Karma and God: Convergent and divergent mental representations of supernatural norm enforcement

Abstract

Cultural evolutionary theories have proposed that prosocial religious traditions can facilitate societal complexity and large-scale cooperation among strangers, in part, through the culturally transmitted commitment to morally concerned supernatural entities. Although a growing number of studies have documented an association between reminders of religious concepts and increased prosocial behavior, fewer studies have directly examined mental models of supernaturally monitored morality. Study 1 used pre-existing closed-ended questionnaires to assess whether beliefs about karma reflect one’s secular moral values. Studies 2 and 3 used an open-ended free-list task to investigate participants’ mental models of which human behaviors are rewarded and punished by God and karma, among samples from the USA and India, including Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and non-religious participants. We investigate how mental models of God and karma’s moral concerns reflect (1) widespread consensus about the relevance of interpersonal cooperation, (2) one’s own moral values and internalized cultural norms for moral behavior, and (3) target-specific differences between mental models of God and karma. Results demonstrate how supernatural beliefs reflect aspects of individuals’ secular, interpersonal moral values, while also containing unique elements due to the particular relationships that believers have different supernatural entities.

Small gods, rituals, and cooperation: The Mentawai water spirit Sikameinan

“…But in comparison with the moralizing forces of world religions, Sikameinan's scope and domain of interest are limited. Whereas moralistic supernatural forces such as karma or the Christian god are believed to care about large-scale morality, including whether one is greedy, harmful, unkind, or dishonest towards socially distant individuals such as strangers (White & Norenzayan, 2019), Sikameinan attacks people who fail to share meat with fellow clan members. Unlike karma or the Christian god (White & Norenzayan, 2019), Sikameinan cannot read minds, which is implied in the shamans' assurance to the spirit that the patient's failure to share was inadvertent.…”

“…Whereas moralistic supernatural forces such as karma or the Christian god are believed to care about large-scale morality, including whether one is greedy, harmful, unkind, or dishonest towards socially distant individuals such as strangers (White & Norenzayan, 2019), Sikameinan attacks people who fail to share meat with fellow clan members. Unlike karma or the Christian god (White & Norenzayan, 2019), Sikameinan cannot read minds, which is implied in the shamans' assurance to the spirit that the patient's failure to share was inadvertent. Sikameinan is morally concerned but provincial in its scope and limited in its knowledge compared to the powerful gods of the largest-scale societies (see also Tyvan spirit-masters: Purzycki, 2016;Purzycki, 2013).…”

“…Boehm (2008), for instance, coded the ethnographies of 18 forager societies and found supernatural punishment in every society examined. Interestingly though, these punitive forces or gods typically focused on only a few behaviors, often local taboos, and usually lacked the broad, moralistic scope of supernatural punishers in modern world religions, such as karma or the Christian god (White & Norenzayan, 2019). Better understanding the domains, nature, scope, and intensity of supernatural punishment among hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists is crucial not only for properly characterizing the cultural evolution of prosocial religion, but also for understanding the forces supporting human cooperation in small-scale societies, especially given humans' exceptional levels of cooperation towards non-kin (Hill et al, 2011).…”