Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-b4m5d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-23T03:00:54.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - Moral and Religious Systems

from Part V - Applications and Extensions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2025

By
Benjamin Grant Purzycki  and
Theiss Bendixen
Edited by
Bertram Malle  and
Philip Robbins
Bertram Malle
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Philip Robbins
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
Get access

Summary

This chapter of the handbook discusses the complex, multifaceted connection between morality and religion from an evolutionary perspective. After providing some much-needed conceptual ground clearing, the authors focus on accounts of the linkage between morality and religion in terms of evolved psychological mechanisms that promote cooperation and inhibit competition. One of the better known of these accounts is the supernatural punishment hypothesis. On this view, the morality–religion link is sustained by the fact that belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful god who monitors people’s behavior and punishes their moral transgressions motivates people to behave less selfishly and more cooperatively. Another account emphasizes religious behavior and posits that participation in religious ritual is a form of costly signaling, indicating to others that the participant can be trusted to observe the moral norms of the community. While there is considerable support for the idea that aspects of religion function to curb selfishness, however, the authors caution that the psychological and sociological mechanisms underlying this function are not yet well understood.

Keywords

moralityreligiontheory of mindsupernatural punishmentcooperationritualsocial complexity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology , pp. 575 - 595
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, S. (2022). Moralization of religiosity explains worldwide trends in religious belief [Doctoral dissertation]. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Alexander, R. D. (1987). The biology of moral systems. Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Andersen, M. (2019). Predictive coding in agency detection. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 9(1), 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Baldini, R. (2015). Harsh environments and “fast” human life histories: What does the theory say? bioRxiv, Article 014647. https://doi.org/10.1101/014647CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, H. C. (2020). Deciding what to observe: Thoughts for a post-WEIRD generation. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(5), 445–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, H. C., Bolyanatz, A., Crittenden, A. N., Fessler, D. M., Fitzpatrick, S., Gurven, M., Henrich, J., Kanovsky, M., Kushnick, G., Pisor, A., Scelza, B. A., Stich, S., von Rueden, C., Zhao, W., & Laurence, S. (2016). Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(17), 4688–4693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), 29–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, J. L., & Richert, R. A. (2003). Anthropomorphism or preparedness? Exploring children’s God concepts. Review of Religious Research, 44(3), 300–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumard, N. (2016). The origins of fairness: How evolution explains our moral nature. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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(1), 59–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baumard, N., & Boyer, P. (2013). Explaining moral religions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(6), 272–280.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beebe, J. R., & Duffy, L. (2020). The memorability of supernatural concepts: Effects of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety on recall. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 30(4), 322–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beheim, B., Atkinson, Q., Bulbulia, J., Gervais, W. M., Gray, R., Henrich, J., Lang, M., Monroe, M. W., Muthukrishna, M., Norenzayan, A., Purzycki, B. G., Shariff, A., Slingerland, E., Spicer, R., & Willard, A. K. (2019). Treatment of missing data determined conclusions regarding moralizing gods. Nature, 595(7866), E29–E34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bendixen, T., Apicella, C. L., Atkinson, Q., Cohen, E., Henrich, J., McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D., Purzycki, B. G. (2024). Appealing to the minds of gods: Religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 14(2), 183–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bendixen, T., Lightner, A., & Purzycki, B. G. (2023). The cultural evolution of religion and cooperation. In Tehrani, J., Kendal, J., & Kendal, R. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cultural evolution. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.001.0001Google Scholar
Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (2020). 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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bering, J. M. (2006). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(5), 453–462; discussion 462–498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bloom, P. (2012). Religion, morality, evolution. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 179–199.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boehm, C. (2008). A biocultural evolutionary exploration of supernatural sanctioning. In Bulbulia, J., Sosis, R., Harris, E., Genet, R., & Wyman, K. (Eds.), Evolution of religion: Studies, theories, and critiques (pp. 143–152). Collins Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2018). Minds make societies: How cognition explains the world humans create. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(5), 187–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, A. B., Siegel, J. I., & Rozin, P. (2003). Faith versus practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(2), 287–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In Shackelford, T. K. & Hansen, R. D. (Eds.), The evolution of morality (pp. 27–51). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, O., Whitehouse, H., & Mullins, D. (2019). Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies. Current Anthropology, 60(1), 47–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. Viking.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. M., & Shultz, S. (2007). Evolution in the social brain. Science, 317(5843), 1344–1347.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunbar, R. I. M., & Shultz, S. (2017). Why are there so many explanations for primate brain evolution? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 372(1727), Article 20160244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, A. M., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Cooperation and decision time. Current Opinion in Psychology, 26, 67–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1965). Theories of primitive religion. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2004). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25(2), 63–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13(1), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fischer, R., Callander, R., Reddish, P., & Bulbulia, J. (2013). How do rituals affect cooperation? An experimental field study comparing nine ritual types. Human Nature, 24(2), 115–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galen, L. W. (2012). Does religious belief promote prosociality? A critical examination. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 876–906.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 140–150.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, J. D. (2013). Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them. Penguin.Google Scholar
Guthrie, S. E. (1980). A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology, 21(2), 181–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guthrie, S. E. (1995). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, M. (1976). History and significance of the emic/etic distinction. Annual Review of Anthropology, 5, 329–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57(2), 243–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, J. S. (2019). What is religion? Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, D. D. P. (2005). God’s punishment and public goods. Human Nature, 16(4), 410–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, D. (2011). Why God is the best punisher. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 77–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, D. D. P. (2016). God is watching you: How the fear of God makes us human. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, D. D., Stopka, P., & Bell, J. (2002). Individual variation evades the prisoner’s dilemma. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2(1), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kant, I. (1997). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)Google Scholar
Kavanagh, C. M., & Jong, J. (2020). Is Japan religious? Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 14(1), 152–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, J. (2018). Strengthening the supernatural punishment hypothesis through computer modeling. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(3), 290–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lang, M., Chvaja, R., Purzycki, B. G., Václavík, D., & Stanĕk, R. (2022). Advertising cooperative phenotype through costly signals facilitates collective action. Royal Society Open Science, 9(5), Article 202202.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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, 286(1898), Article 20190202.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lightner, A., Bendixen, T., & Purzycki, B. G. (in press). Cross-cultural datasets systematically underestimate the presence of moralizing gods in small-scale societies. Evolution and Human Behavior.Google Scholar
Markov, A. V., & Markov, M. A. (2020). Runaway brain-culture coevolution as a reason for larger brains: Exploring the “cultural drive” hypothesis by computer modeling. Ecology and Evolution, 10(12), 6059–6077.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayr, E. (1961). Cause and effect in biology. Science, 134(3489), 1501–1506.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElreath, R., & Boyd, R. (2008). Mathematical models of social evolution: A guide for the perplexed. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McKay, R., Efferson, C., Whitehouse, H., & Fehr, E. (2011). Wrath of god: Religious primes and punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278(1713), 1858–1863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2014). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141(2), 447–473.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McNamara, R. A., & Henrich, J. (2018). Jesus vs. the ancestors: How specific religious beliefs shape prosociality on Yasawa Island, Fiji. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 185–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2016). Supernatural punishment, in-group biases, and material insecurity: Experiments and ethnography from Yasawa, Fiji. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6(1), 34–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Dunbar, R. (2006). A bias for social information in human cultural transmission. British Journal of Psychology, 97(3), 405–423.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muthukrishna, M., Doebeli, M., Chudek, M., & Henrich, J. (2018). The cultural brain hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history. PLOS Computational Biology, 14(11), Article e1006504.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nettle, D., & Frankenhuis, W. E. (2020). Life-history theory in psychology and evolutionary biology: One research programme or two? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1803), Article 20190490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016a). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, Article e1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016b). Parochial prosocial religions: Historical and contemporary evidence for a cultural evolutionary process. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, Article e29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Penn, D. C., & Povinelli, D. J. (2007). On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 362(1480), 731–744.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peoples, H. C., Duda, P., & Marlowe, F. W. (2016). Hunter-gatherers and the origins of religion. Human Nature, 27(3), 261–282.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piazza, J., Bering, J. M., & Ingram, G. (2011). “Princess Alice is watching you”: Children’s belief in an invisible person inhibits cheating. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(3), 311–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pisor, A., & Ross, C. T. (2024). Parochial altruism: What it is and why it varies. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(1), pp. 2–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, E. A. (2017a). Discerning devotion: Testing the signaling theory of religion. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(1), 82–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, E. A. (2017b). Social support networks and religiosity in rural south India. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(3), 0057.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 515–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. (2011). Tyvan cher eezi and the socioecological constraints of supernatural agents’ minds. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 31–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. (2013). The minds of gods: A comparative study of supernatural agency. Cognition, 129(1), 163–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Purzycki, B. G., & Arakchaa, T. (2013). Ritual behavior and trust in the Tyva Republic. Current Anthropology, 54(3), 381–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., Bendixen, T., Lightner, A. D., & Sosis, R. (2022). Gods, games, and the socioecological landscape. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 3, Article 100057.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(2), 101–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., & McKay, R. (2023). Morality, gods, and social complexity. In Purzycki, B. G. & Bendixen, T. (Eds.), The minds of gods: New horizons in the naturalistic study of religion (pp. 121–132). Bloomsbury Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., & McNamara, R. A. (2016). An ecological theory of gods’ minds. In De Cruz, H. & Nichols, R. (Eds.), Cognitive science of religion and its philosophical implications (pp. 143–167). Continuum.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., Pisor, A., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Cohen, E., Henrich, J., McNamara, R. A., Norenzayan, A., Willard, A. K., & Xygalatas, D. (2018). The cognitive and cultural foundations of moral behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(5), 490–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., Ross, C. T., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Cohen, E., McNamara, R. A., Willard, A. K., Xygalatas, D., Norenzayan, A., & Henrich, J. (2018). Material security, life history, and moralistic religions: A cross-cultural examination. PLoS ONE, 13(3), Article e0193856.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Purzycki, B. G., & Sosis, R. (2022). Religion evolving: The dynamics of culture, cognition, and ecology. Equinox.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., & Watts, J. (2018). Reinvigorating the comparative, cooperative ethnographic sciences of religion. Free Inquiry, 38(3), 26–29.Google Scholar
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., Weigel, J., Xygalatas, D., & Ross, C. T. (2022). The moralization bias of gods’ minds: A cross-cultural test. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 12(1–2), 38–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rand, D. G., Dreber, A., Haque, O. S., Kane, R. J., Nowak, M. A., & Coakley, S. (2014). Religious motivations for cooperation: An experimental investigation using explicit primes. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 4(1), 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1979). Ecology, meaning, and religion. North Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1994). On the evolution of morality and religion: A response to Lee Cronk. Zygon, 29(3), 331–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1999). Ritual and religion in the making of humanity. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reddish, P., Bulbulia, J., & Fischer, R. (2014). Does synchrony promote generalized prosociality? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 4(1), 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (1999). Complex societies. Human Nature, 10(3), 253–289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schloss, J. P., & Murray, M. J. (2011). Evolutionary accounts of belief in supernatural punishment: A critical review. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1(1), 46–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sear, R. (2020). Do human ‘life history strategies’ exist? Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(6), 513–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming god concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2011). Mean gods make good people: Different views of god predict cheating behavior. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 21(2), 85–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaver, J. H., & Sosis, R. (2014). How does male ritual behavior vary across the lifespan? Human Nature, 25(1), 136–160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Singh, M., Kaptchuck, T. J., & Henrich, J. (2021). Small gods, rituals, and cooperation: The Mentawai crocodile spirit Sikaoinan. Evolution and Human Behavior, 42(1), 61–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, S., Youssouf, M., Malik, Z. A., & Bussmann, R. W. (2017). Sacred groves: Myths, beliefs, and biodiversity conservation – A case study from Western Himalaya, India. International Journal of Ecology, Article 3828609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, E. A. (2000). Three styles in the evolutionary analysis of human behavior. In Cronk, L., Chagnon, N., & Irons, W. (Eds.), Adaptation and human behavior: An anthropological perspective (pp. 27–46). Routledge.Google Scholar
Soler, M. (2012). Costly signaling, ritual and cooperation: Evidence from Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(4), 346–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosis, R. (2005). Does religion promote trust? The role of signaling, reputation, and punishment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 1(7), pp. 1–30.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosis, R., & Bulbulia, J. (2011). The behavioral ecology of religion: The benefits and costs of one evolutionary approach. Religion, 41(3), 341–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosis, R., Kress, H. C., & Boster, J. S. (2007). Scars for war: Evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(4), 234–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (2018). Cutting culture at the joints? Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8(4), 447–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swan, T., & Halberstadt, J. (2019). The Mickey Mouse problem: Distinguishing religious and fictional counterintuitive agents. PLoS ONE, 14(8), Article e0220886.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swan, T., & Halberstadt, J. (2020). The fitness relevance of counterintuitive agents. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 20(3–4), 188–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swanson, G. E. (1960). The birth of the gods: The origin of primitive beliefs. University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, J. H., & Vogel, C. (2008). Religion and trust: An experimental study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(6), 832–848.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teehan, J. (2016). Religion and morality: The evolution of the cognitive nexus. In Liddle, J. R. & Shackelford, T. K. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology and religion (pp. 117–134). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tillich, P. (1957). Dynamics of faith. Zondervan.Google Scholar
Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20(4), 410–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend, C., Aktipis, A., Balliet, D., & Cronk, L. (2020). Generosity among the Ik of Uganda. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2, Article e23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turchin, P., Currie, T. E., Turner, E. A., & Gavrilets, S. (2013). War, space, and the evolution of old world complex societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(41), 16384–16389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tylor, E. B. (1920). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. Murray.Google Scholar
van Schaik, C. P., & Burkart, J. M. (2011). Social learning and evolution: The cultural intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567), 1008–1016.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Schaik, C. P., Isler, K., & Burkart, J. M. (2012). Explaining brain size variation: From social to cultural brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(5), 277–284.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Veissière, S. P., Constant, A., Ramstead, M. J., Friston, K. J., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2020). Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, Article e90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General systems theory: Foundations, development, applications. George Braziller.Google Scholar
Watts, J., Jackson, J. C., Arnison, C., Hamerslag, E. M., Shaver, J. H., & Purzycki, B. G. (2022). Building quantitative cross-cultural databases from ethnographic records: Promise, problems and principles. Cross-Cultural Research, 56(1), 62–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiltermuth, S. S., & Heath, C. (2009). Synchrony and cooperation. Psychological Science, 20(1), 1–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xygalatas, D., Mitkidis, P., Fischer, R., Reddish, P., Skewes, J., Geertz, A. W., Roepstorff, A., & Bulbulia, J. (2013). Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychological Science, 24(8), 1602–1605.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×