or large-scale societies. Among
the Mentawai horticulturalists, the moralistic spirit Sikameinan specifically punishes one of the few
transgressions—failing to share meat (Singh et al., 2021)—that is not enforceable through secular
justice (Fitouchi & Singh, 2023; Singh & Garfield, 2022).
Prediction 4: Supernatural Punishment Beliefs Target Behaviors People Are Motivated to Police
in Everyday Life
If beliefs in punitive gods emerge as people attempt to incentivize others’ cooperation,
supernatural punishment should target behaviors that people are motivated to deter in everyday life.
In line with this prediction, a growing body of evidence suggests that the content of beliefs in
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
30
punitive gods adapts, in a fine-grained manner, to the local policing problems people face in
different ecologies (Bendixen, Apicella, Atkinson, et al., 2023; Bendixen & Purzycki, 2017;
McNamara & Purzycki, 2020; Purzycki, Bendixen, et al., 2022).
Using a free-list method, Bendixen et al. (2023) asked participants from eight diverse
societies (e.g., Fiji, Tanna, Mauritius, Marajo of Brazil, Hadza of Tanzania) to list behaviors
disapproved by their local deities. They show that these behaviors correspond to locally salient social
dilemmas people encounter in everyday life and which they often struggle to police by secular
means. In the Tyva Republic, local spirits cher eezi especially dislike environmental pollution and
overexploitation of natural resources—a salient social problem in this particular socioecology and
difficult to police by secular means (Bendixen, Apicella, Atkinson, et al., 2023; Purzycki, 2011,
2016; Purzycki, Bendixen, et al., 2022). By contrast, in Tanna (Vanuatu), which relies on
horticulture for subsistence, local gods punish violations of garden taboos, which likely contribute to
proper cultivation and distribution of collective resources in this particular ecology (Bendixen,
Apicella, Atkinson, et al., 2023). In other words, cross-cultural variation in the very content of
supernatural punishment beliefs mirrors variation in the policing problems people face in everyday
life, consistent with people tailoring supernatural punishment beliefs to specific policing problems
they face on a regular basis.
Prediction 5: Supernatural Punishment Beliefs Emerge, Not Only Under Prosocial Forms, But
Also Under Extractive Forms That Serve Selfish Interests
Because people’s policing agendas can be selfish as well as cooperative, the mutual policing
theory predicts that beliefs in supernatural punishment should just as easily take extractive forms
serving selfish interests as prosocial forms serving mutual benefit (see section entitled “The Varieties
of Religious Policing”) Three lines of quantitative evidence support this prediction.
First, rulers of Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern states promoted beliefs in supernatural
punishment to compel subjects into obedience—from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to
Medieval China and Europe (Bentzen & Gokmen, 2022; Bernstein & Katz, 2010; Cronk, 1994;
Morris, 2015; Wright, 2009; see also Watts et al., 2016). In a sample of 1265 pre-industrial
societies, Bentzen & Gokmen (2022) show that more stratified societies—where leaders have
greater incentives to use religion to legitimize power—are more likely to develop beliefs in
moralizing high gods, after controlling for social complexity and agricultural intensity. Using
irrigation potential as an instrument for stratification among agricultural societies (Bentzen et al.,
2017), they further show that exogenous variation in stratification leads to greater belief in
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
31
moralizing high gods and greater institutionalization of religion, proxied by the prevalence of
religious laws (Bentzen & Gokmen, 2022). These results support the idea that the cultural
stabilization of supernatural punishment beliefs is partly driven by powerful individuals promoting
these beliefs for selfish policing purposes (see Cronk, 1994; de Aguiar & Cronk, 2011).
Second, selfish supernatural policing recurs in small-scale societies. Take beliefs in
supernatural punishment among the Dogon of Mali (Strassmann, 1992, 1996). Women are
threatened with supernatural sanctions, such as famine and illness, if they refuse to segregate in
menstrual huts during their menses (Strassmann, 1992, 1996). Genetic and ethnographic evidence
shows that these taboos and supernatural threats allow males to police female sexuality and increase
their paternity certainty by publicizing women’s reproductive cycle (Strassmann, 1992; Strassmann
et al., 2012). Third, a large body of evidence indicates that individuals with a monogamous
reproductive strategy—people who invest in parental care and committed pair-bonds—use religion
as a tool to police sexual promiscuity around them, in order to protect against cuckoldry or mate-
poaching and facilitate familial stability (Jacquet et al., 2021; Kerry et al., 2022; McCullough et al.,
2005; Moon, 2021; Moon et al., 2019; Weeden et al., 2008; Weeden & Kurzban, 2013, 2016).
Prediction 6: There should be Evidence of Deliberate Policing Purpose in Prosocial Religious
Rituals
If prosocial religions are shaped by policing goals, we should expect deliberate policing to
shape not just beliefs in supernatural punishment but the associated rituals, as well. Several lines of
evidence support this prediction.
Confession of sins. Policing goals are apparent in confession rituals. Consider the Christian
Church’s decision to make confession mandatory for all at least once a year, from the 13th century
onwards (Bériou, 1983; Tentler, 2015). In line with the mutual policing model, historians have
argued that the Christian hierarchy deliberately designed mandatory confession as a technology of
social control (Little, 1981; Martin, 1983; Tentler, 1974, 2015). First, a huge number of manuals
provided priests with very precise techniques about how to conduct confession, making clear that
people construed confession as an instrumental technology:
this literature was practical. The summas and manuals for confessors were designed for use.
A priest could find out what he wanted to know by consulting them because they were
organized especially with that in mind. No better example of this practicality can be
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
32
imagined than the creation of the alphabetical summa, which makes it possible to get
information immediately on a specific topic (Tentler, 2015, p. 49; see also Little, 1981).
Second, confession appears grounded in the folk-psychological intuition that triggering
guiltby making people confess their sinswas an efficient way to make people more cooperative
(Tentler, 2015, pp. 129, 130, 161-162, 345-347). Techniques of confession were “designed to make
people understand concretely and feel acutely their own personal guilt” (Tentler, 2015, pp. 161–
162). These design features are consistent with psychological evidence that people understand the
prosocial effects of guilt and exploit this folk-understanding by strategically inducing guilt in others
to nudge them into cooperating (Baumeister et al., 1994, 1995; Huhmann & Brotherton, 1997;
Vangelisti et al., 1991; though see Cardella, 2016). The ecclesiastical hierarchy appears to have done
just this, by designing confession as a “system of discipline primarily through guilt” (Tentler, 2015,
p. 347)2.
Penance rituals. Penance rituals—found in several prosocial religions (e.g., Hinduism:
Olivelle, 2011; Christianity: Meens, 2014; Tentler, 2015)—also appear to be shaped by people’s
policing goals. First, the community requires the penitent to publicly confess their crime (early
Christianity: Tentler, 2015, pp. 4–9; Ancient India: Olivelle, 2011). This is used by many
communities deploying high levels of social control, as public confession increases the reputational
cost of cheating while decreasing policing costs by deterring observers from future cheating
(Hechter, 1988, 1990). Second, penance requires wrongdoers to suffer hard treatments, such as
ascetic abstinence or inflictions of pain, well suited to deter future wrongdoing by increasing its cost
(Coşgel & Miceli, 2018; Tentler, 2015). Third, penance requires culprits to credibly signal
contrition and genuinely make amends for their fault—a necessary condition for being forgiven by
the community (Tentler, 2015, p. 13). This is consistent with psychological evidence that people
perceive sincere, costly apology as a necessary condition for cheaters to behave more cooperatively in
the future (Ohtsubo & Watanabe, 2009; Watanabe & Ohtsubo, 2012).
Accordingly, historical studies of penance in early Christianity explicitly characterize them as
a technology of mutual policing:
2 According to Tentler (2015), “In theory and practice, sacramental confession provided a
comprehensive and organized system of social control… Moral and legal norms—which medieval
religious authorities were disposed to believe were in agreement—had to be obeyed… the heart of
the system is reliance on internal feelings of guilt. If the system is working, sinners will feel guilty
outside of confession; and confession will help insure that guilt is elicited independently of the
presence of any other human being. The institutions of forgiveness belong most decidedly to a
religion of conscience and a system of discipline primarily through guilt” (pp. 345-347).
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
33
penitential institutions, developed in the first centuries of the ancient and medieval
church…existed first of all to insure discipline, to exercise control. …The willing recourse
to excommunication; the public nature of exclusion, retribution, and reconciliation;
concentration on the most serious crimes against marriage, property, and life; and the
punitive nature of the system’s sanctions: all of these harsh characteristics point to the
prominent role played by the church in the maintenance of social order… it preserved
order in a highly restricted local community, which expected strict obedience to its rules
and, when there were failures, gave only one difficult chance for readmission to full
privileges in that group… The first function of ecclesiastical penance then is discipline, or
social control.
(Tentler, 2015, pp. 12–13)
.
Explaining The Fall of Prosocial Religions
While prosocial religions are widespread across cultures (Lightner et al., 2022b), many
societies have experienced a decline in religious belief and participation in the last centuries
(Inglehart, 2020; Jackson et al., 2021b). As long noted, this fall of religion is strongly associated
with economic development and modernization (Inglehart, 2020; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Paldam
& Gundlach, 2013). Virtually all societies secularize as they become richer (Herzer & Strulik, 2017;
Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Inglehart, 2020; Norris & Inglehart, 2011), while societies that remain
highly religious are the poorest and most ecologically insecure (Barber, 2011, 2013; Botero et al.,
2014; Inglehart, 2020; although relative inequality also matters: Solt et al., 2011). Social scientists
have sought to explain the association between affluence and secularization: Why do prosocial
religions vanish in high-income societies?
A leading proposal—the existential security hypothesis—argues that abundant resources,
social insurance, and secure healthcare make religion less attractive as a means to appease anxieties
about existential threats (Barber, 2011, 2013; Immerzeel & van Tubergen, 2013; Inglehart, 2020;
Norris & Inglehart, 2011). Consistent with this view, people across culture use supernatural
practices to prevent misfortunes such as death, hunger, or disease (Boyer, 2019; Singh, 2025) and
alleviate anxieties over uncontrollable outcomes (Malinwoski, 1924; Lang et al., 2020; Sosis, 2007;
Sosis & Handwerker, 2011). Another longstanding hypothesis attributes the fall of religion to the
rise of science and education, fueling a “disenchantment of the world” by which rationalist
worldviews replace supernatural beliefs (Becker et al., 2017; Braun, 2012; Gifford, 2019;
Hungerman, 2014; Weber, 2013).
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
34
While these accounts likely explain part of the secularization process, they focus on the fall
of religion in general. Economic modernity, however, associates not only with a decline of
supernatural beliefs in general, but also with a decreased appeal of the punitive, moralistic aspect of
religion specifically (see Tromp et al., 2021). Many people in modern societies still hold
supernatural beliefs—such as “spirituality without religion” or New Age beliefs broadly construed
(Jackson et al., 2021b; Johnson et al., 2018; Lindeman et al., 2019; Lipka & Gecewicz, 2017)—
while at the same time distancing themselves from the moralistic values of institutional religions
(Houtman & Aupers, 2007; Houtman & Mascini, 2002; Wixwat & Saucier, 2021). Even people
who remain religious, in fact, represent God less and less as a punitive figure and more and more as
a loving, merciful, and forgiving agent (Fincham et al., 2019; Jackson et al., 2021b; Johnson et al.,
2019; Shepperd et al., 2019; Silverman et al., 2016).
The mutual policing theory explains the fall of the moralistic aspect of religion—that is, not
religious beliefs in general but beliefs in moralistic supernatural punishment specifically. People in
rich, modern environments exhibit especially high levels of social trust (De Courson & Nettle,
2021; Nettle, 2015; Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2024; Petersen & Aarøe, 2015), spontaneous prosociality
towards strangers (Holland et al., 2012; Nettle, 2015; Silva & Mace, 2014; Zwirner & Raihani,
2020), and low rates of crime, violence, and homicides (de Courson et al., 2023; De Courson &
Nettle, 2021; Radkani et al., 2023). In this context, we argue that people are less inclined to believe
that the prospect of supernatural punishment is necessary to ensure other people’s cooperation.
Rather, people trust others to behave prosocially without having to feel watched over by punitive
gods.
This increase in social trust reduces the strategic value of supernatural punishment beliefs in
two ways. The first concerns the self-interested motivations for endorsing these beliefs (see section
entitled “Policing for shared interests results in prosocial supernatural punishment”). Since people
think that others won't cheat anyway, whether they believe in divine punishment or not, they no
longer find it useful to communicate beliefs in punitive gods. Indeed, it’s only when you believe that
others would cheat if they weren’t monitored that it’s worth paying costs to incentivize their
cooperation (Yamagishi, 1986, 1988; Nettle & Saxe, 2021). On the recipient side, the reputational
cost of disbelief is also reduced, since other people think they can trust you anyway, whether you
believe in divine punishment or not.
The second reason concerns the moral motivations for endorsing supernatural punishment
beliefs (see section entitled “Reputation-based policing results in the modal duty to believe in
supernatural punishment”). Since people in high-trust societies can be sure that mutually beneficial
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
35
cooperation will survive regardless of whether others believe in divine punishment, they have less
reason to regard beliefs in punitive gods as a moral duty. Like any form of collective action that has
become useless, the cooperative maintenance of supernatural punishment beliefs is no longer part of
the social contract, and atheism, blasphemy, and apostasy, for example, are no longer considered
morally wrong. This dynamic also reduces the reputational pressure to endorse belief in punitive
gods, since failing to do so no longer amounts to cheating your cooperative partners in the collective
action for belief. These two forces, driven by a decline in the perceived utility of religion for
sustaining cooperation, lead people to turn away from prosocial religions. This proposal generates
the following predictions.
First, higher social trust should decrease the perception that people need to believe in
punitive gods to behave cooperatively. Consistent with this, people in richer societies (where
prosocial religions decline) not only trust other people more (Ortiz-Ospina et al., 2024), but also
disagree more with the idea that believing in God is necessary to be moral (r = - 0.86; Tamir et al.,
2020). Second, the decline of prosocial religions should be part of a more general decrease in
people’s motivation to police each other’s behavior. As people trust each other more, they should
invest less in social control more generally, not just in social control through religious belief.
Supporting this idea, across contemporary societies, people in materially safer environments are not
only less religious; they also tolerate deviance more (Gelfand et al., 2011; Harrington & Gelfand,
2014), support individual freedom of choice and emancipation from strict norms (Inglehart, 2020;
Welzel, 2013; Welzel & Inglehart, 2020), and are less supportive of other mechanisms of social
control such as repressive legal systems (Miethe et al., 2005; Wenzel & Thielmann, 2006; Williams
et al., 2019) and authoritarian governance (Nettle & Saxe, 2021; Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Safra et
al., 2017). Diachronically, too, the secularization process has been associated with a decline in
conservative moral values, traditional social controls (Inglehart, 2018; Inglehart & Baker, 2000),
and the restrictiveness of social norms (Jackson et al., 2019). The decline of moralizing religions, in
other words, appears to be just one of the many facets of a declining culture of mutual policing.
A third prediction concerns whether the fall of religion is mostly driven by individual- or
group-level dynamics. Cultural group selection theories predict that group-level dynamics should be
more important. In that vein, proponents of cultural group selection have interpreted the decline of
religion in developed countries as consistent with their account: Once cultural groups have
stabilized secular institutions that enforce large-scale cooperation efficiently, this would weaken the
group-selection pressures that favor prosocial religions (Norenzayan et al., 2016). It remains unclear
to us, however, how any of the modelled mechanisms of cultural group selection—interdemic
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
36
selection (Boyd & Richerson, 1988, 1990), payoff biased migration (Boyd & Richerson, 2009), or
prestige biased group imitation (Boyd & Richerson, 2002)—can account for the changes observed.
Interdemic selection seems to be too slow of a process (Soltis et al., 1995), given the particularly fast
pace of secularization (Inglehart, 2020); and we know of no evidence that the decline of religion is
attributable to more secular countries outcompeting the more religious ones among the developed
countries. Cultural group selection by payoff biased migration and prestige-biased imitation are
theoretically fast enough (Boyd & Richerson, 2002, 2009), yet there are few indications that
secularization has been driven by large-scale imitation or migration either.
By contrast, the mutual policing theory predicts that the decline of religion should be mostly
driven by a shift in individual-level motivations to police others’ behaviors, as individuals with
greater social trust, or a greater perception that secular policing institutions are sufficient (sect. 3.3),
lose interest in supernatural punishment beliefs. In line with this logic, the relationship between
high trust and low religiosity is not only observed between countries, but also between individuals
within countries. Synchronically, within the same cultural group and among individuals governed
by the same group-level political institutions, individuals of higher socio-economic status, who are
known to exhibit higher social trust (Guillou et al., 2021; Nettle, 2015; Stamos et al., 2019), believe
less that belief in god is necessary for moral behavior (Tamir et al., 2020), are less religious, and
invest less in organized, moralistic religions (Houtman & Aupers, 2007; Houtman & Mascini,
2002; Silveus & Stoddard, 2020; Storm, 2017). Diachronically, too, time series data both within the
United States and in European countries indicate that the fall of organized religions between 1981
and the 2000’s is driven by younger cohorts rejecting the moralistic values of organized religions as
these cohorts develop more individualistic values of emancipation from traditional social controls
(Hout & Fischer, 2014; Houtman & Aupers, 2007; Houtman & Mascini, 2002; see also Houtman
et al., 2009; Inglehart, 2020).
Concluding Remarks
The last four decades have witnessed the application of evolutionary and cognitive models to explain
patterns in human culture. From magic to music, justice to visual art, monogamy to the rise of the
state, sociocultural traditions long outside of the purview of naturalistic approaches have been
fruitfully analyzed as the emergent products of evolved psychologies interacting over cultural
evolutionary time (Boyer, 2018; Henrich, 2020; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Scott-Phillips et al.,
2018). Given its importance in social life, religion has been among the most—if not the most—
studied topic in this new science of culture (Boyer, 2001; Norenzayan, 2013; Purzycki & Sosis,
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
37
2022; Sosis, 2006; Whitehouse, 2004; Wilson, 2010). As such, it has served as a gauntlet to
develop, test, and refine approaches that can then be applied to other cultural domains.
A longstanding tension in the naturalistic study of religion, and thus in the study of culture
more generally, has been between by-product (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007; Bloom, 2007, 2009;
Boyer, 2001, 2003) and adaptationist accounts (Bering, 2006; Johnson, 2016; Johnson & Bering,
2006). More recently, scholars have sought to reconcile these approaches, arguing that cultural
group selection can select among beliefs that emerge incidentally from cognitive biases, resulting in
prosocial supernatural punishment beliefs (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Norenzayan, 2013; Norenzayan
et al., 2016). Still, such syntheses assume a group-adaptationist logic: Cultural products that are
functional, widespread, and socially important—like prosocial religions—are argued to develop
because they promote group fitness.
Here, we have not only proposed an alternative account of prosocial religion; we have also
sought to demonstrate a new approach for studying much of human culture. Religious beliefs, as
well as other “symbolic” domains like magic (Hong et al., 2021; Hong & Henrich, 2021), moral
norms (Fitouchi et al., 2022), and justice institutions (Fitouchi & Singh, 2023), may develop not to
promote group-level benefits, but because individuals craft them to satisfy instrumental goals
(Baumard et al., 2023; Singh, 2022). Notably, individuals are constrained by the limitations of their
own psychologies. Just as they (erroneously) intuit that rain magic or voodoo dolls are effective for
changing the weather and harming rivals (Hong et al., 2021; Singh, 2021), they intuit that beliefs in
supernatural punishment will make their neighbors more cooperative, even if this isn’t the case. Our
perception of utility, rather than objective utility, may often determine cultural success (Singh,
2022).
This approach to culture addresses features of cultural transmission sometimes overlooked
by scholars advocating by-product or group-adaptationist accounts. The most important is
individual motivation (André et al., in press; Boyer, 2020, 2022; Moon, 2021). Much of culture
survives only as long as individuals perceive an interest in maintaining it. Magical practices survive
as long as people use them. Stories exist as long as people tell them. Similarly, beliefs in
supernatural punishment exist only as long as people endorse them. As we have shown, shifting the
focus to individual motivations ends up providing a powerful lever for explaining cultural design:
Individuals not only decide to endorse, adopt, or reject beliefs; they also craft them into forms they
deem useful.
This functional design of culture, either downplayed in by-product approaches or a result of
impersonal selection in cultural group selection theories, thus plausibly develops as people shape
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
38
effective-seeming technologies for satisfying their goals. Importantly, these goals are not random.
Given how natural selection has shaped reward functions in individual brains (Barrett, 2015; Tooby
et al., 2008), people’s goals often align with their fitness interests. Thus, as evolved minds shape
culture to maximize fitness-good currencies—such as food, status, or moral reputation—they
imprint on cultural stuff the functional requirements of their genetic interests (Baumard et al.,
2023). It’s easy to accept that spears or harpoons develop through an endless instrumental
winnowing aimed at achieving fitness-relevant goals, such as acquiring food or killing enemies.
Supernatural punishment beliefs, we argue, may be no different. People’s urge to control the
conduct of groupmates—either for the selfish end of getting more food and sex, or for the moral
goal of making the world less unjust—acts as a systematic force over cultural transmission chains,
ending in beliefs in heaven, wrathful gods, and supernatural justice.
Acknowledgments: L.F. and M.S. acknowledge IAST funding from the French National Research
Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future (Investissements d’Avenir) program, grant
ANR-17-EURE-0010. This work was supported by the EUR FrontCog grant ANR-17-EURE-
0017 and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 to PSL.
References
Abrams, S., Jackson, J. C., Vonasch, A., & Gray, K. (2020). Moralization of Religiosity Explains
Worldwide Trends in Religious Belief [Preprint]. PsyArXiv.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5a2db
Akee, R., Copeland, W., Costello, E. J., & Simeonova, E. (2018). How does household income
affect child personality traits and behaviors? American Economic Review, 108(3), 775–827.
André, J.-B., Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2023). Cultural evolution from the producers’ standpoint.
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 5, e25. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2023.20
André, J.-B., Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (in press). The Mystery of Symbolic Culture: What fitness
costs? What fitness benefits? https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/kdh7t
André, J.-B., Fitouchi, L., Debove, S., & Baumard, N. (2022). An evolutionary contractualist theory
of morality. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2hxgu
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
39
Arai, S., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2022). Why punish cheaters? Those who withdraw
cooperation enjoy better reputations than punishers, but both are viewed as difficult to
exploit. Evolution and Human Behavior.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.10.002
Arseneau-Robar, T. J. M., Müller, E., Taucher, A. L., van Schaik, C. P., Bshary, R., & Willems,
E. P. (2018). Male monkeys use punishment and coercion to de-escalate costly intergroup
fights. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1880), 20172323.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2323
Arseneau-Robar, T. J. M., Taucher, A. L., Müller, E., van Schaik, C., Bshary, R., & Willems, E.
P. (2016). Female monkeys use both the carrot and the stick to promote male participation
in intergroup fights. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 283(1843),
20161817. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.1817
Asaba, M., & Gweon, H. (2022). Young children infer and manage what others think about them.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32), e2105642119.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105642119
Atkinson, Q. D., & Bourrat, P. (2011). Beliefs about God, the afterlife and morality support the
role of supernatural policing in human cooperation. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(1),
41–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.07.008
Atran, S., & Henrich, J. (2010). The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive
learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to
prosocial religions. Biological Theory, 5(1), 18–30.
Bader, C. D., Desmond, S. A., Carson Mencken, F., & Johnson, B. R. (2010). Divine Justice: The
Relationship Between Images of God and Attitudes Toward Criminal Punishment.
Criminal Justice Review, 35(1), 90–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734016809360329
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
40
Baker, C. L., Jara-Ettinger, J., Saxe, R., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2017). Rational quantitative
attribution of beliefs, desires and percepts in human mentalizing. Nature Human Behaviour,
1(4), 0064. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0064
Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2014). Why did this happen to me? Religious believers’ and non-
believers’ teleological reasoning about life events. Cognition, 133(1), 277–303.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.06.017
Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2017). You get what you give: Children’s karmic bargaining.
Developmental Science, 20(5), e12442. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12442
Barber, N. (2011). A Cross-National Test of the Uncertainty Hypothesis of Religious Belief. Cross-
Cultural Research, 45(3), 318–333. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397111402465
Barber, N. (2013). Country religiosity declines as material security increases. Cross-Cultural
Research, 47(1), 42–50.
Barclay, P. (2005). Reputational benefits for altruistic punishment.
Barclay, P., & Benard, S. (2013). Who Cries Wolf, and When? Manipulation of Perceived Threats
to Preserve Rank in Cooperative Groups. PLOS ONE, 8(9), e73863.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073863
Barclay, P., & Benard, S. (2020). The effects of social vs. Asocial threats on group cooperation and
manipulation of perceived threats. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2, e54.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.48
Barrett, H. C. (2015). The shape of thought: How mental adaptations evolve. Oxford University Press.
Barrett, J. L., & Lanman, J. A. (2008). The science of religious beliefs. Religion, 38(2), 109–124.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.007
Baumard, N., André, J.-B., & Sperber, D. (2013). A mutualistic approach to morality: The
evolution of fairness by partner choice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(01), 59–78.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11002202
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
41
Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2013a). Explaining moral religions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(6),
272–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.04.003
Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2013b). Religious beliefs as reflective elaborations on intuitions: A
modified dual-process model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(4), 295–300.
Baumard, N., & Chevallier, C. (2012). What goes around comes around: The evolutionary roots of
the belief in immanent justice. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 12(1–2), 67–80.
Baumard, N., Fitouchi, L., André, J.-B., Nettle, D., & Scott-Philipps, T. (2023). The gene’s-eye
view of culture. https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/6303/
Baumard, N., Hyafil, A., Morris, I., & Boyer, P. (2015). Increased Affluence Explains the
Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions. Current Biology, 25(1), 10–15.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.063
Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A. M., & Heatherton, T. F. (1994). Guilt: An interpersonal approach.
Psychological Bulletin, 115(2), 243.
Baumeister, R. F., Well, A. M. S., Heatherton, T. F., Roy, R., Baumeister, F., & Psychology, D.
O. (1995). Personal narratives about guilt: Role in action control and interpersonal
relationships. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 173–198.
Beck, J., & Forstmeier, W. (2007). Superstition and Belief as Inevitable By-Products of an
Adaptive Learning Strategy. Human Nature, 18, 35–46.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02820845
Becker, S. O., Nagler, M., & Woessmann, L. (2017). Education and religious participation: City-
level evidence from Germany’s secularization period 1890–1930. Journal of Economic Growth,
22(3), 273–311. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-017-9142-2
Beisner, B. A., & McCowan, B. (2013). Policing in Nonhuman Primates: Partial Interventions
Serve a Prosocial Conflict Management Function in Rhesus Macaques. PLOS ONE, 8(10),
e77369. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077369
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
42
Bell, F. L. S. (1953). Land Tenure in Tanga. Oceania, 24(1), 28–57.
Bellah, R. N. (2008). Tokugawa religion. Simon and Schuster.
Bendixen, T., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q., Cohen, E., Henrich, J., McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan,
A., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D., & Purzycki, B. G. (2023). Appealing to the minds of
gods: Religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies. Religion,
Brain & Behavior, 1–23.
Bendixen, T., Lightner, A. D., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q., Bolyanatz, A., Cohen, E., Handley, C.,
Henrich, J., Klocov´a, E. K., Lesorogol, C., Mathew, S., McNamara, R. A., Moya, C.,
Norenzayan, A., Placek, C., Soler, M., Vardy, T., Weigel, J., Willard, A. K., … Purzycki,
B. G. (2023). Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across
15 cultures. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2023.15
Bendixen, T., Lightner, A. D., & Purzycki, B. G. (2023). The Cultural Evolution of Religion and
Cooperation. In J. J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, & R. Kendal (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Cultural Evolution (p. 0). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.47
Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (2017). Peering into the Minds of Gods: What Cross-Cultural
Variation in Gods’ Concerns Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Religion. Journal for the
Cognitive Science of Religion, 5(2), 142-165-142–165. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.40951
Bentzen, J. S., & Gokmen, G. (2022). The power of religion. Journal of Economic Growth.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-022-09214-4
Bentzen, J. S., Kaarsen, N., & Wingender, A. M. (2017). Irrigation and Autocracy. Journal of the
European Economic Association, 15(1), 1–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12173
Berger, P. L. (2011). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. Open Road Media.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
43
Berggren, N., & Bjørnskov, C. (2011). Is the importance of religion in daily life related to social
trust? Cross-country and cross-state comparisons. Journal of Economic Behavior &
Organization, 80(3), 459–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2011.05.002
Bering, J. M. (2006). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 453–462.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06009101
Bériou, N. (1983). Autour de latran IV: La naissance de la confession moderne et sa diffusion. Le Cerf.
Berniūnas, R., Dranseika, V., & Tserendamba, D. (2020). Between Karma and Buddha: Prosocial
Behavior among Mongolians in an Anonymous Economic Game. The International Journal
for the Psychology of Religion, 30(2), 142–160.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2019.1696497
Bernstein, A. E., & Katz, P. R. (2010). The Rise of Postmortem Retribution in China and the
West. The Medieval History Journal, 13(2), 199–257.
https://doi.org/10.1177/097194581001300202
Billingsley, J., Gomes, C. M., & McCullough, M. E. (2018). Implicit and explicit influences of
religious cognition on Dictator Game transfers. Royal Society Open Science, 5(8), 170238.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170238
Black, D. (1984). Social control as a dependent variable. In Toward a general theory of social control
(pp. 1–36). Elsevier.
Black, D. (2000). Evolutionary Origins of Morality. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(1).
Blaine, T., & Boyer, P. (2017). Origins of sinister rumors: A preference for threat-related material
in the supply and demand of information. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.10.001
Bloom, P. (2007). Religion is natural. Developmental Science, 10(1), 147–151.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00577.x
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
44
Bloom, P. (2009). Religious belief as an evolutionary accident. The Believing Primate: Scientific,
Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, 118–127.
Bloom, P. (2012). Religion, Morality, Evolution. Annual Review of Psychology, 63(1), 179–199.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100334
Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behavior. Harvard University
Press.
Boehm, C. (2000). Conflict and the evolution of social control. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(1–
2), 79–101.
Boehm, C. (2008). A biocultural evolutionary exploration of supernatural sanctionning. In
Evolution of religion: Studies, theories, and critiques (pp. 143–152).
Boehm, C. (2012). Moral origins: The evolution of virtue, altruism, and shame. Basic Books.
Bones, P. D. C., & Sabriseilabi, S. (2018). Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: An Exploration
of Religious Forces on Support for the Death Penalty: SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF
AN ANGRY GOD. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 57(4), 707–722.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12553
Botero, C. A., Gardner, B., Kirby, K. R., Bulbulia, J., Gavin, M. C., & Gray, R. D. (2014). The
ecology of religious beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(47), 16784–
16789. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1408701111
Boyd, R., Gintis, H., & Bowles, S. (2010). Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains
Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare. Science, 328(5978), 617–620.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1183665
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1988). Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago
press.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
45
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1990). Group selection among alternative evolutionarily stable
strategies. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 145(3), 331–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-
5193(05)80113-4
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2002). Group Beneficial Norms Can Spread Rapidly in a Structured
Population. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 215(3), 287–296.
https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2001.2515
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2009). Voting with your feet: Payoff biased migration and the
evolution of group beneficial behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 257(2), 331–339.
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained. Random House.
Boyer, P. (2003). Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 119–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00031-7
Boyer, P. (2018). Minds make societies: How cognition explains the world humans create. Yale
University Press.
Boyer, P. (2019). Informal religious activity outside hegemonic religions: Wild traditions and their
relevance to evolutionary models. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1–14.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1678518
Boyer, P. (2020). Why Divination?: Evolved Psychology and Strategic Interaction in the
Production of Truth. Current Anthropology, 000–000. https://doi.org/10.1086/706879
Boyer, P. (2021a). Deriving Features of Religions in the Wild. Human Nature.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09410-y
Boyer, P. (2021b). Deriving Features of Religions in the Wild: How Communication and Threat-
Detection May Predict Spirits, Gods, Witches, and Shamans. Human Nature, 32(3), 557–
581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09410-y
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
46
Boyer, P. (2022). Why we blame victims, accuse witches, invent taboos, and invoke spirits: A model
of strategic responses to misfortune. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13826
Boyer, P., & Parren, N. (2015). Threat-Related Information Suggests Competence: A Possible
Factor in the Spread of Rumors. PloS One, 10, e0128421.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128421
Braun, C. (2012). Explaining Global Secularity: Existential Security or Education? Secularism and
Nonreligion, 1, 68. https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.ae
Bridgers, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H. (2020). Young children consider the expected utility of
others’ learning to decide what to teach. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(2), 144–152.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0748-6
Bridges, E. L. (1948). Uttermost part of the earth. Hodder & Stoughton London.
Callan, M., Sutton, R., Harvey, A., & Dawtry, R. (2014). Immanent justice reasoning: Theory,
research, and current directions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 105–161.
Caluori, N., Jackson, J. C., Gray, K., & Gelfand, M. (2020). Conflict Changes How People View
God. Psychological Science, 31(3), 280–292. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619895286
Cameron, L., Seager, J., & Shah, M. (2021). Crimes Against Morality: Unintended Consequences
of Criminalizing Sex Work*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(1), 427–469.
https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa032
Cant, M. A., Nichols, H. J., Johnstone, R. A., & Hodge, S. J. (2014). Policing of reproduction by
hidden threats in a cooperative mammal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
111(1), 326–330. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1312626111
Cardella, E. (2016). Exploiting the guilt aversion of others: Do agents do it and is it effective?
Theory and Decision, 80(4), 523–560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-015-9513-0
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
47
Chapman, A. (1982). Drama and power in a hunting society: The Selk’nam of Tierra del Fuego. CUP
Archive.
Chua, R., Huang, K., & Jin, M. (2019). Mapping cultural tightness and its links to innovation,
urbanization, and happiness across 31 provinces in China. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 116, 6720–6725. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815723116
Clark, K. J., & Winslett, J. (2011). The Evolutionary Psychology of Chinese Religion: Pre-Qin
High Gods as Punishers and Rewarders. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 79,
928–960. https://doi.org/10.2307/41348745
Cohen, A. B. (2003). Religion, Likelihood of Action, and the Morality of Mentality. International
Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 13(4), 273–285.
https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327582IJPR1304_4
Cohen, A. B., & Rozin, P. (2001). Religion and the morality of mentality. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 81(4), 697–710. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.697
Cooper, J. M. (1946). The Yahgan. Handbook of South American Indians, Edited by Julian H.
Steward, 1, 81–106.
Coşgel, M., & Miceli, T. J. (2018). The price of redemption: Sin, penance, and marginal
deterrence. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 156, 206–218.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.10.012
Cronk, L. (1994). Evolutionary theories of morality and the manipulative use of signals. Zygon,
29(1), 81–101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1994.tb00651.x
Cross, F. L., & Livingstone, E. A. (2005). The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. Oxford
University Press, USA.
Cubitt, R. P., Drouvelis, M., Gächter, S., & Kabalin, R. (2011). Moral judgments in social
dilemmas: How bad is free riding? Journal of Public Economics, 95(3), 253–264.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.10.011
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
48
Curry, O. S., Mullins, D. A., & Whitehouse, H. (2019). Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the
Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies. Current Anthropology, 60(1), 47–69.
https://doi.org/10.1086/701478
Darmangeat, C. (2009). Le communisme primitif n’est plus ce qu’il était. Aux Origines de l’oppression
Des Femmes, Smolny, Toulouse.
Dayer, A., Aswamenakul, C., Turner, M. A., Nicolay, S., Wang, E., Shurik, K., & Holbrook, C.
(2024). Intuitive moral bias favors the religiously faithful. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 18291.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67960-4
de Aguiar, R., & Cronk, L. (2011). Stratification and supernatural punishment: Cooperation or
obedience? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 73–75.
de Courson, B., Frankenhuis, W. E., Nettle, D., & van Gelder, J.-L. (2023). Why is violence high
and persistent in deprived communities? A formal model. Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, 290(1993), 20222095. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.2095
De Courson, B., & Nettle, D. (2021). Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and
low trust? Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80897-8
Delton, A. W., Nemirow, J., Robertson, T. E., Cimino, A., & Cosmides, L. (2013). Merely opting
out of a public good is moralized: An error management approach to cooperation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 105(4), 621–638. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033495
Dennett, D. C. (2007). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Reprint édition).
Penguin Publishing Group.
Desmons, É. (2009). Réflexions sur la politique et la religion, de Rousseau à Robespierre. Revue
Francaise d’Histoire des Idees Politiques, N° 29(1), 77–93.
Deversi, M., Ispano, A., & Schwardmann, P. (2021). Spin doctors: An experiment on vague
disclosure. European Economic Review, 139, 103872.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103872
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
49
Dickemann. (1981). Paternal confidence and dowry competition: A biocultural analysis of purdah.
In Natural selection and social behavior.
Dilmaghani, M. (2017). Religiosity and social trust: Evidence from Canada. Review of Social
Economy, 75(1), 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2016.1186820
Doniger, W. (2014). On Hinduism. Oxford University Press.
Du Toit, B. M. (1964). Gadsup culture hero tales. The Journal of American Folklore, 77(306), 315–
330.
Dundes, A. (1962). The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales. Indiana University.
Edelstein, D. (2018). On the Spirit of Rights. University of Chicago Press.
https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226589039.001.0001
El Mouden, C., West, S. A., & Gardner, A. (2010). THE ENFORCEMENT OF
COOPERATION BY POLICING. Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-
5646.2010.00963.x
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1965). Theories of primitive religion. https://ixtheo.de/Record/1113315040
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (Edward E. (1937). Witchcraft, Oracles And Magic Among The Azande.
Clarendon Press. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-
edu.proxy.library.upenn.edu/document?id=fo07-071
Fessler, D. M. T., Pisor, A. C., & Navarrete, C. D. (2014). Negatively-Biased Credulity and the
Cultural Evolution of Beliefs. PLoS ONE, 9(4), e95167.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095167
Fincham, F. D., May, R. W., & Kamble, S. V. (2019). Are Hindu representations of the divine
prototypically structured? Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 11, 101–110.
https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000166
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
50
Fitouchi, L., André, J.-B., & Baumard, N. (2022). Moral disciplining: The cognitive and
evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1–71.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22002047
Fitouchi, L., André, J.-B., & Baumard, N. (2024). Are There Really So Many Moral Emotions?
Carving Morality at Its Functional Joints. In L. Al-Shawaf & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), The
Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions (p. 0). Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197544754.013.35
Fitouchi, L., & Singh, M. (2022). Supernatural punishment beliefs as cognitively compelling tools
of social control. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 252–257.
Fitouchi, L., & Singh, M. (2023). Punitive justice serves to restore reciprocal cooperation in three
small-scale societies. Evolution and Human Behavior, S1090513823000284.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2023.03.001
Flack, J. C., de Waal, F. B. M., & Krakauer, D. C. (2005). Social Structure, Robustness, and
Policing Cost in a Cognitively Sophisticated Species. The American Naturalist, 165(5),
E126–E139. https://doi.org/10.1086/429277
Flack, J. C., Girvan, M., de Waal, F. B. M., & Krakauer, D. C. (2006). Policing stabilizes
construction of social niches in primates. Nature, 439(7075), 426–429.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04326
Flack, J. C., Krakauer, D. C., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2005). Robustness mechanisms in primate
societies: A perturbation study. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,
272(1568), 1091–1099. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2004.3019
Foster, K. R., & Kokko, H. (2009). The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 31–37.
Frank, S. (1995). Mutual policing and repression of competition in the evolution of cooperative
groups. Nature, 377, 520–522. https://doi.org/10.1038/377520a0
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
51
Frank, S. A. (1996). Policing and group cohesion when resources vary. Animal Behaviour, 52(6),
1163–1169. https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1996.0263
Frank, S. A. (2003). Repression of Competition and the Evolution of Cooperation. Evolution,
57(4), 693–705. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2003.tb00283.x
Funkhouser, E. (2017). Beliefs as signals: A new function for belief. Philosophical Psychology, 30(6),
809–831. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2017.1291929
Galen, L. W. (2012). Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination.
Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 876–906. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028251
Galen, L. W., Kurby, C. A., & Fles, E. H. (2020a). Religiosity, shared identity, trust, and
punishment of norm violations: No evidence of generalized prosociality. Psychology of
Religion and Spirituality. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000320
Galen, L. W., Kurby, C. A., & Fles, E. H. (2020b). Religiosity, shared identity, trust, and
punishment of norm violations: No evidence of generalized prosociality. Psychology of
Religion and Spirituality, No Pagination Specified-No Pagination Specified.
https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000320
Galen, L. W., Sharp, M., & McNulty, A. (2015). Nonreligious Group Factors Versus Religious
Belief in the Prediction of Prosociality. Social Indicators Research, 122(2), 411–432.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0700-0
Ge, E., Chen, Y., Wu, J., & Mace, R. (2019). Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not
fear of divine punishment. Royal Society Open Science, 6(8), 190991.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190991
Gelfand, M. J., Harrington, J. R., & Jackson, J. C. (2017). The Strength of Social Norms Across
Human Groups. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(5), 800–809.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617708631
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
52
Gelfand, M. J., Raver, J. L., Nishii, L., Leslie, L. M., Lun, J., Lim, B. C., Duan, L., Almaliach, A.,
Ang, S., Arnadottir, J., Aycan, Z., Boehnke, K., Boski, P., Cabecinhas, R., Chan, D.,
Chhokar, J., D’Amato, A., Ferrer, M., Fischlmayr, I. C., … Yamaguchi, S. (2011).
Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study. Science, 332(6033),
1100–1104. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197754
Gervais, W. M. (2013). In Godlessness We Distrust: Using Social Psychology to Solve the Puzzle
of Anti-atheist Prejudice: In Godlessness We Distrust. Social and Personality Psychology
Compass, 7(6), 366–377. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12035
Gervais, W. M. (2014). Everything Is Permitted? People Intuitively Judge Immorality as
Representative of Atheists. PLoS ONE, 9(4), e92302.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092302
Gervais, W. M., & Najle, M. B. (2018). How Many Atheists Are There? Social Psychological and
Personality Science, 9(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617707015
Gervais, W. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is
central to anti-atheist prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1189–
1206. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025882
Gervais, W. M., Xygalatas, D., McKay, R. T., van Elk, M., Buchtel, E. E., Aveyard, M.,
Schiavone, S. R., Dar-Nimrod, I., Svedholm-Häkkinen, A. M., Riekki, T., Klocová, E. K.,
Ramsay, J. E., & Bulbulia, J. (2017). Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice
against atheists. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(8), 0151. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-
0151
Gifford, P. (2019). The plight of Western religion: The eclipse of the other-worldly.
Glowacki, L., & von Rueden, C. (2015). Leadership solves collective action problems in small-scale
societies. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 370.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0010
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
53
Gomes, C. M., & McCullough, M. E. (2015). The effects of implicit religious primes on dictator
game allocations: A preregistered replication experiment. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 144(6), e94–e104. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000027
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral
Foundations Theory. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 55–130).
Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00002-4
Grasmick, H. G., Cochran, J. K., Bursik, R. J., & Kimpel, M. (1993). Religion, punitive justice,
and support for the death penalty. Justice Quarterly, 10(2), 289–314.
https://doi.org/10.1080/07418829300091831
Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the Divine
Mind. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 7–16.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309350299
Greif, A. (1993). Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The Maghribi
Traders’ Coalition. American Economic Review, 83, 525–548.
Greif, A., Milgrom, P., & Weingast, B. R. (1994). Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement:
The Case of the Merchant Guild. Journal of Political Economy, 102(4), 745–776.
https://doi.org/10.1086/261953
Grim, B. J. (2012). Laws Penalizing Blasphemy, Apostasy and Defamation of Religion are
Widespread. Pew Research Center.
Grodekov, N. (n.d.). The Kazakhs and Kirgiz of the Syr-Darya Oblast.
Guala, F. (2012). Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not)
demonstrate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(01), 1–15.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11000069
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
54
Guillou, L., Grandin, A., & Chevallier, C. (2021). Temporal discounting mediates the relationship
between socio-economic status and social trust. Royal Society Open Science, 8(6).
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202104
Gusinde, M., & Schütze, F. (1937). The Yahgan: The life and thought of the water nomads of
Cape Horn. Die Feuerland-Indianer [The Fuegian Indians], II.
https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=sh06-001
Hadaway, C. K., Marler, P. L., & Chaves, M. (1993). What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look
at U.S. Church Attendance. American Sociological Review, 58(6), 741.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2095948
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. Journal of Theoretical
Biology, 7(1), 17–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6
Harrington, J. R., & Gelfand, M. J. (2014). Tightness-looseness across the 50 united states.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(22), 7990–7995.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1317937111
Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D. (2006). The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary Model
of Cognitive Biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 47–66.
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_3
Hechter, M. (1988). Principles of group solidarity (1. paperback printing). Univ. of California Press.
Hechter, M. (1990). The attainment of solidarity in intentional communities. Rationality and
Society, 2(2), 142–155.
Heckathorn, D. D. (1989). Collective Action and the Second-Order Free-Rider Problem.
Rationality and Society, 1(1), 78–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463189001001006
Henrich, J. (2020). The weirdest people in the world: How the west became psychologically peculiar and
particularly prosperous. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
55
Henrich, J., & Muthukrishna, M. (2021). The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation.
Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), 207–240. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-
081920-042106
Herzer, D., & Strulik, H. (2017). Religiosity and income: A panel cointegration and causality
analysis. Applied Economics, 49(30), 2922–2938.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2016.1251562
Heyman, G. D., Compton, A. M., Amemiya, J., Ahn, S., & Shao, S. (2021). Children’s reputation
management: Learning to identify what is socially valued and acting upon it. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 30(4), 315–320.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211009516
Hilbig, B. E. (2009). Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 45(4), 983–986. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.012
Hilbig, B. E. (2012). How framing statistical statements affects subjective veracity: Validation and
application of a multinomial model for judgments of truth. Cognition, 125(1), 37–48.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.06.009
Hill, C. (2002). The century of revolution 1603-1714. Routledge: Taylor & Francis e-Library.
Ho, M. K., Saxe, R., & Cushman, F. (2022). Planning with Theory of Mind. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 26(11), 959–971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.003
Hoebel, E. (2009). The law of primitive man: A study in comparative legal dynamics. Harvard
University Press.
Hoffman, S. J., Baral, P., Rogers Van Katwyk, S., Sritharan, L., Hughsam, M., Randhawa, H.,
Lin, G., Campbell, S., Campus, B., Dantas, M., Foroughian, N., Groux, G., Gunn, E.,
Guyatt, G., Habibi, R., Karabit, M., Karir, A., Kruja, K., Lavis, J. N., … Poirier, M. J. P.
(2022). International treaties have mostly failed to produce their intended effects.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
56
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32), e2122854119.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2122854119
Hoffmann, R. (2013). The experimental economics of religion. Journal of Economic Surveys, 27(5),
813–845.
Hogbin, H. I., & Malinowski, B. (1934). Law and order in Polynesia: A study of primitive legal
institutions. (No Title).
Holland, J., Silva, A. S., & Mace, R. (2012). Lost Letter Measure of Variation in Altruistic
Behaviour in 20 Neighbourhoods. PLoS ONE, 7(8), e43294.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043294
Hone, L. S., McCauley, T. G., Pedersen, E. J., Carter, E. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2020). The
sex premium in religiously motivated moral judgment. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
Hong, Z. (2024). The cognitive origin and cultural evolution of taboos in human societies. Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1467-9655.14098. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-
9655.14098
Hong, Z., & Henrich, J. (2021). The Cultural Evolution of Epistemic Practices: The Case of
Divination. Human Nature, 32(3), 622–651. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09408-6
Hong, Z., Henrich, J., & Slingerland, E. (2021). Magic and empiricism in early Chinese rainmaking–
A cultural evolutionary analysis.
Hong, Z., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (n.d.). Magic and empiricism in early Chinese
rainmaking. Current Anthropology.
Hout, M., & Fischer, C. (2014). Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference:
Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012. Sociological Science, 1, 423–447.
https://doi.org/10.15195/v1.a24
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
57
Houtman, D., & Aupers, S. (2007). The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition: The Spread
of Post-Christian Spirituality in 14 Western Countries, 1981?2000. Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion, 46(3), 305–320. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00360.x
Houtman, D., Aupers, S., & Heelas, P. (2009). Christian Religiosity and New Age Spirituality: A
Cross-Cultural Comparison. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48(1), 169–179.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01435_2.x
Houtman, D., & Mascini, P. (2002). Why Do Churches Become Empty, While New Age Grows?
Secularization and Religious Change in the Netherlands. Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion, 41, 455–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00130
Huhmann, B. A., & Brotherton, T. P. (1997). A Content Analysis of Guilt Appeals in Popular
Magazine Advertisements. Journal of Advertising, 26(2), 35–46.
Hungerman, D. M. (2014). The effect of education on religion: Evidence from compulsory
schooling laws. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 104, 52–63.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2013.09.004
Immerzeel, T., & van Tubergen, F. (2013). Religion as Reassurance? Testing the Insecurity Theory
in 26 European Countries. European Sociological Review, 29(2), 359–372.
https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcr072
Inglehart, R. (2018). Cultural evolution: People’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world.
Cambridge University Press.
Inglehart, R., & Baker, W. E. (2000). Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of
Traditional Values. American Sociological Review, 65(1), 19.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2657288
Inglehart, R. F. (2020). Religion’s sudden decline: What’s causing it, and what comes next? Oxford
University Press.
Israel, J. (1995). The Dutch Republic: Its rise, greatness and fall, 1477-1806. Clarendon Press.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
58
Jackson, J. C., Caluori, N., Abrams, S., Beckman, E., Gelfand, M., & Gray, K. (2021). Tight
cultures and vengeful gods: How culture shapes religious belief. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General.
Jackson, J. C., Caluori, N., Gray, K., & Gelfand, M. (2021). The new science of religious change.
American Psychologist, 76(6), 838–850. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000818
Jackson, J. C., Dillion, D., Bastian, B., Watts, J., Buckner, W., DiMaggio, N., & Gray, K. (2023).
Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social
phenomena. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01558-0
Jackson, J. C., Gelfand, M., De, S., & Fox, A. (2019). The loosening of American culture over 200
years is associated with a creativity–order trade-off. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(3), 244–
250. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0516-z
Jackson, J. C., Gelfand, M., & Ember, C. R. (2020). A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-
industrial societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1930), 20201036.
Jacquet, P. O., Pazhoohi, F., Findling, C., Mell, H., Chevallier, C., & Baumard, N. (2021).
Predictive modeling of religiosity, prosociality, and moralizing in 295,000 individuals from
European and non-European populations. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications,
8(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00691-9
Jagiello, R., Heyes, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2022). Tradition and Invention: The Bifocal Stance
Theory of Cultural Evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1–50.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22000383
Jara-Ettinger, J. (2019). Theory of mind as inverse reinforcement learning. Current Opinion in
Behavioral Sciences, 29, 105–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2019.04.010
Jara-Ettinger, J., Floyd, S., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2017). Children understand that
agents maximize expected utilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(11),
1574–1585. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000345
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
59
Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2016). The Naïve Utility
Calculus: Computational Principles Underlying Commonsense Psychology. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 20(8), 589–604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.05.011
Jerotijević, D. (2015). The coexistence of different explanatory models of misfortune: A case from
Serbia. Human Affairs, 25(3), 261–275.
Johnson, D. (2011). Why God is the best punisher. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 77–84.
Johnson, D. (2016). God is watching you: How the fear of God makes us human. Oxford University
Press.
Johnson, D., & Bering, J. (2006). Hand of God, Mind of Man: Punishment and Cognition in the
Evolution of Cooperation. Evolutionary Psychology, 4(1), 147470490600400.
https://doi.org/10.1177/147470490600400119
Johnson, D. D. (2015). Big Gods, small wonder: Supernatural punishment strikes back. Religion,
Brain & Behavior, 5(4), 290–298.
Johnson, D. D. P. (2009). The Error of God: Error Management Theory, Religion, and the
Evolution of Cooperation. In S. A. Levin (Ed.), Games, Groups, and the Global Good (pp.
169–180). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_10
Johnson, D. D. P., Blumstein, D. T., Fowler, J. H., & Haselton, M. G. (2013). The evolution of
error: Error management, cognitive constraints, and adaptive decision-making biases. Trends
in Ecology & Evolution, 28(8), 474–481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.05.014
Johnson, K. A., Okun, M. A., Cohen, A. B., Sharp, C. A., & Hook, J. N. (2019). Development
and validation of the five-factor LAMBI measure of God representations. Psychology of
Religion and Spirituality, 11(4), 339–349. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000207
Johnson, K. A., Sharp, C. A., Okun, M. A., Shariff, A. F., & Cohen, A. B. (2018). SBNR
Identity: The Role of Impersonal God Representations, Individualistic Spirituality, and
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
60
Dissimilarity With Religious Groups. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion,
28(2), 121–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2018.1445893
Jones, P. (1980). Blasphemy, Offensiveness and Law. British Journal of Political Science, 10(2), 129–
148. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123400002064
Jordan, J. J., Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. G. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly
signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530(7591), 473–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16981
Kavanagh, C., Jong, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2020). Ritual and Religion as Social Technologies of
Cooperation. In L. J. Kirmayer, C. M. Worthman, S. Kitayama, R. Lemelson, & C.
Cummings (Eds.), Culture, Mind, and Brain (1st ed., pp. 325–362). Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695374.016
Kelley, H. H., & Michela, J. L. (1980). Attribution Theory and Research. Annual Review of
Psychology, 31(1), 457–501. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.002325
Kelly, J. M., Kramer, S. R., & Shariff, A. F. (2024). Religiosity predicts prosociality, especially
when measured by self-report: A meta-analysis of almost 60 years of research. Psychological
Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000413
Kerry, N., Prokosch, M., & Murray, D. (2022). The Holy Father (and Mother)? Multiple Tests of
the Hypothesis That Parenthood and Parental Care Motivation Lead to Greater Religiosity.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 014616722210769.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221076919
Kruglanski, A. W. (1970). Attributing trustworthiness in supervisor-worker relations. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 6(2), 214–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-
1031(70)90088-0
Kurzban, R., & Aktipis, C. (2007). Modularity and the Social Mind Are Psychologists Too Self-
ish? Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology, Inc, 11, 131–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294906
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
61
Lang, A. (1900). The making of religion. Genesis Publishing Pvt Ltd.
Lang, M., Krátký, J., & Xygalatas, D. (2020). The role of ritual behaviour in anxiety reduction: An
investigation of Marathi religious practices in Mauritius. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1805), 20190431.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0431
Lang, M., Purzycki, B. G., Apicella, C. L., Atkinson, Q. D., Bolyanatz, A., Cohen, E., Handley,
C., Kundtová Klocová, E., Lesorogol, C., Mathew, S., McNamara, R. A., Moya, C.,
Placek, C. D., Soler, M., Vardy, T., Weigel, J. L., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D.,
Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2019). Moralizing gods, impartiality and religious
parochialism across 15 societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,
286(1898), 20190202. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0202
Le Goff, J. (1986). The birth of purgatory. University of Chicago Press.
Leeson, P. T. (2009). The invisible hook: The hidden economics of pirates. Princeton University Press.
Leeson, P. T. (2014). “God Damn”: The Law and Economics of Monastic Malediction. The
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 30(1), 193–216.
https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ews025
Legare, C. H., Evans, E. M., Rosengren, K. S., & Harris, P. L. (2012). The Coexistence of Natural
and Supernatural Explanations Across Cultures and Development: Coexistence of Natural
and Supernatural Explanations. Child Development, 83(3), 779–793.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01743.x
Leimar, O., & Connor, R. C. (2003). By-product benefits, reciprocity, and pseudoreciprocity in
mutualism. Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, 203–222.
Leimar, O., & Hammerstein, P. (2010). Cooperation for direct fitness benefits. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1553), 2619–2626.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0116
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
62
Lengauer, G., Esser, F., & Berganza, R. (2012). Negativity in political news: A review of concepts,
operationalizations and key findings. Journalism, 13(2), 179–202.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884911427800
Levine, S., Kleiman-Weiner, M., Schulz, L., Tenenbaum, J., & Cushman, F. (2020). The logic of
universalization guides moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
117(42), 26158–26169. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014505117
Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. (1989). Continuity and change in Roman religion. Clarendon Press.
Lienard, P. (2014). Beyond kin: Cooperation in a tribal society. Reward and Punishment in Social
Dilemmas, 214–234.
Liénard, P., & Boyer, P. (2006). Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model of
Ritualized Behavior. American Anthropologist, 108(4), 814–827.
https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.4.814
Lie-Panis, J., Fitouchi, L., Baumard, N., & André, J.-B. (2023). A model of endogenous institution
formation through limited reputational incentives. PsyArXiv.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uftzb
Lightner, A. D., Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (2022). Moralistic supernatural punishment is
probably not associated with social complexity. Evolution and Human Behavior, 6481.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.10.006
Lightner, A. D., Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (2023). Moralistic supernatural punishment is
probably not associated with social complexity. Evolution and Human Behavior, 44(6), 555–
565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.10.006
Lindbeck, G. A. (2020). Creed. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/creed
Lindeman, M., van Elk, M., Lipsanen, J., Marin, P., & Schjødt, U. (2019). Religious Unbelief in
Three Western European Countries: Identifying and Characterizing Unbeliever Types
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
63
Using Latent Class Analysis. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 29(3),
184–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2019.1591140
Lipka, M., & Gecewicz, C. (n.d.). More Americans now say they’re spiritual but not religious. Pew
Research Center. Retrieved December 22, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/
Little, L. (1981). Les techniques de la confession et la confession comme technique. Publications de
l’École Française de Rome, 51(1), 87–99.
Little, L. K. (1993). Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France. Cornell
University Press.
Major-Smith, D. (2023). Exploring causality from observational data: An example assessing
whether religiosity promotes cooperation. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 5, e22.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2023.17
Malinowski, B., & Strenski, I. (1992). Malinowski and the Work of Myth. Princeton Univ. Press.
https://ixtheo.de/Record/110278747
Manhes, P., & Velicer, G. J. (2011). Experimental evolution of selfish policing in social bacteria.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(20), 8357–8362.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1014695108
Manrique, H. M., Zeidler, H., Roberts, G., Barclay, P., Walker, M., Samu, F., Fariña, A., Bshary,
R., & Raihani, N. (2021). The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200287.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0287
Marlowe, F. W. (2010). The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (University of California Press).
Martin, H. (1983). Confession et controle social à la fin du Moyen Age. GROUPE DE LA
BRUSSIÉRE. Pratiques de La Confésion. Des Péres Du Désert à Vatican II. Paris: Du Cerf.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
64
Mathew, S. (2017). How the second-order free rider problem is solved in a small-scale society.
American Economic Review, 6.
Mathew, S., & Boyd, R. (2014). The cost of cowardice: Punitive sentiments towards free riders in
Turkana raids. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35(1), 58–64.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.10.001
McCullough, M. E. (2020). The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral
Code. Simon and Schuster.
McCullough, M. E., & Carter, E. C. (2013). Religion, self-control, and self-regulation: How and
why are they related? In APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context,
theory, and research (pp. 123–138). American Psychological Association.
https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-006
McCullough, M. E., Enders, C. K., Brion, S. L., & Jain, A. R. (2005). The Varieties of Religious
Development in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Investigation of Religion and Rational Choice.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(1), 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-
3514.89.1.78
McCullough, M. E., Swartwout, P., Shaver, J. H., Carter, E. C., & Sosis, R. (2016). Christian
religious badges instill trust in Christian and non-Christian perceivers. Psychology of Religion
and Spirituality, 8(2), 149–163. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000045
McKay, R. T., & Dennett, D. C. (2009). The evolution of misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
32(6), 493–510. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X09990975
McNamara, R. A., & Purzycki, B. G. (2020). Minds of gods and human cognitive constraints:
Socio-ecological context shapes belief. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 10(3), 223–238.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1678510
Meens, R. (2014). Penance in medieval Europe, 600–1200. Cambridge University Press.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
65
Mencken, F. C., Bader, C., & Embry, E. (2009). In God We Trust: Images of God and Trust in
the United States among the Highly Religious. Sociological Perspectives, 52(1), 23–38.
https://doi.org/10.1525/sop.2009.52.1.23
Mercier, H. (2017). How gullible are we? A review of the evidence from psychology and social
science. Review of General Psychology, 21(2), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000111
Mercier, H. (2020). Not born yesterday: The science of who we trust and what we believe.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691198842
Mesoudi, A., & Thornton, A. (2018). What is cumulative cultural evolution? Proceedings of the
Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1880), 20180712.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0712
Miethe, T. D., Lu, H., & Deibert, G. R. (2005). Cross-National Variability in Capital
Punishment: Exploring the Sociopolitical Sources of Its Differential Legal Status.
International Criminal Justice Review, 15(2), 115–130.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1057567705283954
Miller, D. T., Visser, P. S., & Staub, B. D. (2005). How Surveillance Begets Perceptions of
Dishonesty: The Case of the Counterfactual Sinner. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 89(2), 117–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.2.117
Mills, C. M., & Keil, F. C. (2005). The Development of Cynicism. Psychological Science, 16(5),
385–390. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01545.x
Miton, H., Claidière, N., & Mercier, H. (2015). Universal cognitive mechanisms explain the
cultural success of bloodletting. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(4), 303–312.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.01.003
Molleman, L., Kölle, F., Starmer, C., & Gächter, S. (2019). People prefer coordinated punishment
in cooperative interactions. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(11), 1145–1153.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0707-2
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
66
Moon, J. W. (2021). Why are world religions so concerned with sexual behavior? Current Opinion
in Psychology, 40, 15–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.07.030
Moon, J. W., Krems, J. A., Cohen, A. B., & Kenrick, D. T. (2019). Is Nothing Sacred? Religion,
Sex, and Reproductive Strategies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(4), 361–365.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419838242
Moon, J. W., Tratner, A. E., & McDonald, M. M. (2022). Men are less religious in more gender-
equal countries. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1968), 20212474.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2474
Morris, I. (2015). Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve.
Nash, D. (2007). Blasphemy in the Christian world: A history. Oxford University Press.
Nettle, D. (2015). Tyneside neighbourhoods: Deprivation, social life and social behaviour in one British
city. Open Book Publishers.
Nettle, D., & Saxe, R. (2021). ‘If Men Were Angels, No Government Would Be Necessary’: The
Intuitive Theory of Social Motivation and Preference for Authoritarian Leaders. Collabra:
Psychology, 7(1), 28105. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.28105
Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton
University Press.
Norenzayan, A. (2015). Big questions about Big Gods: Response and discussion. Religion, Brain &
Behavior, 5(4), 327–342.
Norenzayan, A., & Gervais, W. M. (2015). Secular rule of law erodes believers’ political intolerance
of atheists. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 5(1), 3–14.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2013.794749
Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E.,
& Henrich, J. (2016). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14001356
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
67
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and Secular.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2011). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge
University Press.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (Eds.). (2019). Authoritarian and Populist Values. In Cultural Backlash:
Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism (pp. 85–212). Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cultural-backlash/authoritarian-and-populist-
values/EBB3D54D4D75E03B36816372F4C3F25F
Ohtsubo, Y., & Watanabe, E. (2009). Do sincere apologies need to be costly? Test of a costly
signaling model of apology. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(2), 114–123.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.09.004
Olivelle, P. (2011). Penance and Punishment: Marking the Body in Criminal Law and Social
Ideology of Ancient India. The Journal of Hindu Studies, 4(1), 23–41.
https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hir011
Ong, H. H., Evans, A. M., Nelissen, R. M. A., & Van Beest, I. (2022). Belief in karma is
associated with perceived (but not actual) trustworthiness. Judgment and Decision Making,
17(2), 362–377. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500009141
Ortiz-Ospina, E., Roser, M., & Arriagada, P. (2024). Trust. Our World in Data.
https://ourworldindata.org/trust
Osiurak, F., Claidière, N., & Federico, G. (2022). Bringing cumulative technological culture
beyond copying versus reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, S1364661322002455.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.024
Osiurak, F., Lasserre, S., Arbanti, J., Brogniart, J., Bluet, A., Navarro, J., & Reynaud, E. (2021).
Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture. Nature Human
Behaviour, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01159-9
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
68
Osiurak, F., & Reynaud, E. (2020). The elephant in the room: What matters cognitively in
cumulative technological culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e156.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19003236
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action.
Cambridge University Press.
Ott, M. A., & Santelli, J. S. (2007). Abstinence and abstinence-only education. Current Opinion in
Obstetrics & Gynecology, 19(5), 446–452. https://doi.org/10.1097/GCO.0b013e3282efdc0b
Oviedo, L. (2016). Religious attitudes and prosocial behavior: A systematic review of published
research. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6(2), 169–184.
Ozono, H., Jin, N., Watabe, M., & Shimizu, K. (2016). Solving the second-order free rider
problem in a public goods game: An experiment using a leader support system. Scientific
Reports, 6(1), 38349. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38349
Pal, S., & Hilbe, C. (2022). Reputation effects drive the joint evolution of cooperation and social
rewarding. Nature Communications, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-
33551-y
Paldam, M., & Gundlach, E. (2013). The religious transition. A long-run perspective. Public
Choice, 156(1), 105–123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-012-9934-z
Pasek, M. H., Kelly, J. M., Shackleford, C., White, C. J. M., Vishkin, A., Smith, J. M.,
Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A., & Ginges, J. (2023). Thinking About God Encourages
Prosociality Toward Religious Outgroups: A Cross-Cultural Investigation. Psychological
Science, 34(6), 657–669. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231158576
Peoples, H. C., Duda, P., & Marlowe, F. W. (2016). Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of
Religion. Human Nature, 27(3), 261–282. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
69
Petersen, M. B., & Aarøe, L. (2015). Birth Weight and Social Trust in Adulthood: Evidence for
Early Calibration of Social Cognition. Psychological Science, 26(11), 1681–1692.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615595622
Purzycki, B. G. (2011). Tyvan cher eezi and the socioecological constraints of supernatural agents’
minds. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 31–45.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2010.550723
Purzycki, B. G. (2013). The minds of gods: A comparative study of supernatural agency. Cognition,
129(1), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.06.010
Purzycki, B. G. (2016). The Evolution of Gods’ Minds in the Tyva Republic. Current Anthropology,
57(S13), S88–S104. https://doi.org/10.1086/685729
Purzycki, B. G., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Cohen, E., McNamara, R. A., Willard, A. K.,
Xygalatas, D., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2016). Moralistic gods, supernatural
punishment and the expansion of human sociality. Nature, 530(7590), 327–330.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16980
Purzycki, B. G., Bendixen, T., Lightner, A. D., & Sosis, R. (2022). Gods, Games, and the
Socioecological Landscape. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 100057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2022.100057
Purzycki, B. G., Finkel, D. N., Shaver, J., Wales, N., Cohen, A. B., & Sosis, R. (2012). What
Does God Know? Supernatural Agents’ Access to Socially Strategic and Non-Strategic
Information. Cognitive Science, 36(5), 846–869. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-
6709.2012.01242.x
Purzycki, B. G., Henrich, J., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Baimel, A., Cohen, E., McNamara, R.
A., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D., & Norenzayan, A. (2018). The evolution of religion and
morality: A synthesis of ethnographic and experimental evidence from eight societies.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
70
Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 101–132.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1267027
Purzycki, B. G., & Holland, E. C. (2019). Buddha as a God: An Empirical Assessment. Method &
Theory in the Study of Religion, 31(4–5), 347–375. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-
12341453
Purzycki, B. G., & Kulundary, V. (2018). Buddhism, identity, and class: Fairness and favoritism in
the Tyva Republic. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 205–226.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1267031
Purzycki, B. G., & Sosis, R. (2022). Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics.
Equinox Publishing Limited.
Purzycki, B. G., Stagnaro, M. N., & Sasaki, J. (2020). Breaches of trust change the content and
structure of religious appeals. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 14(1), 71–
94.
Purzycki, B. G., Willard, A. K., Klocová, E. K., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q., Bolyanatz, A., Cohen,
E., Handley, C., Henrich, J., Lang, M., Lesorogol, C., Mathew, S., McNamara, R. A.,
Moya, C., Norenzayan, A., Placek, C., Soler, M., Vardy, T., Weigel, J., … Ross, C. T.
(2022). The moralization bias of gods’ minds: A cross-cultural test. Religion, Brain &
Behavior, 12(1–2), 38–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2021.2006291
Radkani, S., Holton, E., de Courson, B., Saxe, R., & Nettle, D. (2023). Desperation and inequality
increase stealing: Evidence from experimental microsocieties. Royal Society Open Science,
10(7), 221385. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.221385
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2019). Punishment: One tool, many uses. Evolutionary Human
Sciences, 1, e12. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.12
Ratnieks, F. L. (1988). Reproductive harmony via mutual policing by workers in eusocial
Hymenoptera. The American Naturalist, 132(2), 217–236.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
71
Ratnieks, F. L. W., & Visscher, P. K. (1989). Worker policing in the honeybee. Nature, 342(6251),
Article 6251. https://doi.org/10.1038/342796a0
Ratnieks, F. L. W., & Wenseleers, T. (2005). Policing Insect Societies. Science, 307(5706), 54–56.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1106934
Reyes-Jaquez, B., & Echols, C. H. (2015). Playing by the rules: Self-interest information influences
children’s trust and trustworthiness in the absence of feedback. Cognition, 134, 140–154.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.10.002
Richardson, J. (1940). Law and status among the Kiowa Indians (Vol. 1). University of Washington
Press.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution.
University of Chicago Press.
Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., Salomon, E., & Relihan-Johnson, D. (2016). Imagine no religion:
Heretical disgust, anger and the symbolic purity of mind. Cognition and Emotion, 30(4),
778–796. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1030334
Robertson, C. E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K., Pärnamets, P., Van Bavel, J. J., &
Feuerriegel, S. (2023). Negativity drives online news consumption. Nature Human
Behaviour, 7(5), 812–822. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4
Roes, F., & Raymond, M. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(2),
126–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00134-4
Royzman, E., Atanasov, P., Landy, J. F., Parks, A., & Gepty, A. (2014). CAD or MAD? Anger
(not disgust) as the predominant response to pathogen-free violations of the divinity code.
Emotion, 14(5), 892–907. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036829
Safra, L., Algan, Y., Tecu, T., Grèzes, J., Baumard, N., & Chevallier, C. (2017). Childhood
harshness predicts long-lasting leader preferences. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(5),
645–651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.05.001
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
72
Saroglou, V., & Craninx, M. (2021). Religious moral righteousness over care: A review and a meta-
analysis. Current Opinion in Psychology, 40, 79–85.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.09.002
Sasaki, T., Uchida, S., & Chen, X. (2015). Voluntary rewards mediate the evolution of pool
punishment for maintaining public goods in large populations. Scientific Reports, 5(1),
Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08917
Schein, C., Ritter, R. S., & Gray, K. (2016). Harm mediates the disgust-immorality link. Emotion,
16(6), 862–876. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000167
Schneider, D. M. (1957). Political Organization, Supernatural Sanctions and the Punishment for
Incest on Yap. American Anthropologist, 59(5), 791–800.
https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1957.59.5.02a00040
Scott-Phillips, T., Blancke, S., & Heintz, C. (2018). Four misunderstandings about cultural
attraction. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 27(4), 162–173.
https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21716
Sedikides, C., & Gebauer, J. E. (2010). Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the
Relation Between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 14(1), 17–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309351002
Serra-Garcia, M., van Damme, E., & Potters, J. (2011). Hiding an inconvenient truth: Lies and
vagueness. Games and Economic Behavior, 73(1), 244–261.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2011.01.007
Shariff, A. F. (2015). Does religion increase moral behavior? Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 108–
113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.009
Shariff, A. F., Willard, A. K., Andersen, T., & Norenzayan, A. (2016). Religious Priming: A
Meta-Analysis With a Focus on Prosociality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(1),
27–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868314568811
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
73
Shepperd, J. A., Pogge, G., Lipsey, N. P., Miller, W. A., & Webster, G. D. (2019). Belief in a
Loving Versus Punitive God and Behavior. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 29(2), 390–
401. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12437
Silva, A. S., & Mace, R. (2014). Cooperation and conflict: Field experiments in Northern Ireland.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281(1792), 20141435–20141435.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1435
Silverman, G. S., Johnson, K. A., & Cohen, A. B. (2016). To believe or not to believe, that is not
the question: The complexity of Jewish beliefs about God. Psychology of Religion and
Spirituality, 8(2), 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000065
Silveus, N., & Stoddard, C. (2020). Identifying the causal effect of income on religiosity using the
Earned Income Tax Credit. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 178, 903–924.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.08.022
Singh, M. (2018). The cultural evolution of shamanism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001893
Singh, M. (2021). Magic, Explanations, and Evil: The Origins and Design of Witches and
Sorcerers. Current Anthropology, 62(1), 2–29. https://doi.org/10.1086/713111
Singh, M. (2022). Subjective selection and the evolution of complex culture. Evolutionary
Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/4t2ud
Singh, M. (2025). Shamanism: The Timeless Religion (Knopf).
Singh, M., & Boomsma, J. J. (2015). Policing and punishment across the domains of social
evolution. Oikos, 124(8), 971–982. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.02064
Singh, M., & Garfield, Z. H. (2022). Evidence for third-party mediation but not punishment in
Mentawai justice. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-
01341-7
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
74
Singh, M., & Henrich, J. (2020). Why do religious leaders observe costly prohibitions? Examining
taboos on Mentawai shamans. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2, e32.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.32
Singh, M., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Henrich, J. (2021). Small gods, rituals, and cooperation: The
Mentawai water spirit Sikameinan. Evolution and Human Behavior, 42(1), 61–72.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.07.008
Smith, D., Schlaepfer, P., Major, K., Dyble, M., Page, A. E., Thompson, J., Chaudhary, N., Salali,
G. D., Mace, R., Astete, L., Ngales, M., Vinicius, L., & Migliano, A. B. (2017).
Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling. Nature Communications, 8(1),
1853. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02036-8
Smyth, J. (2016). Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being: The search for a republican
morality. Manchester University Press.
Solt, F., Habel, P., & Grant, J. T. (2011). Economic Inequality, Relative Power, and Religiosity *.
Social Science Quarterly, 92(2), 447–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00777.x
Soltis, J., Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1995). Can Group-Functional Behaviors Evolve by Cultural
Group Selection?: An Empirical Test. Current Anthropology.
https://doi.org/10.1086/204381
Soroka, S., Fournier, P., & Nir, L. (2019). Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in
psychophysiological reactions to news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
116(38), 18888–18892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116
Sosis, R. (2006). Religious behaviors, badges, and bans: Signally theory and the evolution of
religion. In P. McNamara (Ed.) Where God and Science Meet, 61–86.
Sosis, R. (2007). Psalms for Safety: Magico-Religious Responses to Threats of Terror. Current
Anthropology, 48(6), 903–911. https://doi.org/10.1086/523015
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
75
Sosis, R., & Handwerker, W. P. (2011). Psalms and Coping with Uncertainty: Religious Israeli
Women’s Responses to the 2006 Lebanon War. American Anthropologist, 113(1), 40–55.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01305.x
Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G., & Wilson, D. (2010).
Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language, 25(4), 359–393.
Stagnaro, M. N., Arechar, A. A., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Are those who believe in God really more
prosocial? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 10(4), 444–458.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2019.1695656
Stagnaro, M., Stibbard Hawkes, D., & Apicella, C. (2022). Do religious and market-based
institutions promote cooperation in Hadza hunter-gatherers? Religion, Brain & Behavior,
12, 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2021.2006293
Stamos, A., Altsitsiadis, E., & Dewitte, S. (2019). Investigating the effect of childhood
socioeconomic background on interpersonal trust: Lower childhood socioeconomic status
predicts lower levels of trust. Personality and Individual Differences, 145, 19–25.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.03.011
Stanley, M. L., & Kay, A. C. (2022). Belief in divine moral authority satisfies the psychological
need for structure and increases in the face of perceived injustice. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 101, 104302.
Starmans, C., Sheskin, M., & Bloom, P. (2017). Why people prefer unequal societies. Nature
Human Behaviour, 1(4), 0082. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0082
Storm, I. (2017). Does Economic Insecurity Predict Religiosity? Evidence from the European
Social Survey 2002–2014. Sociology of Religion, 78(2), 146–172.
https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srw055
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
76
Strassmann, B. (1996). Menstrual hut visits by Dogon women: A hormonal test distinguishes deceit
from honest signaling. Behavioral Ecology - BEHAV ECOL, 7, 304–315.
https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/7.3.304
Strassmann, B. I. (1992). The function of menstrual taboos among the dogon: Defense against
Cuckoldry? Human Nature, 3(2), 89–131. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692249
Strassmann, B. I., Kurapati, N. T., Hug, B. F., Burke, E. E., Gillespie, B. W., Karafet, T. M., &
Hammer, M. F. (2012). Religion as a means to assure paternity. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 109(25), 9781–9785. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1110442109
Street, C. N. H., & Richardson, D. C. (2015). Lies, Damn Lies, and Expectations: How Base
Rates Inform Lie-Truth Judgments: Base rate beliefs in lie detection. Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 29(1), 149–155. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3085
Strickland, L. H. (1958). Surveillance and trust1. Journal of Personality, 26(2), 200–215.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1958.tb01580.x
Strickland, L. H., Barefoot, J. C., & Hockenstein, P. (1976). Monitoring behavior in the
surveillance and trust paradigm. Representative Research in Social Psychology, 7(1), 51–57.
Sun, K.-K., & Papadokonstantaki, S. (2023). Lying aversion and vague communication: An
experimental study. European Economic Review, 160, 104611.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104611
Sun, Q., Hampton, J. D., Merchant, A., Haynes, K. F., & Zhou, X. (2020). Cooperative policing
behaviour regulates reproductive division of labour in a termite. Proceedings of the Royal
Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1928), 20200780. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0780
Swanson, G. E. (1960). The birth of the gods: The origin of primitive beliefs (Vol. 93). University of
Michigan Press.
Tamir, C., Connaughton, A., & Salazar, A. M. (2020). People’s thoughts on whether belief in God is
necessary to be moral vary by economic development, education and age. 39.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
77
Tan, J. H. W., & Vogel, C. (2008). Religion and trust: An experimental study. Journal of Economic
Psychology, 29(6), 832–848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2008.03.002
Tentler, T. N. (1974). The summa for confessors as an instrument of social control. In The Pursuit
of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (pp. 103–137). Brill.
Tentler, T. N. (2015). Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton University Press.
Theodorou, A. E. (2016). Which countries still outlaw apostasy and blasphemy. Pew Research
Center, 29.
Thompson, S. (1946). The folktale. the Dryden press.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001276234
Tinniswood, A. (2004). By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London. Random
House.
Tomasello, M. (2020). The moral psychology of obligation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e56.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19001742
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., Sell, A., Lieberman, D., & Sznycer, D. (2008). Internal regulatory
variables and the design of human motivation: A computational and evolutionary approach.
Handbook of Approach and Avoidance Motivation, 15, 251.
Townsend, C., Aktipis, A., Balliet, D., & Cronk, L. (2020). Generosity among the Ik of Uganda.
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.22
Tromp, P., Kulkova, A., & Houtman, D. (n.d.). Research Note: Religious Decline or Religious
Change? Evidence from Thirteen Western-European Countries (1981-2008).
Tsang, J.-A., Al-Kire, R. L., & Ratchford, J. L. (2021). Prosociality and religion. Current Opinion
in Psychology, 40, 67–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.08.025
Turchin, P. (2016). Ultrasociety: How 10,000 years of war made humans the greatest cooperators on
earth. Beresta Books Chaplin, CT.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
78
Turchin, P., Whitehouse, H., Larson, J., Cioni, E., Reddish, J., Hoyer, D., Savage, P. E., Covey,
R. A., Baines, J., Altaweel, M., Anderson, E., Bol, P., Brandl, E., Carballo, D. M.,
Feinman, G., Korotayev, A., Kradin, N., Levine, J. D., Nugent, S. E., … François, P.
(2022). Explaining the rise of moralizing religions: A test of competing hypotheses using
the Seshat Databank. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 0(0), 1–28.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065345
Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy,
Religion, Art, and Custom. J. Murray.
Valente, R. R., & Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. (2020). Religiosity and Trust: Evidence from the United
States. Review of Religious Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00437-8
Vangelisti, A. L., Daly, J. A., & Rudnick, J. R. (1991). Making People Feel Guilty in
Conversations. Human Communication Research, 18(1), 3–39.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00527.x
Vardy, T., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2022). Moralistic and local god beliefs and the extent of prosocial
preferences on Tanna Island, Vanuatu. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 12(1–2), 79–96.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2021.2006290
Vlerick, M. (2020). The cultural evolution of institutional religions. Religion, Brain & Behavior,
10(1), 18–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2018.1515105
von Hippel, W., & Trivers, R. (2011). The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 34(01), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10001354
Vovelle, M. (2002). La Révolution contre l’Eglise: De la Raison à l’Etre suprême. Editions Complexe.
Wang, Q., He, N., & Chen, X. (2018). Replicator dynamics for public goods game with resource
allocation in large populations. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 328, 162–170.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2018.01.045
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
79
Watanabe, E., & Ohtsubo, Y. (2012). Costly apology and self-punishment after an unintentional
transgression. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 10(3), 87–105.
https://doi.org/10.1556/jep.10.2012.3.1
Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015).
Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of
political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,
282(1804), 20142556–20142556. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2556
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2016). Ritual human sacrifice
promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature, 532(7598), 228–231.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17159
Weber, M. (2013). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Routledge.
Weeden, J., Cohen, A. B., & Kenrick, D. T. (2008). Religious attendance as reproductive support.
Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(5), 327–334.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.03.004
Weeden, J., & Kurzban, R. (2013). What predicts religiosity? A multinational analysis of
reproductive and cooperative morals. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(6), 440–445.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.08.006
Weeden, J., & Kurzban, R. (2016). The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind: How Self-Interest
Shapes Our Opinions and Why We Won’t Admit It. Princeton University Press.
Welzel, C. (2013). Freedom rising. Cambridge University Press.
Welzel, C., & Inglehart, R. (2013). Political culture. Comparative Politics, 19.
Wenzel, M., & Thielmann, I. (2006). Why We Punish in the Name of Justice: Just Desert versus
Value Restoration and the Role of Social Identity. Social Justice Research, 19(4), 450–470.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-006-0028-2
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
80
West, S. A., Cooper, G. A., Ghoul, M. B., & Griffin, A. S. (2021). Ten recent insights for our
understanding of cooperation. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(4), 419–430.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01384-x
West, S. A., El Mouden, C., & Gardner, A. (2011). Sixteen common misconceptions about the
evolution of cooperation in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(4), 231–262.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.08.001
West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2007). Social semantics: Altruism, cooperation,
mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20(2),
415–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2006.01258.x
White, C. J. M., Kelly, J. M., Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2019). Supernatural norm
enforcement: Thinking about karma and God reduces selfishness among believers. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 84, 103797. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.03.008
White, C. J. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2019). Belief in karma: How cultural evolution, cognition, and
motivations shape belief in supernatural justice. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
(Vol. 60, pp. 1–63). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2019.03.001
White, C. J. M., Norenzayan, A., & Schaller, M. (2019). The Content and Correlates of Belief in
Karma Across Cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(8), 1184–1201.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218808502
White, C. J. M., Willard, A. K., Baimel, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2021). Cognitive Pathways to
Belief in Karma and Belief in God. Cognitive Science, 45(1), e12935.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12935
Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Rowman
Altamira.
Wiessner, P. (2005). Norm enforcement among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen: A case of strong
reciprocity? Human Nature, 16(2), 115–145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1000-9
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
81
Wiessner, P. (2014). Embers of Society: Firelight Talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111
Wiessner, P., & Pupu, N. (2021). When marital institutions break down: Impact and adaptation
among the Enga of Papua New Guinea. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 3, e19.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.13
Wiessner, P., & Tumu, A. (1998). Historical vines: Enga networks of exchange, ritual and warfare in
Papua New Guinea. Smithsonian Inst Press.
Willard, A. K. (2018). Religion and prosocial behavior among the Indo-Fijians. Religion, Brain &
Behavior, 8(2), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2016.1267032
Williams, D. (2021). Socially adaptive belief. Mind & Language, 36(3), 333–354.
https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12294
Williams, K. E. G., Votruba, A. M., Neuberg, S. L., & Saks, M. J. (2019). Capital and
punishment: Resource scarcity increases endorsement of the death penalty. Evolution and
Human Behavior, 40(1), 65–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.08.002
Williamson, R. W. (2013). Religion and Social Organization in Central Polynesia. Cambridge
University Press.
Wilson, D. (2010). Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. University of
Chicago Press.
Wixwat, M., & Saucier, G. (2021). Being spiritual but not religious. Current Opinion in Psychology,
40, 121–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.09.003
Woodburn, J. (1979). Minimal politics: The political organization of the Hadza of North Tanzania.
Politics in Leadership: A Comparative Perspective, 244–266.
Wrangham, R. (2019). The goodness paradox: The strange relationship between virtue and violence in
human evolution. Vintage.
EVOLUTION OF PROSOCIAL RELIGION
82
Wright, R. (2009). The Evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Co.
Yamagishi, T. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 51(1), 110.
Yamagishi, T. (1988). The Provision of a Sanctioning System in the United States and Japan. Social
Psychology Quarterly, 51(3), 265–271. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786924
Yang, F., Choi, Y.-J., Misch, A., Yang, X., & Dunham, Y. (2018). In Defense of the Commons:
Young Children Negatively Evaluate and Sanction Free Riders. Psychological Science, 29(10),
1598–1611. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618779061
Yilmaz, O., & Bahçekapili, H. G. (2016). Supernatural and secular monitors promote human
cooperation only if they remind of punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(1), 79–
84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.09.005
Yudkin, D. A., Van Bavel, J. J., & Rhodes, M. (2020). Young children police group members at
personal cost. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(1), 182–191.
https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000613
Zwirner, E., & Raihani, N. (2020). Neighbourhood wealth, not urbanicity, predicts prosociality
towards strangers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1936), 20201359.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1359
... The ascription of supernatural features to twinship could be understood as a tool to increase compliance to twin-related cultural norms, be they geminophilous or geminophobic. Work in the evolutionary anthropology of religion suggests that several religious prescriptions may have developed to effectively enforce prosocial and cooperative norms via the threat of supernatural punishment (Fitouchi et al., 2023). Delegating norm enforcement to supernatural forces may constitute a convenient and efficient way to circumvent the problems stemming from punishment and monitoring costs, and thus extend support networks beyond immediate kin (Purzycki et al., 2016). ...
Article
Full-text available
Natural selection should favour litter sizes that optimise trade-offs between brood-size and offspring viability. Across the primate order, the modal litter size is one, suggesting a deep history of selection favouring minimal litters in primates. Humans, however – despite having the longest juvenile period and slowest life-history of all primates – still produce twin births at appreciable rates, even though such births are costly. This presents an evolutionary puzzle. Why is twinning still expressed in humans despite its cost? More puzzling still is the discordance between the principal explanations for human twinning and extant empirical data. Such explanations propose that twinning is regulated by phenotypic plasticity in polyovulation, permitting the production of larger sib sets if and when resources are abundant. However, comparative data suggest that twinning rates are actually highest in poorer economies and lowest in richer, more developed economies. We propose that a historical dynamic of gene–culture co-evolution might better explain this geographic patterning. Our explanation distinguishes geminophilous and geminophobic cultural contexts, as those celebrating twins (e.g. through material support) and those hostile to twins (e.g. through sanction of twin-infanticide). Geminophilous institutions, in particular, may buffer the fitness cost associated with twinning, potentially reducing selection pressures against polyovulation. We conclude by synthesising a mathematical and empirical research programme that might test our ideas.
... [41-43]), signaling ([44-46, 35, 36, 31] 18 ), reputation ([2, 1, 32, 35, 36, 9]), indirect reciprocity ([36, 37, 48]), punishment ([49-52]), reciprocal altruism ([53, 54]), social norms ([55, 56, 52]), and e.g. [57, 58, 12, 13,[59][60][61][62]. See also evolutionary game theory (e.g.[63]), which helps explain why cooperation come about, for instance between cells,[16] and between rats [28]. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
With an evolutionary approach, the basis of morality can be explained as adaptations to problems of cooperation. With ‘evolution’ taken in a broad sense, AIs that satisfy the conditions for evolution to apply will be subject to the same cooperative evolutionary pressure as biological entities. Here the adaptiveness of increased cooperation as material safety and wealth increase is discussed — for humans, for other societies, and for AIs. Diminishing beneficial returns from increased access to material resources also suggests the possibility that, on the whole, there will be no incentive to for instance colonize entire galaxies, thus providing a possible explanation of the Fermi paradox, wondering where everybody is. It is further argued that old societies could engender, give way to, super-AIs, since it is likely that super-AIs are feasible, and fitter. Closing is an aside on effective ways for morals and goals to affect life and society, emphasizing environments, cultures, and laws, and exemplified by how to eat.� `Diminishing returns’ is defined, as less than roots, the inverse of infeasibility. It is also noted that there can be no exponential colonization or reproduction, for mathematical reasons, as each entity takes up a certain amount of space. Appended are an algorithm for colonizing for example a galaxy quickly, models of the evolution of cooperation and fairness under diminishing returns, and software for simulating signaling development.
Article
The commentaries addressed various aspects of our account of historical myths. We respond by clarifying the evolutionary theory of coalitional psychology that underlies our claims (R1). This addresses concerns about the role of fitness interdependence in large groups (R2), cultural transmission processes (R3), alternative routes to nation-building (R4) and the role of proximal mechanisms (R5). Finally, we evaluate alternative theories (R6) and discuss directions for future research (R7).
Article
Full-text available
What do we gain from the scientific study of religion? One possibility is that religious contexts are unique, and cognition within these contexts is worth understanding. Another possibility is that religion can be viewed as a laboratory for understanding psychology and culture more broadly. Rather than limiting the study of religion to a single context, I argue that the study of religion is useful precisely because it illuminates secular psychological and cultural processes. I first outline my practical approach to psychology and religion, focusing on how people use religion to advance mundane goals. I then discuss several domains in which studying religion has led to important insights, including culture, prejudice, and cognition. This article is an extended version of an Early Career Award address given at the International Association for the Psychology of Religion meeting in 2023 in Groningen, Netherlands.
Article
Full-text available
Why do human societies have so many taboos, defined here as culturally prohibited activities? In this article, I offer a naturalistic account of the origin and transmission of taboos from an evolutionary anthropological perspective. Drawing from the extensive literature in cognitive science and cultural evolution, I argue that taboos may arise from our tendency to retrospectively attribute causes to misfortunes due to a deterministic worldview, and the imperfect transmission of taboos often leads to the loss of their original utilitarian rationale, making them resemble mere cultural conventions. While this account does not explain all cultural prohibitions in human societies, it provides valuable insights into the psychological and social mechanisms by which many taboos are generated in a bottom‐up fashion. Towards the end of the article, I offer a few implications on the proposed account of taboos and specify some testable predictions that merit further studies.
Article
Full-text available
People facing material deprivation are more likely to turn to acquisitive crime. It is not clear why it makes sense for them to do so, given that apprehension and punishment may make their situation even worse. Recent theory suggests that people should be more willing to steal if they are on the wrong side of a ‘desperation threshold’; that is, a level of resources critical to wellbeing. Below such a threshold, people should pursue any risky behaviour that offers the possibility of a short route back above, and should be insensitive to the severity of possible punishments, since they have little left to lose. We developed a multi-round, multi-player economic game with a desperation threshold and the possibility of theft as well as cooperation. Across four experiments with 1000 UK and US adults, we showed that falling short of a desperation threshold increased stealing from other players, even when the payoff from stealing was negative on average. Within the microsocieties created in the game, the presence of more players with below-threshold resources produced low trust, driven by the experience of being stolen from. Contrary to predictions, our participants appeared to be somewhat sensitive to the severity of punishment for being caught trying to steal. Our results show, in an experimental microcosm, that some members of society falling short of a threshold of material desperation can have powerful social consequences.
Preprint
Full-text available
Institutions explain humans’ exceptional levels of cooperation. Yet institutions are at the mercy of the very problem they are designed to solve. They are themselves cooperative enterprises, so to say that institutions stabilize cooperation just begs the question: what stabilizes institutions? Here, we use a mathematical model to show that reputation can sustain institutions without such a second-order problem. Our premise is that cooperative dilemmas vary in difficulty. Some are easy: they can be solved by reputation alone because cooperation is cheap, behaviors are observable, or interactions occur within small groups of kith and kin. Others are hard: they cannot be solved by reputation alone. Humans need not tackle hard cooperation problems head on. Instead, they can design an institution, which (a) is based on an easy cooperation dilemma, and (b) generates enough new incentives to solve the initial hard cooperation problem. Our model leads us to view institutions as technologies that humans have invented and gradually refined to build the most mutually beneficial social organizations that can be sustained by reputation alone. Just as a pulley system helps lift heavy loads with minimal effort, institutions maximize the potential of limited reputational incentives, helping humans achieve extended levels of cooperation.
Article
Full-text available
Causal inference from observational data is notoriously difficult, and relies upon many unverifiable assumptions, including no confounding or selection bias. Here, we demonstrate how to apply a range of sensitivity analyses to examine whether a causal interpretation from observational data may be justified. These methods include: testing different confounding structures (as the assumed confounding model may be incorrect), exploring potential residual confounding, and assessing the impact of selection bias due to missing data. We aim to answer the causal question “Does religiosity promote cooperative behaviour?” as a motivating example of how these methods can be applied. We use data from the parental generation of a large-scale (n = approx. 14,000) prospective UK birth cohort (the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children), which has detailed information on religiosity and potential confounding variables, while cooperation was measured via self-reported history of blood donation. In this study, there was no association between religious belief or affiliation and blood donation. Religious attendance was positively associated with blood donation, but could plausibly be explained by unmeasured confounding. In this population, evidence that religiosity causes blood donation is suggestive, but rather weak. These analyses illustrate how sensitivity analyses can aid causal inference from observational research.
Article
Full-text available
How do beliefs about gods vary across populations, and what accounts for this variation? We argue that appeals to gods generally reflect prominent features of local social ecologies. We first draw from a synthesis of theoretical, experimental, and ethnographic evidence to delineate a set of predictive criteria for the kinds of contexts with which religious beliefs and behaviors will be associated. To evaluate these criteria, we examine the content of freely-listed data about gods' concerns collected from individuals across eight diverse field sites and contextualize these beliefs in their respective cultural milieus. In our analysis, we find that local deities' concerns point to costly threats to local coordination and cooperation. We conclude with a discussion of how alternative approaches to religious beliefs and appeals fare in light of our results and close by considering some key implications for the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion.
Chapter
Full-text available
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
Article
Full-text available
Fines, corporal punishments, and other procedures of punitive justice recur across small-scale societies. Although they are often assumed to enforce group norms, we here propose the relation-restoration hypothesis of punitive justice, according to which punitive procedures function to restore dyadic cooperation and curtail conflict between offender and victim following violations of reciprocal obligations. We test this hypothesis's predictions using observations of justice systems in three small-scale societies. We code ethnographic reports of 97 transgressions among Kiowa equestrian foragers (North America); analyze a sample of 302 transgressions among Mentawai horticulturalists (Indonesia); and review retributive procedures documented among Nuer pastoralists (South Sudan). Consistent with the relation-restoration hypothesis, we find that third-party punishment is rare; that most third-party involvement aims at resolving conflicts; that costs paid by offenders serve to achieve forgiveness by repairing victims; that punitive justice is accompanied by ceremonial procedures aimed at limiting conflict and restoring goodwill; and that failures to impose costs contribute to a decline in reciprocal cooperation. Although we document rare instances of third-party punishment among the Kiowa (6.6% of offenses), punitive justice more often serves as restorative justice, appeasing victims' urge for revenge while not overly harming offenders' interests to ensure reconciliation.