Big Gods in small places: the Random Allocation Game in Mauritius

Xygalatas, Dimitris; Kotherová, Silvie; Maňo, Peter; Kundt, Radek; Cigán, Jakub; Klocová, Eva Kundtová; Lang, Martin

doi:10.1080/2153599x.2016.1267033

Cited by 41 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Compared to participants who only took part in the prayers and not in the costly ritual itself, Kavadi participants donated significantly higher amounts from their reward. These results were reinforced by subsequent studies where we showed that frequent participation in the Kavadi ritual predicts decreased cheating at the expense of anonymous co-religionists (Xygalatas et al, 2018) and that priming participants with music from the Kavadi ritual decreased dishonest reporting to obtain financial reward .…”

Section: Costly Signals Of Commitmentsupporting

confidence: 60%

The evolutionary paths to collective rituals: An interdisciplinary perspective on the origins and functions of the basic social act

Lang

2019

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present article is an elaborated and upgraded version of the Early Career Award talk that I delivered at the IAPR 2019 conference in Gdańsk, Poland. In line with the conference’s thematic focus on new trends and neglected themes in psychology of religion, I argue that psychology of religion should strive for firmer integration with evolutionary theory and its associated methodological toolkit. Employing evolutionary theory enables to systematize findings from individual psychological studies within a broader framework that could resolve lingering empirical contradictions by providing an ultimate rationale for which results should be expected. The benefits of evolutionary analysis are illustrated through the study of collective rituals and, specifically, their purported function in stabilizing risky collective action. By comparing the socio-ecological pressures faced by chimpanzees, contemporary hunter-gatherers, and early Homo, I outline the selective pressures that may have led to the evolution of collective rituals in the hominin lineage, and, based on these selective pressures, I make predictions regarding the different functions and their underlying mechanisms that collective rituals should possess. While examining these functions, I echo the Early Career Award and focus mostly on my past work and the work of my collaborators, showing that collective rituals may stabilize risky collective action by increasing social bonding, affording to assort cooperative individuals, and providing a platform for reliable communication of commitment to group norms. The article closes with a discussion of the role that belief in superhuman agents plays in stabilizing and enhancing the effects of collective rituals on trust-based cooperation.

show abstract

Section: Costly Signals Of Commitmentsupporting

confidence: 60%

The evolutionary paths to collective rituals: An interdisciplinary perspective on the origins and functions of the basic social act

Lang

2019

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One line of work has looked at the role that religions with 'big gods' play in structuring interpersonal behavior by providing a sense of being watched and a threat of supernatural punishment [117]. This hypothesis is supported by cross-cultural work showing correlations between belief in big gods and generosity in economic games, as well as other aspects of moral judgment [118][119][120][121].…”

Section: The Varieties Of Social Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Cognitive Science of the Human: Cross-Cultural Approaches and Their Urgency

Barrett

2020

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

128

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…According to this view, religious prosocial behaviour may be mediated through fear of punishment from co-religionists in society, not from divine entities. It is possible that the two mechanisms outlined above are not mutually exclusive but complementary [53].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not fear of divine punishment

Chen

et al. 2019

R. Soc. open sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reputational considerations favour cooperation and thus we expect less cooperation in larger communities where people are less well known to each other. Some argue that institutions are, therefore, necessary to coordinate large-scale cooperation, including moralizing religions that promote cooperation through the fear of divine punishment. Here, we use community size as a proxy for reputational concerns, and test whether people in small, stable communities are more cooperative than people in large, less stable communities in both religious and non-religious contexts. We conducted a donation game on a large naturalistic sample of 501 people in 17 communities, with varying religions or none, ranging from small villages to large cities in northwestern China. We found that more money was donated by those in small, stable communities, where reputation should be more salient. Religious practice was also associated with higher donations, but fear of divine punishment was not. In a second game on the same sample, decisions were private, giving donors the opportunity to cheat. We found that donors to religious institutions were not less likely to cheat, and community size was not important in this game. Results from the donation game suggest donations to both religious and non-religious institutions are being motivated by reputational considerations, and results from both games suggest fear of divine punishment is not important. This chimes with other studies suggesting social benefits rather than fear of punishment may be the more salient motive for cooperative behaviour in real-world settings.

show abstract

Big Gods in small places: the Random Allocation Game in Mauritius

Cited by 41 publications

References 49 publications

The evolutionary paths to collective rituals: An interdisciplinary perspective on the origins and functions of the basic social act

The evolutionary paths to collective rituals: An interdisciplinary perspective on the origins and functions of the basic social act

Towards a Cognitive Science of the Human: Cross-Cultural Approaches and Their Urgency

Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not fear of divine punishment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About