Cooperation and Commune Longevity: A Test of the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion

Abstract

The costly signaling theory of religion posits that religious rituals and taboos can promote intragroup cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. To test this theory, the authors collected historical data on the constraints and ritual requirements that eighty-three 19th-century U.S. communes imposed on their members. All communes must solve the collective action problem of cooperative labor to survive; thus, they are an ideal population to assess the impact of ritual and taboo on intragroup cooperation. The authors evaluated whether communes that imposed costlier requirements survived longer than less demanding communes and whether costly requirements and religiosity interact to promote cooperation. The results support aspects of the costly signaling theory of religion and reveal new avenues for its development. The authors discuss some of the shortcomings of the theory and explore ways to expand the theory that incorporate additional features of ritual and religious belief.

Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality

“…This helps to partly explain two phenomena: the evolution of large and complex human societies and the religious features of societies with greater social complexity that are heavily populated by such gods 6,7 . In addition to some forms of religious rituals and non-religious norms and institutions, such as courts, markets and police, the present results point to the role that commitment to knowledgeable, moralistic and punitive gods plays in solidifying the social bonds that create broader imagined communities 11,12,31 . Tables S5 and S6 for all other models (highlights from models 1 FE presented here).…”

“…To account for the emergence of these patterns, some evolutionary approaches to religion have theorized that cultural evolution may have harnessed and exploited aspects of our evolved psychology, such as mentalizing abilities, dualistic tendencies and sensitivity to norm compliance, to gradually assemble configurations of supernatural beliefs that promote greater cooperation and trust within expanding groups, leading to greater success in intergroup competition. Of course, given that cultural evolution can produce self-reinforcing stable patterns of beliefs and practices, these supernatural agent concepts may also have been individually favoured within groups due to mechanisms related to signalling, reputation and punishment [5][6][7][8][9]11,12 . Over time, these deities spread culturally and came to dominate the modern world religions like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.…”

“…Of course, given that cultural evolution can produce self-reinforcing stable patterns of beliefs and practices, these supernatural agent concepts may also have been individually favoured within groups due to mechanisms related to signalling, reputation and punishment [5][6][7][8][9]11,12 . Over time, these deities spread culturally and came to dominate the modern world religions like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.…”

Is our brain hardwired to produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive God? A systematic review on the role of the brain in mediating religious experience

“…In another words it should be adaptive. The adaptationist view is supported by the fact that the religious communities were far more likely to outlast their nonreligious counterparts -four times as likely in any given year (Sosis 2000;Sosis and Bressler 2003).…”

Extreme Rituals as Social Technologies

“…This reasoning leads to interesting implications for group-level selection theories. One of the common arguments is that extreme rituals have survived because groups with rituals that are more effective in bonding the in-group are more likely to survive compared to groups that are lacking such rituals (e.g., Sosis and Bressler, 2003;Henrich, 2009; see also Wilson et al, 2008). According to these theories, there should be selective pressures at the group level that provided some advantage to those groups who had these ritual social technologies compared to those who lacked them.…”