CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 294Evolutionary Game Theory and CooperationEvolutionary Psychology and Human BehaviorViolence, Religion, and Philosophy

Hand of God, Mind of Man: Punishment and Cognition in the Evolution of Cooperation

Open access
Johnson, Dominic, Bering, Jesse·2006·Evolutionary Psychology
DOI 10.1177/147470490600400119
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The evolution of human cooperation remains a puzzle because cooperation persists even in conditions that rule out mainstream explanations. We present a novel solution that links two recent theories. First, Johnson & Kruger (2004) suggested that ancestral cooperation was promoted because norm violations were deterred by the threat of supernatural punishment. However, this only works if individuals attribute negative life events (or a prospective afterlife) as intentionally caused by supernatural agents. A complementary cognitive mechanism is therefore required. Recently, Bering and Shackelford (2004) suggested precisely this. The evolution of “theory of mind” and, specifically, the “intentionality system” (a cognitive system devoted to making inferences about the epistemic contents and intentions of other minds), strongly favoured: (1) the selection of human psychological traits for monitoring and controlling the flow of social information within groups; and (2) attributions of life events to supernatural agency. We argue that natural selection favoured such attributions because, in a cognitively sophisticated social environment, a fear of supernatural punishment steered individuals away from costly social transgressions resulting from unrestrained, evolutionarily ancestral, selfish interest (acts which would rapidly become known to others, and thereby incur an increased probability and severity of punishment by group members). As long as the net costs of selfish actions from real-world punishment by group members exceeded the net costs of lost opportunities from self-imposed norm abiding, then god-fearing individuals would outcompete non-believers.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/147470490600400119

Cites

87 of 87 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Evolutionary theories of religion predict that prejudice against atheists may persist even in secular cultures, either as part of adaptations linking belief to within-group cooperation or as a consequence of culturally transmitted and entrenched proreligious norms.

    “Evolutionary theories of religion predict that prejudice against atheists may persist even in secular cultures, either as part of a suite of adaptations linking belief to withingroup cooperation 20 , or as a consequence of culturally transmitted 21 and entrenched proreligious norms 22 .”

    From Global evidence of extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists (2017) · cites this paper as [20]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Johnson, D., & Bering, J.
Affiliations
  • Princeton University (US)
  • Queen's University Belfast (GB)
ORCID
Venue
Evolutionary Psychology
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2006-01-01
Volume
4
Issue
1
ISSN
1474-7049 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1177/147470490600400119
OpenAlex
W2177818176
Cited by
294
References
87
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 22
FWCI
55.72
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Evolutionary Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford) (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
Keywords
evolution of cooperation, supernatural punishment, theory of mind, agency attribution, norm violation, social transgression, religious beliefs, afterlife beliefs

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review