Conflict Changes How People View God

Caluori, Nava; Jackson, Joshua Conrad; Gelfand, Michele J.

doi:10.1177/0956797619895286

Cited by 45 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…Our investigation reproduced previous associations between cultural tightness and ecological threat, authoritarian leadership, and less intergroup contact [3][4][5][6][7][8]. We also uncovered new links between cultural tightness, cultural complexity and kinship heterogeneity via residence structure.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Recent research suggests that people in societies with strong cultural norms view punitive traits of gods as more important because these traits suggest that rule-breakers will be supernaturally punished for their behavior, even if they cannot be punished by secular institutions [8,19]. Consistent with this dynamic, historical fluctuations in tightness predict citations of Bible passages in which the Christian God punishes wrongdoers, and tightness can explain why moralizing god beliefs are most widespread during times of warfare [8,19]. This evidence suggests that tight non-industrial societies may therefore have the strongest beliefs in moralizing high gods, and we test this prediction for the first time.…”

Section: Tightness-looseness Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies

2020

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Human groups have long faced ecological threats such as resource stress and warfare, and must also overcome strains on coordination and cooperation that are imposed by growing social complexity. Tightness–looseness (TL) theory suggests that societies react to these challenges by becoming culturally tighter, with stronger norms and harsher punishment of deviant behaviour. TL theory further predicts that tightening is associated with downstream effects on social, political and religious institutions. Here, we comprehensively test TL theory in a sample of non-industrial societies. Since previous studies of TL theory have sampled contemporary countries and American states, our analysis allows us to examine whether the theory generalizes to societies in the ethnographic record and also to explore new correlates of tightness that vary more in non-industrial societies. We find that tightness covaries across domains of social norms, such as socialization, law and gender. We also show that tightness correlates with several theorized antecedents (ecological threat, complexity, residential homogeneity) and several theorized consequences (intergroup contact, political authoritarianism, moralizing religious beliefs). We integrate these findings into a holistic model of tightness in non-industrial societies and provide metrics that can be used by future studies on cultural tightness in the ethnographic record.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Tightness-looseness Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies

2020

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“…We may need to consider how people perceive God within religion, in the tightness-looseness model. This argument corresponds recent findings that conflicts increase support for cultural tightness, which in turn increases the importance of punitive God (Caluori et al, 2020).…”

Section: Positive Awe and Attitude Toward Norm Violationsupporting

confidence: 88%

Influence of Positive and Threatened Awe on the Attitude Toward Norm Violations

Sawada

Nomura

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Awe is an emotional response to vast stimuli needing for accommodation. Although several studies have revealed that awe led to more ethical attitudes toward one's own behavior and to generosity toward people in general, it is unclear whether and how the two types of awe-positive and threatened-influence one's attitude toward others' social norm violations. In the current study, we examined the influence of these types of awe on tolerance toward deviators' behavior by using a pre-post design and a scenario task within the Japanese population. The findings indicated that positive awe increased the tolerance of others' norm violations, while threatening awe did not.

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“…Accordingly, groups require stronger norms and punishment of deviance to survive under high threat (78). Indeed, experimentally priming humans with collective threat leads to an increase in desired tightness-either from God or government (79,80).…”

Section: Insight 9: Cultural Evolutionary Forces Impact Covid-19 Sevementioning

confidence: 99%

The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights

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Aktipis

Buss

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Humans and viruses have been coevolving for millennia. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19) has been particularly successful in evading our evolved defenses. The outcome has been tragic—across the globe, millions have been sickened and hundreds of thousands have died. Moreover, the quarantine has radically changed the structure of our lives, with devastating social and economic consequences that are likely to unfold for years. An evolutionary perspective can help us understand the progression and consequences of the pandemic. Here, a diverse group of scientists, with expertise from evolutionary medicine to cultural evolution, provide insights about the pandemic and its aftermath. At the most granular level, we consider how viruses might affect social behavior, and how quarantine, ironically, could make us susceptible to other maladies, due to a lack of microbial exposure. At the psychological level, we describe the ways in which the pandemic can affect mating behavior, cooperation (or the lack thereof), and gender norms, and how we can use disgust to better activate native “behavioral immunity” to combat disease spread. At the cultural level, we describe shifting cultural norms and how we might harness them to better combat disease and the negative social consequences of the pandemic. These insights can be used to craft solutions to problems produced by the pandemic and to lay the groundwork for a scientific agenda to capture and understand what has become, in effect, a worldwide social experiment.

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Conflict Changes How People View God

Cited by 45 publications

References 36 publications

A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies

A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies

Influence of Positive and Threatened Awe on the Attitude Toward Norm Violations

The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights

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