Do beliefs in omniscient and punitive moralizing gods contribute promote ingroup cooperation? And what about their effect on intergroup cooperation with people who belong to other religion?
We are providing some answers to these questions in our new paper called “Moralizing gods, impartiality and religious parochialism across 15 societies". Together, in two experiments with 2228 participants from 15 populations, the ratings of gods as monitoring and punishing predicted resource-sharing with co-religionists. Sharing with outgroups varied between sites: in the absence of intergroup hostility, the results suggest that moralizing gods may promote cooperation with outgroups.
Martin Lang received the Czech National Foundation’s Junior Star grant with his project titled Computing Religious Devotion: How Reinforcing Supernatural Beliefs Affects Normative Models in the Mind.
The vice-rector for Research and Doctoral Studies at Masaryk University has awarded two LEVYNA graduates - Dan Řezníček and Radim Chvaja with a price for excellent results during their Ph.D. studies.
