Recent research has shown that an array of religious beliefs can be used to enforce socially normative behaviour, but the application of these theories to other supernatural beliefs, including witchcraft, is still nascent. Across two pre-registered studies in Mauritius, we examine how witchcraft is believed to be caused by envy and how this belief can create and enforce social norms around not causing envy. Data was collected in-person in Mauritius. In study 1 (N = 445), we found that both practicing witchcraft and being motivated by envy or self-interest increase perceptions of harm. These motivations also increase the rate with which people suggest a person was doing witchcraft, with envy having the stronger effect. Belief that someone was doing witchcraft increases the negativity with which one views that person and damages their reputation. In study 2 (N = 292), we found that when a person breaks a norm around causing envy, participants believe that a subsequent misfortune is cause by witchcraft, but not by God. When someone acts selfishly towards others a subsequent misfortune is believed to be caused by God but not witchcraft. This suggests that witchcraft beliefs, but not religious ones, are enforcing norms around preventing envy. Together, these studies suggest that witchcraft beliefs can support locally specific social norms, and that these norms might be different than those supported by religion.

• Klíčová slova
• Envy, Norm enforcement, Religion, Supernatural punishment, Supernatural retribution, Witchcraft,
• MeSH
• čarodějnictví * MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• motivace MeSH
• sociální normy etnologie   MeSH
• žárlivost MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Mauricius etnologie   MeSH

Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses to assess whether perceiving a locally relevant deity as moralistic predicts cooperative play in two permutations of two economic games using data from up to 15 diverse field sites. Across games, results suggest that gods' moral concerns do not play a direct, cross-culturally reliable role in motivating cooperative behaviour. The study contributes substantially to the current literature by testing a central hypothesis in the evolutionary and cognitive science of religion with a large and culturally diverse dataset using behavioural and ethnographically rich methods.

• Klíčová slova
• Behavioural economics, cognitive anthropology, cultural evolutionary psychology, evolutionary and cognitive science of religion, free-list,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Around the world, people engage in practices that involve self-inflicted pain and apparently wasted resources. Researchers theorized that these practices help stabilize within-group cooperation by assorting individuals committed to collective action. While this proposition was previously studied using existing religious practices, we provide a controlled framework for an experimental investigation of various predictions derived from this theory. We recruited 372 university students in the Czech Republic who were randomly assigned into either a high-cost or low-cost condition and then chose to play a public goods game (PGG) either in a group that wastes money to signal commitment to high contributions in the game or to play in the group without such signals. We predicted that cooperators would assort in the high-cost revealed group and that, despite these costs, they would contribute more to the common pool and earn larger individual rewards over five iterations of PGG compared with the concealed group and participants in the low-cost condition. The results showed that the assortment of cooperators was more effective in the high-cost condition and translated into larger contributions of the remaining endowment to the common pool, but participants in the low-cost revealed group earned the most. We conclude that costly signals can serve as an imperfect assorting mechanism, but the size of the costs needs to be carefully balanced with potential benefits to be profitable.

• Klíčová slova
• costly signalling theory, evolution of cooperation, public goods game, strategic choice model,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Humans have evolved various social behaviors such as interpersonal motor synchrony (i.e., matching movements in time), play and sport or religious ritual that bolster group cohesion and facilitate cooperation. While important for small communities, the face-to-face nature of such technologies makes them infeasible in large-scale societies where risky cooperation between anonymous individuals must be enforced through moral judgment and, ultimately, altruistic punishment. However, the unbiased applicability of group norms is often jeopardized by moral hypocrisy, i.e., the application of moral norms in favor of closer subgroup members such as key socioeconomic partners and kin. We investigated whether social behaviors that facilitate close ties between people also promote moral hypocrisy that may hamper large-scale group functioning. We recruited 129 student subjects that either interacted with a confederate in the high synchrony or low synchrony conditions or performed movements alone. Subsequently, participants judged a moral transgression committed by the confederate toward another anonymous student. The results showed that highly synchronized participants judged the confederate's transgression less harshly than the participants in the other two conditions and that this effect was mediated by the perception of group unity with the confederate. We argue that for synchrony to amplify group identity in large-scale societies, it needs to be properly integrated with morally compelling group symbols that accentuate the group's overarching identity (such as in religious worship or military parade). Without such contextualization, synchrony may create bonded subgroups that amplify local preferences rather than impartial and wide application of moral norms.

• Klíčová slova
• cooperation, group unity, moral hypocrisy, moral judgment, social bonding, synchrony,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Although scientists agree that replications are critical to the debate on the validity of religious priming research, religious priming replications are scarce. This paper attempts to replicate and extend previously observed effects of religious priming on ethical behavior. We test the effect of religious instrumental music on individuals' ethical behavior with university participants (N = 408) in the Czech Republic, Japan, and the US. Participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of three musical tracks (religious, secular, or white noise) or to no music (control) for the duration of a decision-making game. Participants were asked to indicate which side of a vertically-bisected computer screen contained more dots and, in every trial, indicating that the right side of the screen had more dots earned participants the most money (irrespective of the number of dots). Therefore, participants were able to report dishonestly to earn more money. In agreement with previous research, we did not observe any main effects of condition. However, we were unable to replicate a moderating effect of self-reported religiosity on the effects of religious music on ethical behavior. Nevertheless, further analyses revealed moderating effects for ritual participation and declared religious affiliation congruent with the musical prime. That is, participants affiliated with a religious organization and taking part in rituals cheated significantly less than their peers when listening to religious music. We also observed significant differences in cheating behavior across samples. On average, US participants cheated the most and Czech participants cheated the least. We conclude that normative conduct is, in part, learned through active membership in religious communities and our findings provide further support for religious music as a subtle, moral cue.

• MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• hudba * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mravy * MeSH
• náboženství * MeSH
• podněty MeSH
• rozhodování etika   MeSH
• srovnání kultur MeSH
• videohry etika   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH
• Japonsko MeSH
• Spojené státy americké MeSH

The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behaviour toward geographically distant co-religionists. Furthermore, another hypothesis points to such mechanisms being constrained to the religious ingroup, possibly at the expense of religious outgroups. To test these hypotheses, we administered two behavioural experiments and a set of interviews to a sample of 2228 participants from 15 diverse populations. These populations included foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and wage labourers, practicing Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, but also forms of animism and ancestor worship. Using the Random Allocation Game (RAG) and the Dictator Game (DG) in which individuals allocated money between themselves, local and geographically distant co-religionists, and religious outgroups, we found that higher ratings of gods as monitoring and punishing predicted decreased local favouritism (RAGs) and increased resource-sharing with distant co-religionists (DGs). The effects of punishing and monitoring gods on outgroup allocations revealed between-site variability, suggesting that in the absence of intergroup hostility, moralizing gods may be implicated in cooperative behaviour toward outgroups. These results provide support for the hypothesis that beliefs in monitoring and punitive gods help expand the circle of sustainable social interaction, and open questions about the treatment of religious outgroups.

• Klíčová slova
• cultural evolution, impartiality, parochialism, punishing gods, religion, supernatural punishment,
• MeSH
• etnicita psychologie   MeSH
• experimentální hry MeSH
• interpersonální vztahy * MeSH
• kooperační chování * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mravy * MeSH
• náboženství a psychologie * MeSH
• trest psychologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

Several prominent evolutionary theories contend that religion was critical to the emergence of large-scale societies and encourages cooperation in contemporary complex groups. These theories argue that religious systems provide a reliable mechanism for finding trustworthy anonymous individuals under conditions of risk. In support, studies find that people displaying cues of religious identity are more likely to be trusted by anonymous coreligionists. However, recent research has found that displays of religious commitment can increase trust across religious divides. These findings are puzzling from the perspective that religion emerges to regulate coalitions. To date, these issues have not been investigated outside of American undergraduate samples nor have studies considered how religious identities interact with other essential group-membership signals, such as ancestry, to affect intergroup trust. Here, we address these issues and compare religious identity, ancestry, and trust among and between Christians and Hindus living in Mauritius. Ninety-seven participants rated the trustworthiness of faces, and in a modified trust game distributed money among these faces, which varied according to religious and ethnic identity. In contrast to previous research, we find that markers of religious identity increase monetary investments only among in-group members and not across religious divides. Moreover, out-group religious markers on faces of in-group ancestry decrease reported trustworthiness. These findings run counter to recent studies collected in the United States and suggest that local socioecologies influence the relationships between religion and trust. We conclude with suggestions for future research and a discussion of the challenges of conducting field experiments with remote populations.

• Klíčová slova
• Mauritius, ancestry, cooperation, religion, trust,
• MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• důvěra psychologie   MeSH
• hinduismus psychologie   MeSH
• křesťanství psychologie   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• náboženství a psychologie * MeSH
• rozpoznání obličeje * MeSH
• skupinové procesy * MeSH
• sociální identifikace * MeSH
• sociální percepce * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Mauricius etnologie   MeSH

A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, beliefs and behaviors. The bulk of this research, however, draws from coded qualitative ethnographies rather than from standardized methods specifically designed to measure religious beliefs and behaviors. Psychological data sets that examine religious thought and behavior in controlled conditions tend to be disproportionately sampled from student populations. Some cross-national databases employ standardized methods at the individual level, but are primarily focused on fully market integrated, state-level societies. The Evolution of Religion and Morality Project sought to generate a data set that systematically probed individual level measures sampling across a wider range of human populations. The set includes data from behavioral economic experiments and detailed surveys of demographics, religious beliefs and practices, material security, and intergroup perceptions. This paper describes the methods and variables, briefly introduces the sites and sampling techniques, notes inconsistencies across sites, and provides some basic reporting for the data set.

• MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mravy * MeSH
• náboženství * MeSH
• srovnání kultur MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• dataset MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH