LEVYNA contributes to new book on evolution and culture
LEVYNA researcher Radek Kundt is both editor and contributor to a new book published by Springer exploring the complex interplay between biology and culture.
New Publication: Atonement as Social Repair
How do communities restore moral order after a norm violation when there is no single victim to forgive the transgressor? A new paper published in Evolution and Human Behavior addresses this question by applying costly signalling theory to the study of atonement and appeasement rituals across religious traditions.
The paper argues that community-level moral repair poses a structurally distinct challenge from dyadic reconciliation: it requires a public signal that diffuse observers can simultaneously read as credible evidence of moral realignment, without the personal knowledge of the transgressor that makes private apology work. Atonement and appeasement rituals address this challenge through their public character, structured cost, embodied form, and authoritative framing — features that recur cross-culturally precisely because they are functional responses to shared structural demands.
The paper derives testable predictions about when ritual repair will be required rather than cheaper alternatives, and discusses implications for understanding moral regulation, cross-cultural variation in atonement practices, and the limits of contemporary public apology.
Read the paper in Evolution and Human Behavior here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106979
