This article integrates a recent spate of findings regarding beliefs in or thoughts about God and how they influence behavior. I first describe a fast-emerging cultural evolutionary perspective on why people believe in powerful, watchful, and morally invested Gods. I then apply this perspective to the recent spate of findings, arguing that those three culturally evolved features of Gods are responsible for certain additional effects beyond those thought to be their original adaptive function. These effects pertain to self-regulation, the reinforcement of social norms, risk taking, and more. I end by spelling out the theoretical leverage gained by applying a cultural fitness lens to these findings.
GrayK.WegnerD. M. (2010). Blaming God for our pain: Human suffering and the divine mind. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 7–16. This article describes another reason why people might believe in Big (moralizing) Gods, which could be responsible for other secondary effects.
2.
LaurinK.KayA. (2016). (see References). This chapter reviews scholarship on religion and self-regulation; secondary effects of Big Gods on self-regulation are one focus of the present article.
3.
LaurinK.ShariffA. F.HenrichJ.KayA. C. (2012). (See References). This article provides one telling example of a secondary effect that is at odds with the original adaptive function of Big Gods.
4.
NorenzayanA.ShariffA. F.GervaisW. M.WillardA.McNamaraR.SlingerlandE.HenrichJ. (2016). (See References). This article outlines the cultural evolution theory of religion, which this article takes as its starting point.
5.
BaldwinM. W.HolmesJ. G. (1987). Salient private audiences and awareness of the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1087–1098.
6.
BanduraA. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman.
7.
BarrettJ. L.KeilF. C. (1996). Conceptualizing a non-natural entity: Anthropomorphism in God concepts. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219–247.
8.
BaumardN.BoyerP. (2013). Religious beliefs as reflective elaborations: A modified dual-process model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 295–300.
9.
BaumardN.BoyerP. (2014). Empirical problems with the notion of “Big Gods” and of prosociality in large societies. Religion, Brain, & Behavior, 5, 279–283.
10.
BoyerP. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
11.
BussD. M.HaseltonM. G.ShackelfordT. K.BleskeA. L.WakefieldJ. C. (1998). Adaptations, exaptations, and spandrels. American Psychologist, 53, 533–548.
12.
CarterE. C.McCulloughM. E.CarverC. S. (2012). The mediating role of monitoring in the association of religion with self-control. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 3, 691–697.
13.
CarverC. S.ScheierM. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
14.
ChudekM.Brosseau-LiardP. E.BirchS.HenrichJ. (2013). Culture-gene coevolutionary theory and children’s selective social learning. In BanajiM. R.GelmanS. A. (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 181–185). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
15.
CohenA. B. (2015). Religion’s profound influence on psychology: Morality, intergroup relations, self-construal, and enculturation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 77–82.
16.
DahlD. W.ManchandaR. V.ArgoJ. J. (2001). Embarrassment in consumer purchase: The roles of social presence and purchase familiarity. Journal of Consumer Research, 28, 473–481.
17.
DijksterhuisA.PrestonJ.WegnerD. M.AartsH. (2008). Effects of subliminal priming of self and God on self-attribution of authorship for events. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2–9.
18.
DunbarR. I. M. (2003). The social brain: Mind, language, and society in everyday perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32, 163–181.
19.
EvansE. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217–266.
20.
FehrE.GächterS. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90, 980–994.
21.
GranqvistP.MikulincerM.ShaverP. R. (2010). Religion as attachment: Normative processes and individual differences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 49–59.
22.
GreenspanS. (2006). How symbols, language, and intelligence evolved from early primates to modern humans. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
23.
HenrichN.HenrichJ. (2007). Why humans cooperate: A cultural and evolutionary explanation. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
24.
JohnsonK. A.CohenA. B.OkunM. A. (2016). God is watching you. . . but also watching over you: The influence of benevolent God representations on secular volunteerism among Christians. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 8, 363–384.
25.
KarauS. J.WilliamsK. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 681–706.
26.
KayA. C.GaucherD.NapierJ. L.CallanM. J.LaurinK. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18–35.
27.
KayA. C.LaurinK.FitzsimonsG. M.LandauM. J. (2014). A functional basis for structure-seeking: Exposure to structure promotes willingness to engage in motivated action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 486–491.
28.
KhenferJ.TafaniE.RouxE.LaurinK. (2017). When God’s (not) needed: The divergent influence of belief in divine control on goal commitment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 117–123.
29.
KitchensM. B. (2015). Thinking about God causes internal reflection in believers and unbelievers of God. Self and Identity, 14, 724–747.
30.
KuporD. M.LaurinK.LevavJ. (2015). Anticipating divine protection? Reminders of God can increase nonmoral risk taking. Psychological Science, 26, 374–384.
31.
LalandK. N.BrownG. R. (2011). Sense and nonsense: Evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
32.
LaurinK.KayA. C. (2016). Religion and self-regulation. In VohsK. D.BaumeisterR. F. (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, & applications (pp. 305–322). New York, NY: Guilford.
33.
LaurinK.KayA. C. (2017). Motivational underpinnings of belief in powerful Gods. In OlsonJ. M. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 201–257). London, England: Academic Press.
34.
LaurinK.KayA. C.FitzsimonsG. M. (2012). Divergent effects of activating thoughts of God on self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 4–21.
35.
LaurinK.SchumannK.HolmesJ. G. (2014). A relationship with God? Connecting with the divine to assuage fears of interpersonal rejection. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 5, 777–785.
36.
LaurinK.ShariffA. F.HenrichJ.KayA. C. (2012). Outsourcing punishment to God: Beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279, 3272–3281.
37.
McCulloughM. E.WilloughbyB. L. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 69–93.
38.
MikalsonJ. (2010). Ancient Greek religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
39.
NorenzayanA. (2013). Big Gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
40.
NorenzayanA.ShariffA. F.GervaisW. M.WillardA.McNamaraR.SlingerlandE.HenrichJ. (2016). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 39, 1–65.
41.
PeoplesH. C.MarloweF. W. (2012). Subsistence and the evolution of religion. Human Nature, 23, 253–269.
RivesJ. (2007). Religion in the Roman empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
44.
RoesF. L.RaymondM. (2003). Belief in moralizing gods. Evolution & Human Behavior, 24, 126–135.
45.
SaroglouV. (2011). Believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging: The big four religious dimensions and cultural variation. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 1320–1340.
46.
SedikidesC.MeekR.AlickeM. D.TaylorS. (2014). Behind bars but above the bar: Prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53, 396–403.
47.
ShariffA. F.NorenzayanA. (2007). God is watching you: Priming god concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18, 803–809.
48.
ShariffA. F.NorenzayanA. (2011). Mean Gods make good people: Different views of God predict cheating behavior. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 21, 85–96.
49.
SlingerlandE. (2013). Body and mind in early China: An integrated humanities-science approach. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 81, 6–55.
50.
SumidaS. S.BrochuC. A. (2000). Phylogenetic context for the origin of feathers. American Zoologist, 40, 486–503.
51.
WilliamsT. N.MwangiT. W.RobertsD. J.AlexanderN. D.WeatherallD. J.WambuaS.. . . MarshK. (2005). An immune basis for malaria protection by the sickle cell trait. PLOS Medicine, 2(5), e128.
