Does It Pay To Pray? Costly Ritual and Cooperation

By Bradley J. Ruffle, Richard Sosis. 2007

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Demography, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e1e1dbfb0ae4f077ad9c36c23ab5fb88b318361

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Citations in the corpus

Toward an evolutionary social neuroscience of religion (2011, background): “…model of religion makes sense of the costliness of religious ritual, as well, and provides an explanation of religion as a meaning making system that is not only unfalsifiable, but also empirically efficacious in the promotion of trust and cooperation (Ruffle & Sosis, 2007; Sosis & Bressler, 2003).”
Evolutionary accounts of belief in supernatural punishment: a critical review (2011, background): “…between cohesion of cooperating groups and demanding religious practices lend support to this proposal; moreover, correlations between group solidarity and costly behaviors are much weaker or non-existent in secular communities (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Sosis, 2005; Ruffle & Sosis, 2006, 2007).”
Is the importance of religion in daily life related to social trust? Cross-country and cross-state comparisons (2011, background): “As for social interaction, Ruffle and Sosis (2007) argue that collective rituals serve a useful purpose in stimulating social cohesion and a more favorable attitude toward cooperation.”
Religion, spirituality, and altruism (2013, result): “When studies provided significant results, religious participants showed higher cooperation or generosity in the United States (Anderson & Mellor, 2009), India (Muslim students; Ahmed, 2009), and Israel (Jewish kibbutzim; Ruffle & Sosis, 2007).”
Culture and social behavior (2015, background): “Similarly, recent work shows how various ritual elements influence our sociality, including synchrony, music-making, costly acts, and the terrifying experiences created by many rites of passage [34 ,35–43].”
Scars for war: evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs (2007, background): “To evaluate these arguments, Sosis and colleagues (Sosis, 2000a; Sosis & Bressler, 2003; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003, 2004; Ruffle & Sosis, 2007) examined the role of ritual behavior in overcoming the inherent collective action problems of cooperative labor that communal societies confront.”
Ritual increases children’s affiliation with in-group members☆ (2016, background): “…Boyd, & Richerson, 2003), (c) facilitating cooperation with their coalition (e.g. rituals signal group commitment and increase group cooperation) (Ruffle & Sosis, 2007; Sosis & Bressler, 2003; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003), and (d) increasing group cohesion (e.g., rituals serve as mechanisms for social…”
Beliefs about God, the afterlife and morality support the role of supernatural policing in human cooperation (2011, background): “…predictors, studies found that males in religious Kibbutzim are more likely to cooperate in economic games than males from secular Kibbutzim, with the highest rates of cooperation among those males who most regularly engage in collective rituals (Ruffle & Sosis, 2007; Sosis & Bressler, 2003).”