Breaches of Trust Change the Content and Structure of Religious Appeals
Considerable work suggests that social and environmental pressures can influence religious commitment, the content of beliefs, and features of ritual. Some ecologically minded theories of religion posit that crosscultural variation in beliefs and practices can be partly explained by their utility in...
| Published in: | Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture |
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| Subtitles: | Special Issue: Religious Diversity and the Cognitive Science of Religion: New Experimental & Fieldwork Approaches |
| Authors: | ; ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Equinox Publ.
2020
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| In: |
Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Kognitive Religionswissenschaft
/ Socioeconomic change
/ Environmental pollution
/ Religious change
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AE Psychology of religion AG Religious life; material religion ZB Sociology |
| Further subjects: | B
Experimental Economics
B economic games B gods’ minds B Trust B Cognitive Anthropology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Considerable work suggests that social and environmental pressures can influence religious commitment, the content of beliefs, and features of ritual. Some ecologically minded theories of religion posit that crosscultural variation in beliefs and practices can be partly explained by their utility in addressing persistent threats to cooperation and coordination. However, little experimental work has assessed whether or not socioecological pressures can generate systematic variation in the content and structure of specific beliefs. Here, we assess the causal pathway between social ecology and beliefs by experimentally examining whether or not the content of freely elicited beliefs about God’s concerns change because of breaches of trust. We find that riskily investing in others and receiving no return or delaying the outcome in an economic Trust Game experiment increases the chances of claiming that greed angers God. These results suggest that religious cognition flexibly attends to social ecology and can therefore plausibly evolve in ways that address breaches in cooperative pursuits. |
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| ISSN: | 1749-4915 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.38786 |