ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Instability of cooperation based on fictitious belief: an experiment with artificial supernatural punishment.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Target trial emulation shows that supported causal effects of religious attendance on well-being are selective.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2024Article
- Cultural transmission, networks, and clusters among Austronesian-speaking peoples.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Review
- Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses.Science advances · 2022Article
- From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022Article
- What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Culture? There is a Missing Link Between the Natural and the Social Sciences.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2021Article
- Cultural similarity among coreligionists within and between countries.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The Cultural Evolution of Epistemic Practices : The Case of Divination.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence test the phylogenetic inference of Viking-Age plant use.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Article
- Games and enculturation: A cross-cultural analysis of cooperative goal structures in Austronesian games.PloS one · 2021Article
- Resource Stress Predicts Changes in Religious Belief and Increases in Sharing Behavior.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Coding culture: challenges and recommendations for comparative cultural databases.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Cultural group selection and human cooperation: a conceptual and empirical review.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Review
- Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not fear of divine punishment.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Supernatural belief presents an explanatory challenge to evolutionary theorists-it is both costly and prevalent. One influential functional explanation claims that the imagined threat of supernatural punishment can suppress selfishness and enhance cooperation. Specifically, morally concerned supreme deities or 'moralizing high gods' have been argued to reduce free-riding in large social groups, enabling believers to build the kind of complex societies that define modern humanity. Previous cross-cultural studies claiming to support the MHG hypothesis rely on correlational analyses only and do not correct for the statistical non-independence of sampled cultures. Here we use a Bayesian phylogenetic approach with a sample of 96 Austronesian cultures to test the MHG hypothesis as well as an alternative supernatural punishment hypothesis that allows punishment by a broad range of moralizing agents. We find evidence that broad supernatural punishment drives political complexity, whereas MHGs follow political complexity. We suggest that the concept of MHGs diffused as part of a suite of traits arising from cultural exchange between complex societies. Our results show the power of phylogenetic methods to address long-standing debates about the origins and functions of religion in human society.
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