Supernaturalizing Social Life

Human Nature 18 (3):272-294 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper examines three ancient traits of religion whose origins likely date back to the Upper Paleolithic: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the belief in natural and animal spirits. Evidence for the emergence of these traits coincides with evidence for a dramatic advance in human social cooperation. It is argued that these traits played a role in the evolution of human cooperation through the mechanism of social scrutiny. Social scrutiny is an effective means of reducing individualism and enhancing prosocial behavior. Religion’s most ancient traits represent an extension of the human social world into the supernatural, thus reinforcing within-group cooperation by means of ever-vigilant spiritual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may have helped reduce the number of non-cooperators within a group while reinforcing group behavioral norms, thus allowing humanlike levels of cooperation to emerge

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 107,238

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-24

Downloads
57 (#433,452)

6 months
11 (#405,985)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

The evolution of misbelief.Ryan McKay & Daniel Dennett - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):493–510; discussion 510–61.
The evolution of misbelief.Ryan T. McKay & Daniel C. Dennett - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):493-510.
The cultural evolution of shamanism.Manvir Singh - 2018 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41:e66.

View all 15 citations / Add more citations