The moralization bias of gods’ minds: a cross-cultural test

Moralistic supernatural punishment is probably not associated with social complexity

“…Across this work (Bendixen et al, 2021a;Purzycki, 2011Purzycki, , 2013Singh et al, 2021;Townsend et al, 2020), researchers find non-trivial frequencies of moralistic supernatural punishment beliefs among adherents to traditional religions in their field sites. One cross-cultural study (Purzycki et al, 2022a) finds that across 15 different field sites, individuals are more likely than not to claim their local deities care about punishing theft, murder, and deceit. This likelihood holds even after holding constant any correlation with beliefs about explicitly moralistic deities.…”

Coding, causality, and statistical craft: the emergence and evolutionary drivers of moralistic supernatural punishment remain unresolved

“…Setting aside the classical anthropological literature that emphasizes the presence of moralistic gods in traditional societies (e.g., Evans-Pritchard, 1965;Lang, 1909;Malinowski, 1936), contemporary group-level studies (Boehm, 2008;Swanson, 1960;Watts et al, 2015) show non-trivial and even high proportions of small-scale societies having moralistic supernatural punishment. Individual-level cross-cultural projects motivated by the extant target hypotheses (Bendixen et al, nd;Purzycki, 2011Purzycki, , 2013Purzycki et al, 2022;Singh et al, 2021) also point to the presence of moralistic supernatural punishment in traditional religions. In some reports, such beliefs are detectable even after holding constant the correlation with moralistic traditions.…”

From supernatural punishment to big gods to puritanical religions: clarifying explanatory targets in the rise of moralizing religions

“…While previous research often used binary measures (e.g., presence/absence of moralizing gods), the authors' coding includes seven features, allowing to capture degrees of moralizing religion. This is particularly pleasing since a growing body of evidence suggest that belief in a least some form of supernatural punishment in fact recurs in small-scale societies-constituting a non-zero "baseline" of moralizing religion across societies of all scales (Bendixen et al, 2021;Fitouchi & Singh, 2022;Purzycki et al, 2020;Singh et al, 2021;Watts et al, 2015). The question of the rise of moralizing religion thus becomes: What factors drive the evolution of religion from this baselinelimited supernatural sanctions within a misfortune-centered religious ecology (Boyer, 2020;Singh et al, 2021)-to moralizing "big gods" (or karmic forces) whose moral concern is broader and primary.…”

“…(1) Specific supernatural enforcement, which refers to beliefs in the supernatural punishment of a small range of moral violations (e.g., stinginess), and admonished by spirits with lesser powers and lesser interest in morality than moralizing "big gods." Such beliefs appear recurrent in small-scale societies (Bendixen et al, 2021;Boehm, 2008;Purzycki et al, 2020;Singh et al, 2021;Townsend et al, 2020; see also Watts et al, 2015), where they seem to emerge in the middle of a religious ecology otherwise mostly centered on managing misfortune, rather than on promoting cooperation (Boyer, 2020;Singh et al, 2021). ( 2) Religions with moralizing "big gods" (or non-agentic forces): beliefs in supernatural entities that are centrally concerned with human morality, have a broader moral jurisdiction, and greater powers (e.g., afterlife retribution) (Norenzayan, 2013;Norenzayan et al, 2016).…”