Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior

By Richard Sosis, C. Alcorta. 2003

613 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58c61dcd8e98fe834e9666201e823de273ea4971

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Citations in the corpus

The Social Functions of Group Rituals (2016, background): “Sosis and Alcorta (2003) have argued that hardto-fake ritual signals promote trust and affiliation among group members.”
Does Religion Promote Trust? The Role of Signaling, Reputation, and Punishment (2005, background): “This is particularly notable because recent theoretical developments in the study of religion posit that trust plays an important role in generating the cooperatively derived benefits that religious groups are presumed to offer (see Sosis and Alcorta 2003).”
The cultural morphospace of ritual form ☆: Examining modes of religiosity cross-culturally (2011, background): “For example, different elements of ritual form have been associated with costly signalling (Irons, 1996; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Sosis, Kress & Boster, 2007), obsessive compulsive disorder and the human hazard precaution system (Boyer & Lienard, 2006), cognitive constraints on memory systems…”
Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation (2010, background): “Signaling via providing collective goods has also been reported or hypothesized for several noneconomic arenas, particularly various forms of religious ritual (Boone, 1998, 2000; Irons, 2001; Sosis, 2003; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Sosis & Bressler, 2003; Sosis, Kress & Boster, 2007; Wilson, 2008 ).”
Toward an evolutionary social neuroscience of religion (2011, background): “A willingness to suffer may also verify social commitments as hard-to-fake signals of religious/within-group cooperative commitments (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003 ).”
Scars for war: evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs (2007, background): “Evolutionary researchers have increasingly turned their attention toward understanding the adaptive significance of religious behaviors (for reviews, see Bulbulia, 2004a; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”
Beliefs about God, the afterlife and morality support the role of supernatural policing in human cooperation (2011, background): “…1993; Pyysiäinen & Hauser, 2010), others see it as providing fitness advantages by guarding against free-riding and facilitating group cohesion, cooperation and trust (Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Dunbar, 2009; Richerson & Boyd, 1998; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003; Sosis, Kress, & Boster, 2007; Wilson, 2002).”
In Godlessness We Distrust: Using Social Psychology to Solve the Puzzle of Anti-atheist Prejudice (2013, background): “…communities together, and the promotion of ingroup cooperation might be a central adaptive challenge that religions helped solve at the cultural level (e.g., Gervais & Norenzayan, in press ; Johnson & Krueger, 2004; Norenzayan & Gervais, 2012; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”
Discerning devotion: Testing the signaling theory of religion (2017, background): “…on religion, some researchers have suggested that religious practices, particularly those that place costly demands on the individual, can be signals of commitment to the prosocial tenets of the community (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Bulbulia, 2004; Henrich, 2009; Irons, 2001; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”
Religion, spirituality, and altruism (2013, background): “Rituals may also provide opportunities to present oneself and be perceived by others as worthy of trust and cooperation (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003) or to enhance followers’ commitment to the group’s ideology and in-group cooperation (Henrich, 2009).”
The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion (2004, background): “Very basically, if believing in supernatural causation helps us to recover from illness or meet the terrors of life, then tendencies to fall into such deceptions will be conserved and more intricately articulated (McClenon 1997; Bulbulia 2003; Sosis and Alcorta 2003).”
The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution (2009, background): “…scarification, animal sacrifice and subincision — and deep levels of commitment to group ideologies, religious beliefs and shared values that promote solidarity and in-group cooperation (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Cronk, 1994; Durkheim, 1995; Irons, 1996; Rappaport, 1999; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”
Do sincere apologies need to be costly? Test of a costly signaling model of apology (2009, neutral): “…human behavior, such as altruistic behavior of hunters (e.g., Gurven, Allen-Arave, Hill, & Hurtado, 2000; Smith & Bliege Bird, 2000; Sosis, 2000), religious behavior (e.g., Irons, 2001; Sosis, 2003; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003) and human courtship behavior (e.g., Griskevicius et al., 2007; Miller, 2000).”
Principles of Religious Prosociality: A Review and Reformulation (2010, background): “The effort and difficulty associated with these rituals can further increase commitment and trust among group members, thus increasing the likelihood of intragroup co-operation and prosociality (Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”