The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality

By Ara Norenzayan, Azim Shariff. Science, 2008

877 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Demography, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af3cc11496bf699d20933a41d869c1f57fbec9ac

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Citations in the corpus

Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality (2012, background): “…1998; Walster, 1966).2 Differences in the salience of a suffering victim can also explain the perceived wrongness of crimes such as rape (clear victim) versus tax evasion (unclear victim; Nichols & Knobe, 2007), and also why it is worse not to help identifiable victims (Small & Loewenstein, 2003).”
Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives (2009, background): “MS, however, automatically primes religious thoughts (Norenzeyan & Hansen, 2006; Norenzeyan & Shariff, 2008), and so it may be that this previous finding reflects the tendency of MS to remind liberals of their liberal religious values, which might create an hypocrisy barrier against an explicit…”
Religion, spirituality, and altruism (2013, background): “Each of these dimensions is related to general religiosity and seems to contribute to a prosociality limited by concerns for positive self-image (Batson et al., 1993), social reputation (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), or afterlife-related rewards (Tao & Yeh, 2007).”
The Relationship between Religious Identity and Preferred Coping Strategies: An Examination of the Relative Importance of Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Coping in Muslim and Christian Faiths (2010, background): “…the last millennium (and before) various religions have promoted prosociality with a view to increasing to social cohesion and in-group solidarity (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), as supported by a growing body of evidence (Ai, Tice, Peterson, & Huang, 2005; Fischer, Greitemeyer, Kastenmüller,…”
When group membership gets personal: a theory of identity fusion. (2012, background): “Indeed, Atran and Henrich (2010) have suggested that group rituals encourage people to make and keep oaths to each other (Boyer, 2001) and to suppress selfishness and free-riding (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008).”
Who Sees Human? (2010, background): “…systems that propose an omnipresent and judgmental God appear better able to enhance cooperation between group members, possibly because of the capacity for these gods to watch people’s behavior at all times and serve as a constant source of social surveillance (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008).”
Priming Christian Religious Concepts Increases Racial Prejudice (2010, background): “The same mechanisms involved in in-group altruism may also facilitate out-group antagonism’’ (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008, p. 62).”
Moralized Leadership: The Construction and Consequences of Ethical Leader Perceptions (2015, background): “Although religious doctrines often emphasize prosociality, recent reviews and meta-analyses suggest that religiously motivated prosociality is best characterized as progroup behavior (Boer & Fischer, 2013; Galen, 2012; Henrich, Ensminger, et al., 2010; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008).”
Toward an evolutionary social neuroscience of religion (2011, background): “Prosociality, costly signaling, and the evolution of large groups The second account, rooted in evolutionary psychology, suggests that religion flourished because it promotes prosocial tendencies among humans (Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008).”
Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds (2011, background): “As such, commitment to supernatural agents may function to inhibit self-interested behavior, and thus in turn contribute to the evolution and persistence of human cooperation (Bering & Johnson 2005; Johnson 2005; Norenzayan & Shariff 2008).”
Evolutionary accounts of belief in supernatural punishment: a critical review (2011, background): “According to some proposals, the optimal implementation would involve belief in moralizing gods or some other form of supernatural sanctioning (Bering & Johnson, 2005; Johnson & Bering, 2009; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008).”
Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study (2011, background): “Tight nations will also be more religious, thereby reinforcing adherence to moral conventions and rules that can facilitate social order and coordination (10).”