ArticleNature human behaviour2023
Supernatural explanations across 114 societies are more common for natural than social phenomena.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mysterious illnesses have supernatural and ritualistic cures: Evidence from 3,655 century-old Irish folk cures.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Digital pathways beyond Western-centric participants.Behavior research methods · 2025Review
- Quality-checking a novel "fact sheet" on ghostly episodes.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Voluntary and involuntary motor behaviours in the varieties of religious experience.Brain communications · 2025Review
- Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Global supernatural beliefs.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Writing more informative titles and abstracts.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Endocrinology and Supernatural Beliefs; A Review.Indian journal of endocrinology and metabolismReview
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans across the globe use supernatural beliefs to explain the world around them. This article explores whether cultural groups invoke the supernatural more to explain natural phenomena (for example, storms, disease outbreaks) or social phenomena (for example, murder, warfare). Quantitative analysis of ethnographic text across 114 geographically and culturally diverse societies found that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural than for social phenomena, consistent with theories that ground the origin of religious belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in the natural world. Despite the dominance of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, supernatural explanations of social phenomena were especially prevalent in urbanized societies with more socially complex and anonymous groups. Our results show how people use supernatural beliefs as explanatory tools in non-industrial societies, and how these applications vary across small-scale communities versus large and urbanized groups.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.