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Abstract
Although largely unaddressed by evolutionary theory for more than a century after Darwin, over the last decade a wide range of adaptationist, byproduct, and memetic explanations have emerged for various recurrent features of religious belief and practice. One feature that has figured prominently in adaptationist accounts of religion is belief in the reality of moralizing, punishing supernatural agents. However, there is at present no unified theory of what fitness-relevant feature of the selective environment to which this cognitive predisposition is adapted. We distinguish two divergent and often conflated approaches to supernatural punishment theory which hypothesize the adaptive character of such beliefs arise from the fact that they increase cooperation or decrease the cost of incurring punishment for norm violations. We evaluate these, and group and individual selectionist versions, in view of game theoretic models, experimental studies, and ethnographic data in light of which each proposal is plausible but with which none is fully concordant.
Notes
1. The notion of “punishment” suffers from some terminological ambiguity, since it is employed in various ways in the game theoretic, experimental, and anthropological literatures. In some models, punishment by definition simply entails imposing a cost on another at some cost to the punisher, whereas imposing a cost on defection at no cost, e.g., by withholding cooperation, is “defection” (Rockenbach & Milinski, 2009; Ohtsuki et al., 2009). In other accounts punishment involves one party reducing the assets of another, and may be cost free, costly (incurring a cost to the punisher that may be compensated by future benefits), or altruistic (incurring an uncompensated cost). However in practice, even “cost-free” punishment entails costs of vigilance and may incur costs of reprisal when interactions are iterated, as they are in many human social settings. “Costly” punishment – even in games that afford no opportunity for future benefit via increased contributions of others to public goods – may still confer benefit through reputation (Dreber et al., 2008; Sigmund, Hauert, & Nowak, 2001).
2. In modeling punishment and defection under varying social norms that entail reputational benefits and consequences for cooperating, defecting, and punishing, Ohtsuki et al. (2009) find that costly punishment can be established, but only under a narrow range of conditions.
3. Although the agents and forces posited by religious belief are often taken to interact with and make behavioral demands on human communities, there is great variation in the nature of these demands, from local and idiosyncratic signals of commitment to more general expectations of cooperative fidelity.
4. There is, of course, another way to avoid incurring the cost of punishment for defection: do not get caught. If what matters is avoiding the costs of detection and punishment, one can certainly avoid that by not cheating at all, but one might also be able to avoid it by cheating and not getting caught. Below we assess the crucial argument made by defenders of this view that avoiding defection is better than avoiding detection.
5. There are extensive examples of this in the sacred writings, devotional literature, and analytic discourse of many religious traditions. For example, in the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 71 begins as an anguished meditation over doubts arising from the temporal flourishing of the wicked. The author then resolves his doubts by affirming flourishing of the righteous and banishment of the iniquitous in the life to come.
6. Strictly speaking, increasing the likelihood of being detected does not necessarily increase the likelihood of being punished, because some defections are either too trivial or costly to punish, and/or some defectors may escape punishment owing to social status or other factors. However, unless there is reason to posit that enhanced detection is biased toward unpunishable offenses, the first qualification is unimportant: for those defections that are punishable (n > 0), increased detection will result in increased costs to the defector. The second qualification is more complicated. On one read (and it is a read consistent with Nietzschian interpretations of religion), belief in SP might be an adaptation primarily or only for those in the social hierarchy most likely to be punished if detected. On another read, an important distinguishing trait of early human groups – in which some accounts propose both moral norms and religious sanctions to have emerged – involves balancing if not leveling dominance structures of primate sociality with a pan-human, egalitarian tendency to punish all defection (Boehm, 1999a,b). This would strengthen the connection between detection and cost of defecting.
7. One possibility not developed in current proposals is that belief in SP might serve to overcome commitment barriers or cooperative stalemates in Prisoner's Dilemma type games where mutual defection is the Nash equilibrium. This is plausible, though it faces several questions. First, in social organisms where games are iterated it is clear, both theoretically and empirically, that strategies exist to enable cooperation without either punishment or cognition. Second, in situations where overcoming commitment barriers is advantageous – such as pair-bonding or social attachment – there exist affective mechanisms that both facilitate and opportunistically relax commitment (Fisher, Aron, & Brown, Citation2006; Kendrick, Citation2006). Third, and consistent with the previous point, although there are proposals for the role of belief – including fictive belief – in marshalling commitment, current theoretical and empirical warrant favors positive over negative illusions (McKay & Dennett, Citation2009).
8. Byproduct or spandrel accounts of religious cognition are widely defended (Bloom, Citation2005; Boyer, 2001). The prima facie problem with viewing costly religious behaviors as spandrels rather than as adaptations is precisely that they do appear so costly. In order to be established as a spandrel, the fitness costs of the behavioral phenotype have to be compensated for by fitness benefits of another phenotype emerging from a shared cause. But it turns out that signaling theory requires an analogous cost–benefit balance, where the fitness costs of the signal must be compensated for by its resultant benefits. Thus, there is no a priori reason to consider one account more plausible. To resolve this empirically it is necessary to determine (a) actual fitness costs and benefits and (b) (a difficult task) the actual behavioral and dispositional phenotypes from which these fitness consequences accrue (Murray & Moore, 2009).
9. The terms and the underlying concepts of “costly” and “hard-to-fake” or reliable signals reflect some ambiguity in their current employment. Contrary to some accounts, they are not isomorphic: not all costly signals are reliable and not all reliable signals are costly (Cronk, Citation2005). Even where hard-to-fake signals are autonomically mediated, they are not, contrary to appearances, always cost free. Indeed, some learning or belief-oriented behaviors are hard-to-fake precisely in virtue of their costs. For example, linguistic dialects and accents, or sensitivity to culturally variable perceptions of style or humor, are notoriously difficult to fake and reflect the opportunity costs of early exposure. Some other behaviors with direct cognitive or affective costs – including the ability to withstand pain in certain contexts – may be facilitated by or even require, and therefore reliably signal, underlying beliefs. It may be that certain demanding religious rituals, while reflecting conscious choice, require underlying belief or authentic commitment in order to be effective (Sosis, 2004).
10. This assumes that the religious scaffolding necessary to sustain effective belief in supernatural punishment does incur fitness costs (though for a contrary reading on one apparently costly practice, see Larson, Citation2005). However, there is little in the way of firm data to support this claim (see Kotiaho, Citation2001). It is obvious that many systems of religious practice and ritual involve resource expenditures, but such expenditures are not equivalent to fitness costs. As a result, more work needs to be done to establish just what costs are involved and to what extent those costs bear on fitness. Searcy and Nowicki (Citation2005) downplay the seriousness of this concern, however.
11. Temporal disequilibrium between environmental challenge and adaptive response is common to the evolutionary dynamics of all species, but may be much more important for human beings, since the genetic basis of adaptive phenotypes changes much more slowly than challenges posed by and the counter-adaptations generated by the cultural environment (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, Citation1992; Plotkin, Citation1997, Citation2000).
12. It is important to note, however, that even if belief in supernatural punishment is more effective in deterring free-riding and managing reputation, the gains must be balanced against what may be significant fitness costs associated with the cultural scaffolding that appears to be required to sustain such a belief. See note 10 for a brief discussion of such costs.
13. This view assumes that in such societies the normal mechanisms of defection prevention would be less effective, though given claims that the move from egalitarian to hierarchical social organization may often typify larger societies, it is not clear that punishment mechanisms are less effective and more in need of supplementing.