1. Appealing to the minds of gods: religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies
- Author
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Theiss Bendixen, Coren Apicella, Quentin Atkinson, Emma Cohen, Joseph Henrich, Rita A. McNamara, Ara Norenzayan, Aiyana K. Willard, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Benjamin Grant Purzycki
- Subjects
Religious studies ,cognitive anthropology ,cultural evolution ,religious systems ,human behavioral ecology ,free-list method ,gods’ minds - Abstract
Data availability statement: All data and code to reproduce the present study are available at: https://github.com/tbendixen/cross-cultural-free-list-project. The main project repository including raw data, full protocols, and related materials is available at: https://github.com/bgpurzycki/Evolution-of-Religion-and-Morality . The file available on this institutional repository is a preprint available on PsyArXiv at https://psyarxiv.com/tjn3e/. It has not been certified by peer review. We recommend you consult the version of record published by Routledge at https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487. 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. Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium, funded by a SSHRC partnership grant and the John Templeton Foundation (awarded to A.N. and J.H.); B.G.P. acknowledges support from the Max Planck Society; T.B. and B.G.P. acknowledge generous support from the Aarhus University Research Foundation.
- Published
- 2023