Religion and expanding the cooperative sphere in Kastom and Christian villages on Tanna, Vanuatu

ABSTRACT

The coexistence of Christian and traditional “Kastom” beliefs on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu provides an especially interesting environment in which to investigate the association between religion and cooperation. Here I use an experimental economic game together with ethnographic and survey data to compare religious beliefs and practices and their association with cooperative behavior across two communities – one predominantly Christian and one predominantly Kastom. Results show some evidence of bias in favor of the self in the Kastom but not the Christian village, although the overall allocations are not significantly different between villages. Allocations to self or own village were generally lower for those who professed belief in a more omniscient and rewarding supernatural agent and for those who engaged in ritual acts of devotion more frequently, although the relationship with ritual devotion and local garden spirit beliefs varied across sites. These findings highlight intriguing differences between the two sites and provide some support for the hypothesis that elements of religion may function to facilitate the expansion of cooperation to co-religionists beyond the local community.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural evolution
• evolution of cooperation
• supernatural punishment
• Vanuatu

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the graduate research assistants (Jacqueline Davis, Crystal Shackleford, Alice Wang, and Emma Sharp) and Tanna field researchers (JJ, Simon, Malcom, Joe, Mela, Kiel, John, and Joseph) for their invaluable help in conducting this research, and thank you to the people of Tanna who participated in this research.

ORCID

Quentin D. Atkinson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8499-7535

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC) funded by a partnership grant [895-2011-1009] from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand [grant number #RDF-UOA1101].