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...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Publié dans:Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
Autres titres:Special Issue: Religious Diversity and the Cognitive Science of Religion: New Experimental & Fieldwork Approaches
Auteurs: PurzyckI, Benjamin Grant (Auteur) ; Sasaki, Joni (Auteur) ; Stagnaro, Michael N. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Equinox Publ. 2020
Dans: Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
Année: 2020, Volume: 14, Numéro: 1, Pages: 71-94
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Kognitive Religionswissenschaft / Changement socioéconomique / Impact environnemental / Changement religieux
RelBib Classification:AD Sociologie des religions
AE Psychologie de la religion
AG Vie religieuse
ZB Sociologie
Sujets non-standardisés:B Experimental Economics
B economic games
B gods’ minds
B Trust
B Cognitive Anthropology
Accès en ligne: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Résumé: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.
ISSN:1749-4915
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal for the study of religion, nature and culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.38786