Religion, Morality, Evolution -...

PS63CH08-Bloom ARI 31 October 2011 11:26

Religion, Morality, EvolutionPaul BloomDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2012. 63:179–99

First published online as a Review in Advance onSeptember 21, 2011

The Annual Review of Psychology is online atpsych.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100334

Copyright c© 2012 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

0066-4308/12/0110-0179$20.00

Keywords

altruism, atheism, faith, kindness, prejudice, religiosity, supernaturalbelief

Abstract

How did religion evolve? What effect does religion have on our moralbeliefs and moral actions? These questions are related, as some scholarspropose that religion has evolved to enhance altruistic behavior towardmembers of one’s group. I review here data from survey studies (bothwithin and across countries), priming experiments, and correlationalstudies of the effects of religion on racial prejudice. I conclude thatreligion has powerfully good moral effects and powerfully bad moraleffects, but these are due to aspects of religion that are shared by otherhuman practices. There is surprisingly little evidence for a moral effectof specifically religious beliefs.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180TWO PUZZLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Religion and Morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181Evolution of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

SENSES OF RELIGION. . . . . . . . . . . . . 183RELIGION AND MORALITY:

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS. . . . . 184MORALITY AND THE

EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINOF RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

MORALITY WITHOUTRELIGION? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

RELIGION AND GOODNESS,WITHIN AND ACROSSCOUNTRIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

RELIGION AND GOODNESS,LABORATORYMANIPULATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

RELIGION, INGROUPS,AND OUTGROUPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

EXPLAINING THE COMPLEXEFFECTS OF RELIGION . . . . . . . . 192

DEBATING THE MORALRELEVANCE OF BELIEFS . . . . . . 194

INTRODUCTION

Psychologists typically ignore religion. It isbarely mentioned in introductory textbooks,and the best journals rarely publish papers onthe topic. Religion is seen as an exotic specialtyarea, like sexual fetishes or the detection of ran-dom number sequences.

This neglect isn’t limited to psychologyproper. McCauley & Whitehouse (2005, p. 3)note: “. . . as with so many contemporary intell-ectuals, cognitive scientists, until quite recently,have mostly found topics like religion to be anembarrassment.” They add: “No topic—noteven sex, death, taxes, or terrorism—can elicitany more quirky, unpredictable responses fromintellectuals than religion.” Religion is like sexto a Victorian or dreams to a behaviorist—anawkward and embarrassing phenomenon best

not talked about. Many would go furtherand insist that religion isn’t a fit topic forscience at all. To study it as a psychologistis to commit the sins of “scientism” and “re-ductionism” (see Wieseltier 2006 for such anattack).

Since this article explores religious beliefand practice, it’s worth addressing this concernat the outset. One way to do so is to insist ona distinction made by David Hume. In 1757,Hume began The Natural History of Religionwith this: “As every enquiry which regards reli-gion is of the utmost importance, there are twoquestions in particular which challenge our at-tention, to wit, that concerning its foundationin reason, and that concerning its origin in hu-man nature” (p. 21).

There is a lot to be said about Hume’s firstquestion and whether it is the proper focus ofempirical inquiry. Some scholars believe thatreligion’s “foundation in reason” falls withinthe realm of science, while others disagree.But the second question—religion’s “origin inhuman nature”—is bread-and-butter psychol-ogy. How could psychology not address suchan important domain of belief, motivation, andaction? Critically, the psychology of religioncan be studied independently of one’s beliefabout the truth of religious claims. Regardlessof whether God exists, for instance, the ques-tion remains as to why so many people believehe does (see Bloom 2009).

Why should psychologists be interested inthe topic? One consideration is the universal-ity of religious belief. Most people characterizethemselves as belonging to a religion—typicallyChristianity and Islam; about half of the6.9 billion people on Earth see themselves asfalling into one of these two faiths. Most peo-ple engage in various religious practices, suchas circumcision and church going and obeyingdietary restrictions, and most people hold reli-gious beliefs, such as believing in God or in lifeafter death.

Religion is ubiquitous in the United States,where well over 90% of the population claimsto believe in God, and about 40% believe thatJesus Christ will return to Earth in the next half

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century (Appiah 2006). America is admittedlyunusual compared to the countries of WesternEurope, where the citizens are less likely to af-filiate themselves with a religion and where theyoften claim not to believe in God. But lookingat the world as a whole, it is Western Europethat is the exception. American religiosity sitswell with the countries of Asia and Africa andthe rest of the Americas—that is, most of therest of the planet.

Within the United States, there are politi-cal and social divides, and these correspond toreligiosity in the expected ways, with conser-vatives being more religious than liberals. Butreligion is not limited to a conservative sub-group. Most people who identify themselvesas Democrats pray daily or more often, andthe vast majority believe in life after death(Waldman 2004). Even most American aca-demics, who are among the more secular andliberal members of our species, are religious. Arecent study of 40,000 faculty members at 421colleges (Lindholm et al. 2006) found that al-most two thirds said that they considered them-selves religious either “to some extent” (29%)or “to a great extent” (35%).

In 1916, a large selection of scientists wereasked whether they believe in God, and thequestion was framed in a fairly strict manner,referring to a God who one could pray to andactually get an answer from. Even with thishigh bar, about 40% of scientists said yes—thesame percentage found in a similar poll in1996 (Larson & Witham 1997). Only whenwe look at the most elite scientists—membersof the National Academy of Sciences—do wefind a strong majority of atheists and agnostics(Larson & Witham 1998).

Finally, religion is highly relevant to manypeople’s lives (Shermer 2003). Religious activ-ities are a major source of everyday pleasure(Bloom 2010). And many important contempo-rary social and political debates—over gay mar-riage, abortion, capital punishment, stem cellresearch, the teaching of evolution in schools,and so on—are affected by people’s religiousviews. It is impossible to make sense of most ofhuman existence, including law, morality, war,

and culture, without some appreciation of reli-gion and how it works.

TWO PUZZLES

Religion and Morality

The main focus of this review is the effect ofreligious belief and religious affiliation on ourmoral lives. To put it crudely, does religionmake people good, does it make them bad, ordoes it have no effect at all?

Many people think they know the answer.In a 2007 Gallup poll, most Americans said thatthey would not vote for an otherwise qualifiedatheist to be president—they were more willingto vote for a Mormon, a Jew, or a homosexual.Another study found that people ranked athe-ists lower than Muslims, recent immigrants,and homosexuals in “sharing their vision ofAmerican society” and were least willing toallow their children to marry them (Edgellet al. 2006). When asked why there were soset against atheists, the answers had to do withmorality:

Some people view atheists as problematic be-cause they associate them with illegality, suchas drug use and prostitution—that is, withimmoral people who threaten respectablecommunity from the lower end of the sta-tus hierarchy. Others saw atheists as rampantmaterialists and cultural elitists that threatencommon values from above—the ostenta-tiously wealthy who make a lifestyle out ofconsumption or the cultural elites who thinkthey know better than everyone else. Bothof these themes rest on a view of atheists asself-interested individualists who are not con-cerned with the common good (pp. 225, 227).

This distrust of atheists is shared by manyscholars, including those who are otherwiseseen as champions of the Enlightenment. JohnLocke, for instance, did not believe that athe-ists should be allowed to hold office. He wrote(1689, p. 51): “Promises, covenants, and oaths,which are the bonds of human society, can have

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no hold upon an atheist” (quoted by Haidt &Kesebir 2010).

There are other scholars who hold the op-posite view, arguing that religion makes peopleworse. Most would agree, after all, that religiousfanaticism and extremism can sometimes drivepeople to do terrible things, and many wouldagree as well that certain everyday religiouspractices and beliefs can have a dark side. Exam-ples might include the persecution of homosex-uals, the murdering of heretics, and incitementsto holy war. As Blaise Pascal pointed out, “Mennever do evil so completely and cheerfully aswhen they do it from a religious conviction.”Even Pope Benedict XVI conceded this, not-ing: “There exist pathologies in religion that areextremely dangerous” (cited by Myers 2008).

Some would take this further, arguing thatreligion in general has a corrosive effect of ourmoral lives. Hitchens (2007, p. 56), for instance,argues that religion is “violent, irrational, intol-erant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry,invested in ignorance and hostile to free in-quiry, contemptuous of women and coercive to-ward children” (see Myers 2008 for discussion).Batson (1976, p. 30) argued that religion is “adouble agent”: “Espousing the highest good,seeking to make all men brothers, religion hasproduced the Crusades, the Inquisition and anunending series of witch hunts. Virtually everyorganized religion has been the excuse, if notthe cause, for violent, inhumane, and antisocialacts.”

To some extent, the question of the effects ofreligion falls outside the domain of psychology.Debates about the moral effects of religion areoften framed with reference to data from his-tory and sociology and anthropology: Partici-pants in these debates tally up all of the good andall of the bad done by the religious and the non-religious, and argue about who comes off betterin the end. (As I put it in an earlier article, “Isee your Crusades and raise you Stalin!”) Fromthis standpoint, this question of the moral ef-fects of religion is similar to arguments over themerits of parliamentary democracy, free trade,or the legalization of drugs. These are empiri-cal questions, at least in part, but they are best

addressed through the study of societies, notthrough psychological research into the mindsof individuals.

Still, as we have seen, many believe thatreligion does have an effect on individualswithin a society, and they argue, plausiblyenough, that policy implications follow fromthis. Brooks (2006), for instance, argues thatreligion makes individuals both happier andkinder, and concludes that organizations suchas the American Civil Liberties Union, whichseek to staunch displays of religiosity, are harm-ing society. On the other side, the so-calledNew Atheists, a group that includes Christo-pher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris,and Richard Dawkins, argue that religious be-lief is not just factually mistaken, but makesus worse people. If so, then rational andmoral individuals should work toward itsdemise.

To put the importance of the issue inperspective, consider that psychologists spendgreat energy exploring whether violent videogames have a negative effect on children. Couldanyone doubt that the question of the moraleffects of Islam and Christianity—practices farmore widespread than Grand Theft Auto—is atleast as interesting?

Evolution of Religion

A second question about religion that I addresshere is why it exists in the first place. Religionposes certain difficult and intriguing puzzles foranyone interested in the evolution of the humanmind.

Consider first the problem of religious be-liefs. Nonreligious beliefs that people holdinclude:

� Unsupported things fall to the ground.� The sun rises in the morning.� One plus one equals two.

Such beliefs make Darwinian sense becausethey are true of the world in which we live.This makes it plausible that they could eitherarise directly through natural selection (becauseit is usually adaptive for animals to know true

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things), or they could arise indirectly throughnatural selection (because we have evolved fairlyaccurate mechanisms of perception and learn-ing and can use these mechanisms to learn truethings).

Consider now religious beliefs such as:

� God created the universe.� When people die, they go to heaven or to

hell.� Christ was born from a virgin.

These beliefs illustrate, as H.L. Menckenput it, humanity’s “stupendous capacity for be-lieving the incredible.” Mencken was an atheist,but even a theist would agree that these beliefsreally are incredible in the sense that they don’tarise in any clear way from our usual systems forapprehending the world. We can see dogs andtrees; we cannot (in any literal sense) see God.The propensity to form such beliefs could beinnate, but this raises the question of how sucha propensity could have evolved.

Religious activities pose an even more dif-ficult puzzle. Just as with beliefs, many of thenonreligious activities that people choose todo are related in some sense to the dictatesof natural selection—eating, drinking, fornicat-ing, caring for children, establishing social rela-tionships, and so on. The psychological mech-anisms underlying these behaviors can be seenas adaptations. There are also many activitiesthat don’t have obvious selectionist explana-tions, such as music and art; these can often beunderstood as by-products of adaptations (seeBloom 2010).

But religious activities fall into a third rathermysterious category. It is not merely that theydon’t have obvious survival value; it is thatthey seem maladaptive from a Darwinian stand-point. Religious practices include mutilatingone’s body, sacrificing valuable goods, choos-ing celibacy, and so on. One might have ex-pected any desire to engage in such activ-ities to be weeded out by the unforgivingsieve of natural selection. Why this hasn’t hap-pened is another of the mysteries that anytheory of the evolution of religion has toaddress.

The study of the origin of religion connectsin interesting ways to issues of morality. Oneincreasingly popular theory sees religion as anevolved solution to the problem of bringingtogether communities of people; religious be-lief and practice exist to instill cooperation andgroup feelings, to motivate kindness and com-passion to other members of one’s tribe. Thisreview critically evaluates this proposal.

In the course of this exploration, I discussa range of research programs. As noted above,there isn’t as much research on the topic as onewould hope. Furthermore, the research thatdoes exist is carried out by intellectual com-munities that don’t tend to read one another’swork. There is a tradition in social psychol-ogy, for instance, that focuses on the relation-ship between religion and prejudice, and thereis another tradition that explores the effect ofreligious primes on generosity and altruism—and they don’t tend to cite one another. Theparable of the blind men and the elephantis overused, but here it seems apt. One goalof this article, then, is simply to review andsynthesize research. More ambitious goals areto show that these findings can be integratedin a satisfying way and to make some sub-stantive claims about religion, morality, andevolution.

SENSES OF RELIGION

What do we mean when we talk about religion?We can consider three main senses.

One sense of “religion” corresponds to acertain type of transcendent or mystical expe-rience. This was the topic of William James’s(1902) classic The Varieties of Religious Experi-ence. James was interested in “the feelings, acts,and experiences of individual men in their soli-tude, so far as they apprehend themselves tostand in relation to whatever they may con-sider the divine” (p. 31). The contemporaryscholars who continue this tradition includethose who explore the emotion of awe (e.g.,Keltner 2009) and those who study theneuropsychology of religious visions (e.g.,Persinger 2001).


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A second sense has to do with supernatu-ral beliefs. In 1871, the anthropologist EdwardTylor argued that the “minimum definition ofreligion” is a belief in spiritual beings, in the su-pernatural. Much of the work in the psychologyand cognitive science of religion concerns thequestion of why we have such beliefs—why webelieve in Gods, spirits, and so on (e.g., Bloom2004).

A third conception of religion is as a certainsort of social activity, what one does with otherpeople. As we will see, this is the conception thatmost connects with claims about the evolutionof religion and its relationship to morality.

One can be “religious” in these three dis-tinct ways, then, and each of the three sensesof religion can exist in the absence of the oth-ers. One can experience transcendent experi-ence without any specific beliefs and affiliation;this is what is often meant when people describethemselves as “spiritual.” Even some ardentatheists discuss and seek out such transcendentexperiences, as in meditative practice. Or onemight hold supernatural beliefs without affiliat-ing with a religion or having any transcendentexperiences—these individuals are what DavidHume called “superstitious atheists.” Indeed,most who insist that they have no religious affili-ation still believe that they will survive the deathof their bodies (Putnam & Campbell 2010). Fi-nally, one can belong to a community that is areligion in every sense except that its adherentsdon’t engage in transcendent experience or be-lieve in supernatural beings. Zuckerman (2008)notes that this is the case for many Christiansin Scandinavian countries.

As an exercise, one could continue to mixand match, describing all eight permutations ofthe above three features. I won’t do this here.Note that although these notions of religion areseparable, they do tend to fall together. Thatis, most of those who characterize themselvesas adhering to Christianity, Islam, Judaism,Hinduism, and other religions are religious inthe sense that they have certain experiences andthat they hold certain beliefs and that they en-gage in certain practices.

RELIGION AND MORALITY:POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS

How might religion, characterized in any of theabove ways, affect morality? How can it influ-ence one’s views about right and wrong, theextent of one’s altruism or selfishness, and soon?

One possibility emphasizes the fact that re-ligions make explicit moral claims that theirfollowers accept. Through holy texts and theproclamations of authority figures, religionsmake moral claims about abortion, homosexu-ality, duties to the poor, charity, masturbation,just war, and so on. People believe these claimsbecause, implicitly or explicitly, they trust thesources. They accept them on faith.

This sort of deference is common; manyof our moral and political and scientific be-liefs have this sort of deferential nature, wherewe hold a belief because it is associated withour community or with people that we trust.Upon hearing about a welfare plan proposed bya political party, for instance, people are morelikely to agree with the plan if it has been pro-posed by their own political party—although,interestingly, they are not conscious that this isoccurring; they mistakenly believe that theirjudgment is based on the objective merit of theprogram (Cohen 2003). Most people who claimto believe in natural selection do so not becausethey are persuaded by the data—indeed, mosthave no real understanding of what natural se-lection is—but rather because they trust the sci-entists (see Bloom & Weisberg 2007).

A second way in which religion can havean effect is by emphasizing certain aspectsof morality. As one case of this, Cohen &Rozin (2001) note that Christianity codifiesthe principle that thoughts are to some extentequivalent to actions. This is expressed inChrist’s dictum: “You have heard that it wassaid ‘you shall not commit adultery’; but I say toyou, that everyone who looks at a woman withlust for her has already committed adultery withher in his heart.” Judaism, in contrast, focusesless on intentions and more on actions. Cohenand Rozin find that this difference has an effect

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on the intuitions that individual Christiansand Jews have about specific situations. Forinstance, Christians and Jews have differentmoral evaluations of a person who doesn’tlike his parents but chooses to take good careof them nonetheless. For the Christians, theperson’s attitude matters more than it doesfor the Jews—the Christians judge him morenegatively because of his mental states.

More generally, religions tend to emphasizecertain aspects of morality that are less impor-tant to an atheist. These include what Shwederet al. (1997, p. 138) describe as an “ethics ofdivinity”: a cluster of ethical notions that relyon concepts such as “sacred order, natural or-der, tradition, sanctity, sin, and pollution. . . [anethics that] aims to protect the soul, the spirit,the spiritual aspects of the human agent and‘nature’ from degradation.” There is an espe-cially tight connection between religion and themoralization of purity, particularly in the do-mains of food and sex (see Graham & Haidt2010).

Finally, it might be that religion has a moregeneral effect. Religion might turn the dials ofcompassion. Religious belief and practice mightincrease one’s empathy and caring and love. Itmight also increase one’s prejudice and intoler-ance, particularly toward those who are seen asoutside of the community. Such effects mightbe triggered by the messages that religions con-vey or might somehow emerge from the verynature of religious practice and activity. Muchof the discussion that follows focuses on thisproposal.

MORALITY AND THEEVOLUTIONARY ORIGINOF RELIGION

One popular view among psychologists whowrite about the evolution of religion is thatreligion is an accident. Under this view, reli-gion is a by-product of other evolved systemsor traits, what is sometimes described as a“spandrel” (see Gould & Lewontin 1979). It isnot the case, under this view, that humans arereligious because our more religious ancestors

outlived and outproduced our less religiousancestors. Rather, religion emerges out ofcapacities, traits, and inclinations that haveevolved for other purposes. It is an evolutionaryaccident.

More specifically, the notion is that certainuniversal religious beliefs—such as belief in su-pernatural beings, creationism, miracles, andbody-soul dualism—emerge as by-products ofcertain cognitive systems that have evolved forunderstanding the physical and social world (fordifferent versions of this proposal, see Atran2004; Barrett 2004; Bloom 2004, 2007, 2009;Boyer 2001; Evans 2000, 2001; Guthrie 1993;Kelemen 2004; Pinker 1997; Pyysiainen 2003;see Bloom 2009 for review).

One of the best-known examples of this ap-proach is the theory that humans are highly sen-sitive to cues to animacy and intention; we areconstantly on the lookout for other humans andnonhuman animals, for clear adaptive reasons.This leads us to sometimes assume the exis-tence of entities that don’t really exist and henceprovides the foundation for animism and deism(Guthrie 1993; see also Barrett’s 2004 proposalof a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device). Asanother example, I have argued that the cogni-tive systems that underlie “theory of body” and“theory of mind” are functionally and neuro-logically distinct. As a consequence of this, wethink about bodies and minds as distinct sorts ofthings, which may explain why we are natural-born dualists, why we so naturally believe inimmaterial souls, in spirits, and in ghosts andreincarnation (Bloom 2004).

When it comes to explaining religiousbeliefs, such theories have the virtue of sim-plicity because they posit no special cognitivecapacities beyond what we already have. Theyalso have some empirical support. For instance,if belief in God and other deities is caused by anoverextension of social cognition, then adultswho fall on the autism spectrum disorder, whohave diminished social cognition, should beless prone to believe in a feeling God, and thereis some evidence that this is the case (Bering2002). Women are arguably more sensitive tothe mental states of others (see Baron-Cohen


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2003), which is nicely consistent with the well-known finding that women tend to be morereligious than men. Further, the developmentof religious and supernatural beliefs in childrenseems to track the emergence of more generaltheory-of-mind capacities (e.g., Bloom 2004,Lane et al. 2010).

One problem with this accident view, how-ever, is its narrowness. At best, it explains reli-gious belief. But it says nothing about transcen-dent experience, religious rituals, or the socialnature of religion.

Over the past decade or so, an alterna-tive perspective on religion has emerged thatmight fill some of these gaps. Religion, underthis view, is a constellation of behaviors andthoughts that have evolved to benefit groups,and, in particular, to help solve the problem offree-riders. A community works best if every-one cooperates on certain tasks, such as grouphunting, care of children, and warfare. But indi-vidual members of the community might ben-efit from defecting, from accepting the bene-fits of this cooperative behavior without payingthe cost. Religion is arguably a solution to theproblem of defection. As Haidt (2007) nicelyput it, “Religions, generally speaking, work tosuppress our inner chimp and bring out our in-ner bee” (see also Haidt 2012 for an extendeddiscussion).

This might be one function of rituals (seeAlcorta & Sosis 2005, Atran & Norenzayan2004, Bulbulia 2004, Irons 2004; see Finkelet al. 2010 for review). Consider again the sortsof activities that people do when they are mem-bers of a religion: cutting away part of one’sgenitals (or one’s child’s genitals), spending apotentially productive day doing nothing, re-fusing to eat tasty and nutritious foods, endur-ing agonizing initiation rites, and so on. Thepainful, difficult, and time-consuming aspectsof these rituals seem entirely mysterious untilyou consider that these negative aspects maybe the very point behind their existence. Froma costly signaling perspective, these serve ashurdles that weed out the uncommitted: “Iffulfilling these obligations is more costly fornonbelievers than believers, then cooperation

can emerge and stabilize” (Finkel et al. 2010,p. 290).1

Other religious activities create bonds be-tween members of a group. This might alsohelp with the free-rider problems—to the ex-tent that you feel emotionally close to another,you are less likely to betray him or her. Someritual activities generate what Durkheim (1912)called “collective effervescence.” Dancing andchanting are the best cases of this. Most of usare familiar with the emotional rush of linkingarms and dancing at a Jewish wedding, or be-ing at a rave, or dancing in a pub with drunkenfriends. Laboratory studies find this synchronyhas prosocial effects, leading people to sacri-fice more money to others in economic games(Wiltermuth & Heath 2009). Indeed, even sim-ple mimicry can increase empathy (Chartrand& Bargh 1999). The reason why this works isunclear; one possibility is that it is due to a glitchin the system. If I dance with others, and theymove with me, their bodies moving as I intendmy own body to move, it confuses me into ex-panding the boundaries of my self to includethem (Bloom 2010). Regardless of its cause, re-ligions might exploit this fact about our mindsin order to increase ingroup solidarity.

To show that this evolutionary theory is cor-rect, however, it’s not enough to demonstratethat such activities bring people together as acohesive and cooperative group. One also hasto present evidence that this is why these activi-ties have evolved in the first place; it’s what theyare for. Such evidence is hard to find, but not im-possible. One prediction that the evolutionaryaccount does make, for instance, is that the ex-tent to which religious rituals are practiced by a

1One different interpretation of these rituals builds on theclassic cognitive dissonance finding that if you sacrifice tobelong to a group, you’ll be more committed to that group(e.g., Festinger 1957). Someone who gives up time to workfor a political party, say, will be more committed to the partythan someone who gets a salary; a patient who pays for ther-apy will value it more than someone who gets it for free. Thisis why fraternities and other communities have painful andhumiliating hazing rituals. From this perspective, participa-tion in unpleasant religious rituals can be seen as a form ofhazing, evolved to increase fidelity to a group.

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group should relate to the success of that group.Consistent with this, religious groups that havemany costly rituals tend to outlast those thathave fewer (Sosis & Bressler 2003).

I have been framing this proposal so far interms of what’s good for the group, as this isthe approach that many of its proponents take.A propensity for religious ritual is in our genes,then, not because of the advantages it gives toindividuals, but because of the advantages thatit gives to the groups that the individuals be-long to (e.g., Wilson 2002, 2007). Such an ap-peal to group selection is controversial, to saythe least (Williams 1966; see Sober & Wilson2011 for discussion). And many would arguethat it’s unnecessary here and that one can ex-plain the evolution of social traits that suppressfree-riders using a more standard Darwinianapproach (e.g., Cosmides 1989). This is an in-teresting debate, though unfortunately one thatfalls outside the scope of this review.

A quite different approach is sometimesknown as “cultural group selection,” (Boyd& Richerson 2002, Norenzayan & Shariff2008). Religion, including religious rituals,might emerge through cultural evolution:Societies that have religion would outlastthose that do not. This process can occurwithout genetic change, and hence, unlikethe biological approach, this cultural theorydoes not predict that our psychologies wouldbe naturally oriented to the creation andpractice of religion. Note, however, thatbiological evolution and cultural evolution arecompatible. It might be, for instance, that someaspects of religion initially evolved throughnatural selection and then cultural evolutionkicked in to enhance and transform them (seeNorenzayan & Gervais 2012 for discussion).

In both its biological and cultural forms, thisfree-rider theory focuses on rituals and on com-munity. What about supernatural beliefs? It’spossible that these too can be seen as existing fora social function. One specific proposal is thata belief in an omniscient supernatural entitymight make people nicer to those with whomthey are in constant contact (Bering 2006, 2011;Norenzayan & Shariff 2008). After all, we cheat

less and give more when we think someone elseis watching. And so belief in an omniscient Godmight be a clever mechanism—emerging in bi-ological evolution or cultural evolution—thatexploits this fact about human nature. Similarly,it is not hard to see how belief in heaven and hellcan play a similar role ( Johnson 2005, John-son & Bering 2006). Just like rituals then, reli-gious beliefs might evolve to serve a prosocialfunction.

MORALITY WITHOUTRELIGION?

How can we tell if religion has an effect onmorality?

It is difficult. The standard way to look at theeffect of X on human behavior (where X mightbe exposure to violent video games, testos-terone, spanking, psychoanalysis. . . or religion)is to compare people who have been exposedto X to those who haven’t. This can be donethrough correlational studies (do children whohave been spanked turn out differently fromthose who haven’t?) or, better, through con-trolled experiments (what happens if you givea randomly selected subset of patients a certainform of therapy?).

But what if X is everywhere? What if ev-eryone is exposed to X? The dilemma we faceis that religion seems to be inescapable. As deWaal (2010) puts it, “It is impossible to knowwhat morality would look like without religion.It would require a visit to a human culture thatis not now and never was religious.” There areof course relatively atheistic communities andindividuals, but many of the customs and moralsthat they adhere to have emerged long beforethey became atheistic. One might argue thenthat the kindness (or cruelty) of such individ-uals and societies exists only because they ridethe coattails of religion.

Still, we do have some access to populationswithout religion. Indeed, de Waal himself, inthe same article, goes on at length about altru-ism, empathy, and even rudimentary notions offairness and justice in chimpanzees, bonobos,and monkeys (see also de Waal 1996, 2010).


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Consider also the demonstrations of moral, orat least proto-moral, behavior in babies andtoddlers, including empathetic responses to thepain of others (e.g., Hoffman 2000), sponta-neous altruistic behavior (e.g., Warneken &Tomasello 2006), and some capacity to judgeindividuals on the basis of their behavior to oth-ers (e.g., Hamlin et al. 2007).

We can be confident, then, that at least somegood behavior exists prior to religion. This re-futes the strong claim that morality requires re-ligion. Then again, an advocate of the impor-tance of religion to morality will respond bypointing out that there are all sorts of moralcapacities that chimps and babies don’t have,and it is at least possible that the reason theyaren’t fully moral beings is that they don’t havereligion.

What about studies with adult humans?Since researchers who study this populationaren’t able to contrast X from non-X, they dothe next best thing and compare more X withless X. And so the studies that explore the effectof religion on our moral lives do so by com-paring individuals within cultures that used tobe religious but now are not entirely so (suchas Danes) versus cultures that are more heartilyreligious (such as Americans). Within a culturethey compare religious people with less reli-gious people; in priming studies they explorethe effects of getting people to think about re-ligious notions more than they would normallydo. This is the research that is described below.

RELIGION AND GOODNESS,WITHIN AND ACROSSCOUNTRIES

One specific question concerns the effect of re-ligion on a person’s kindness to strangers. Arethe religious more generous and more likely tovolunteer to help others?

In his influential book Who Really Cares?,Brooks (2006) draws upon existing datasets andconcludes that, controlling for education, age,gender, income, and politics, religious peoplecare more. They donate more money to char-ities, including nonreligious charities; they are

more likely to volunteer, to donate blood, andto give to the homeless. And they are happier.In a 2004 study, the secular are twice as likelyto say that they feel like failures, whereas thereligious are twice as likely to say that they arevery happy with their lives.

These conclusions were recently supple-mented by a large set of analyses reported byPutnam & Campbell (2010). They find that giv-ing to religious charities is correlated with giv-ing to nonreligious charities and that frequentchurchgoers are particularly likely to give to theneedy, the elderly, and the young. And again,this holds even when one rules out other fac-tors, such that the American religious are morelikely than average to be older, female, South-ern, and African American. These data suggestthat there is a moral boost to being religiousand that it’s not restricted to one’s ingroup, butrather it applies more generally.2

In a critical discussion of Brooks (2006),Norenzayan & Shariff (2008) note that thesedata are based on self-report. This raises theconcern that religion might not lead to an actualincrease in altruism, but rather to an increase inhow much people believe they are altruistic orhow prone they are to say that they are altruis-tic. This point applies to Putnam & Campbell(2010) as well. In support of their concern,Norenzayan & Shariff (2008) note that the re-search of Batson and his colleagues (e.g., Batsonet al. 1989, 1993) finds that although religiouspeople report being more altruistic, they are nonicer in laboratory conditions.

This is a serious concern. On the other hand,there are some objective data for the connection

2As an aside, the major conclusion of Brooks (2006) wasn’tabout religion; it was about political orientation. His answerto the question “Who really cares?” was: political conserva-tives (at the top of the cover of the paperback version is, TheSurprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism). But Put-nam & Campbell (2010) point out that in their own datasets,and in the datasets that Brooks himself used, the moral ad-vantage of political conservatives exists only because of thecorrelation with religiosity: “Holding religiosity constant,ideology has little significant effect on total giving or totalvolunteering but liberals assuredly give and volunteer morefor nonreligious causes than conservatives do” (p. 458; empha-sis added).

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between religion and altruism: Data from theInternal Revenue Service (IRS) indicate that themore religious states give more to charity thando the less religious states (Brooks 2006). Sincethe IRS requires receipts for charitable giving,their data suggest that there is a real difference.

Also, there is real-world evidence that reli-gion is a force for charitable giving. It is notunusual for hospitals and other charitable or-ganizations to be religiously based, with theSalvation Army being a prominent example.And some degree of charity is proscribed in allthe major religious faiths, as in the parables ofChrist, the Jewish notion of tzedaka, and theIslamic pillar of Zakat.

Other analyses provide a different perspec-tive, however. Paul (2005) presents an analy-sis of 18 democracies and finds that the moreatheist societies are better off with regard toseveral objective measures of societal health,such as murder and suicide rates, extent of sex-ually transmitted diseases, abortion, and teenpregnancy. This conclusion has been criticized;among other concerns, it is based on a highlyselective sample of countries ( Jensen 2006).Still, it does show that religion isn’t essentialfor a moral community. Along the same lines,Zuckerman (2008) provides an extensive casestudy of the Danes and the Swedes. These areamong the least religious of contemporary hu-mans. They tend not to go to church or prayin the privacy of their own homes; they tendnot to believe in God or heaven or hell. But, byany reasonable standard, they are nice to oneanother. Even without belief in a God loomingover them, they murder and rape one anothersignificantly less frequently than the much morereligious Americans do.

Although it is possible that these correla-tions exist because religion has a negative ef-fect on a society, it is more plausible, as Paul(2005) suggests, that some drop in religiousbelief is caused by the prosperity and socialhealth of a community—perhaps rich and stableWestern democracies are likely to abandon orreject religious ideals. Paul (2010, p. 642) takesthis further: “Prosperous modernity is provingto be the nemesis of religion.”

RELIGION AND GOODNESS,LABORATORY MANIPULATIONS

We can now move from the rather messy cor-relational data and turn to laboratory research.There is a long tradition of experimental stud-ies that explore the role of religion on goodactions. Many of these studies work by elicitingreligious thoughts and exploring their effects.

The best-known study is famous for itscleverness—and for its null effect. Darley &Batson (1973) tested male seminary students,telling them that they had to make a short pre-sentation, either about the jobs available forseminary students or about the parable of theGood Samaritan, in which Jesus tells about atraveler lying unconscious on the road, attackedby thieves, and the good man who stops to helphim. The students were then told to go to an-other location, and some were told to hurry,that they were already late. On the way, allgroups of students passed someone slumped ina doorway, a confederate playing a part of thevictim.

The main finding was that students whowere told to hurry were more likely to passthe victim by—that aspect of the situation in-fluenced their behavior. But whether or notthey were told the story of the Good Samar-itan (which, of course, was directly relevant tothe situation they were in) had no effect. Theauthors note that, “on several occasions, a sem-inary student going to give his talk on the para-ble of the Good Samaritan literally stepped overthe victim as he hurried on his way!” (p. 107).

In a reanalysis, however, Greenwald (1975)noted that the sample size was small, and he re-analyzed the data using different methods. Al-though being told to hurry clearly did have aneffect, Greenwald concluded that it was prema-ture to dismiss the possibility that reading theparable actually did increase the odds of help-ing. Darley and Batson might well have beenthe first psychologists to successfully use reli-gion to prime moral behavior.

Several have done so since then. Mazaret al. (2008) asked subjects to either writedown ten books they read in high school or


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write down the Ten Commandments. Whenlater put in a situation where they could cheat,those in the Ten Commandments conditionwere less likely to do so. Bering et al. (2005)confronted children and adults with supposedsupernatural beings. When adults are told thatthere is a ghost in the laboratory, they areless likely to cheat on a computer task. Andwhen children, ages 5–6 and 8–9, are told thatthey are in the presence of an invisible agent(“Princess Alice”), they are slower to cheatthan are those not given this information.Indeed, when the skeptical children—who didnot believe in Princess Alice—were removedfrom the analysis, the effect of the presenceof this invisible figure was the same as thepresence of an actual adult (Piazza et al. 2011).

Using a scrambled sentence task, Shariff& Norenzayan (2007) found that getting sub-jects to unscramble sentences that includedreligious words—spirit, divine, God, sacred,and prophet—made them more generous ina “dictator game” in which they were free togive an anonymous stranger as much moneyas they wanted. Randolph-Seng & Nielsen(2007) found that subliminal priming of re-ligious words—flashing them on a screen for80 milliseconds—made subjects less likely tocheat on a subsequent task. Pichon et al. (2007)found that when primed with religious words,people were later more interested in helping todistribute charity-related information.

Why do these primes cause these effects?One possibility is that they make people thinkabout an invisible and omnipresent God. Sub-jects believe, perhaps unconsciously, that theyare being watched, which leads to better behav-ior. This meshes well with findings that evensubtle cues to the presence of others—such asphotographs of eyes or even dot patterns thatresemble eyes—affect moral behavior. Peopleare more generous, for instance, in a computertask when they are exposed to eye spots onthe screen (Haley & Fessler 2005). And theyare less likely to take coffee without paying(Bateson et al. 2006) or to litter (Ernest-Joneset al. 2010) when in the presence of posters witheyes on them.

There is reason to doubt, however, that thefelt presence of a supernatural watcher is solelyresponsible for the priming effects. Other stud-ies find that one can get the same effect withsecular moral primes. Shariff & Norenzayan(2007) replicated their finding in a second studywhen subjects scrambled sentences with theprimes: civic, jury, court, police, and contract.Mazar et al. (2008) found that getting subjectsto sign a brief statement acknowledging theircommitment to the local university honor code(even if their university didn’t in fact have anhonor code) caused a similar drop in cheating.

RELIGION, INGROUPS,AND OUTGROUPS

The work so far suggests that religion causesa general boost in moral behaviors, such as al-truism and reluctance to cheat. But the evolu-tionary theories described above make a pre-diction about the limits of religiously triggeredniceness. If religion is an adaptation that bindsgroups together, it shouldn’t lead to indiscrim-inate kindness. Rather, it should drive one tofavor the ingroup.

One doesn’t have to be steeped in evolution-ary theory to make this prediction. Critics ofreligion have long emphasized its power to di-vide people, to motivate hatred toward hereticsand apostates, and to fuel violence and genocideand war. After all, religious moral teachings areoften explicitly parochial. As Graham & Haidt(2010) summarize:

Many of the religious commandments to treatothers compassionately and fairly are limitedto the treatment of other individuals withinthe religious community; for instance, theHebrew Bible’s “love your neighbor as your-self ” (Leviticus 19:18) was intended to applyonly to other Israelites. . . The Qur’an com-mands, “Do not take the Jews and Christiansas allies: they are allies only to each other. Any-one who takes them as an ally becomes one ofthem—God does not guide such wrongdoers”(5:51; see also 29:68–69).

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One might ask how religiosity affects one’sattitudes toward others who don’t belong to thesame faith. Does being very Catholic make onemore prone to despise Jews, or vice versa? Butthe focus of most research in social psychol-ogy concerns the effects of religiosity on racialprejudice (see also Batson & Stocks 2005 forreview), and it is this line of work that I reviewhere.

This topic was first explored in detail inGordon Allport’s classic book, The Nature ofPrejudice (Allport 1954). In his original studiesin the 1940s and 1950s, people’s responses tothe question “To what degree has religion beenan influence in your upbringing?” correlatedwith prejudicial attitudes toward other groups(see also Allport & Kramer 1946). Subsequentresearch found that this was true as well in the1970s: Relative to those whites who claimed tohave no religious affiliation, white Protestantswere more likely to disapprove of interracialmarriage, and white Protestants and Catholicswere more likely to agree that “most blackshave less in-born ability to learn” (Putnam &Campbell 2010). And a recent meta-analysis(Hall et al. 2010) looked at 55 studies between1964 and 2008 and found that a small but sta-tistically significant relationship exists betweencertain forms of religiosity and racial prejudice.

Some caveats are needed, however. In theHall et al. meta-analysis, not all form of reli-giosity had this effect on prejudice: It was foundfor “extrinsic religiosity,” defined as “an instru-mental approach to religion that is motivated byexternal factors such as desires for social status,security, and acceptance from others” (Allport& Ross 1967, p. 127) and for “religious fun-damentalism,” defined as “an unquestioning,unwavering certainty in basic religious truths”(Altemeyer & Hunsberger 1992, p. 127). Butgreater “intrinsic religiosity”—being “commit-ted to religion as an end in itself ” (p. 128)—was negatively associated with prejudice, as was“Quest,” a notion introduced by Batson (1976,p. 128), which corresponds to a “readiness toface existential questions, acknowledge reli-gious doubts, and accept change” (see Sedikides& Gebauer 2010 for review and discussion).

Moreover, in most analyses, the relationshipbetween religion and prejudice has declinedsince 1964.

One wonders also about the extent that thesestudies are finding negative effects of religionper se as opposed to other factors that are cor-related with religiosity. Unlike the recent stud-ies reported by Brooks (2006) and Putnam &Campbell (2010) discussed above, there is rarelyany attempt in these earlier studies to factorout considerations such as age, race, politicalorientation, and so on. It might well be, for in-stance, that those with no religious affiliationhave more cosmopolitan attitudes and experi-ences than those who are religious, and it is thisthat leads them to be less prejudiced, not theirlack of religiosity per se. More generally, thereis a clear correlation between religiosity (andparticularly religious fundamentalism) and po-litical conservatism and authoritarian attitudes,both of which correlate with negative attitudestoward racial minorities (see Jost et al. 2008,Napier & Jost 2008).

Still, there is priming data suggesting thatreligion in itself can evoke prejudice. In whatis, to my knowledge, the only study of this sort,Johnson et al. (2010) found that flashing reli-gious words (such as church, gospel, prayer) ona screen for 35 milliseconds increases prejudiceby whites toward African Americans on a rangeof overt and implicit measures.

Also, a provocative series of studies byGinges et al. (2009) found strong correlationsbetween religiosity and support for suicidebombings. Interestingly, though, only certainmeasures of religiosity had an effect. Gingeset al. found that for Palestinian Muslim adults,frequency of mosque attendance predictedsupport for suicide attacks but frequency ofprayer did not. (They also found that studentswho attended mosque more than once a daywere over three times more likely than thosewho didn’t to believe that Islam requiressuicide attacks.) Ginges et al. also tested IsraeliJews living in the West Bank and Gaza, askingabout their support for the 1994 suicide attackby Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslimsin the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank.


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When primed with thoughts about synagogueattendance, they were more likely to describethe act as “heroic” than when primed withthoughts about prayer.

Finally, Ginges et al. (2009) used survey datafrom Indonesian Muslims, Mexican Catholics,British Protestants, Russian Orthodox inRussia, Israeli Jews, and Indian Hindus toexplore the relationship between prayer fre-quency and frequency of religious attendanceon negative feelings toward other groups, asmeasured by their responses to the questions“I would be willing to die for my God/beliefs”and “I blame people of other religions for muchof the trouble in this world.” Once again, reli-gious attendance was a positive predictor whileregular prayer was not.

EXPLAINING THE COMPLEXEFFECTS OF RELIGION

The available research tells us two things aboutthe moral effects of religion.

First, religion makes people nicer. There isevidence from studies of charitable giving thatreligious people within the United States de-vote more time and resources to helping oth-ers than the nonreligious. Such studies rely onself-report, but they are backed by laboratorydemonstrations that religious primes increasemoral behaviors such as generosity to strangersand reduce immoral behaviors such as cheating.All of this makes sense in light of the universal-ist and enlightened moral notions encoded in allof the major religions (Waldron 2010, Wright2009).

Second, religion doesn’t make people nicer.In laboratory studies, secular primes workjust as well to improve behavior as religiousprimes. Countries filled with the devout, suchas the United States, are in many objectiveregards morally worse than more atheisticcountries, such as Sweden. There is evidencethat certain sorts of religiosity are associatedwith increased prejudice toward others. Andattendance in religious ceremonies is correlatedwith an endorsement of suicide bombings. Allof this makes sense in light of the parochial

nature of religious beliefs and practices andthe explicit religious ideologies that privilegethemselves over others (Hall et al. 2010, Harris2004).

How can we explain these seemingly contra-dictory effects?

A close look at the data suggests a reason-ably coherent account, largely along the linesproposed by Graham & Haidt (2010). Religionexerts many of its effects, good and bad,through its force as a social glue: To belong toa religion is to belong to a social group whosemembers are close to one another, who sharerituals and meet regularly, and hence are morelikely to be generous toward each other andless likely to cheat one another—and, undersome circumstances, are more likely to be nastytoward others.

From this perspective, it is the communityassociated with religion that mainly drives itseffects, not the belief system. As support forthis, Putnam & Campbell (2010) collected ex-tensive data on theological views and practices,asking people about their beliefs in life afterdeath, heaven, and hell; in the importance ofreligion, evolution, and special creation; and inthe importance of God to morality. It turns outthat none of these beliefs correlate with behav-iors having to do with volunteering and chari-table giving. Community is everything: “Oncewe know how observant a person is in termsof church attendance, nothing that we can dis-cover about the content of her religious faithadds anything to our understanding or predic-tion of her good neighborliness” (Putnam &Campbell 2010, p. 467). They later add, “Infact, the statistics suggest that even an atheistwho happened to become involved in the so-cial life of the congregation (perhaps througha spouse) is much more likely to volunteer ina soup kitchen than the most fervent believerwho prays alone. It is religious belongingnessthat matters for neighborliness, not religiousbelieving” (p. 473).

The same point holds for the data reviewedby Brooks (2006) that find that the religiousare happier and more generous than the secu-lar. These surveys do not define “religious” and

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“secular” in terms of belief. They define it interms of religious attendance.

This emphasis of community can provide adifferent perspective on why American atheistsare less generous. It’s not that they have nosense of right and wrong or are cold-bloodedself-maximizers. It is that they have been leftout of the dominant modes of American to-getherness. And, as P.Z. Myers (2007) puts it,“[S]cattered individuals who are excluded fromcommunities do not receive the benefits of com-munity, nor do they feel willing to contributeto the communities that exclude them.”

If this view is correct, then the specifi-cally religious aspects of religion—supernaturalbeliefs and sacred texts and transcendentexperiences—might play little role in its moralforce. Indeed, Putnam and his colleagues(Putnam 2000, Putnam & Campbell 2010) usedata from survey studies to argue that any formof voluntary association with other people is in-tegral to a fulfilled and productive existence.This makes us “smarter, healthier, safer, richer,and better able to govern a just and stabledemocracy” (Putnam 2000, p. 290). Putnam ar-gues, for instance, that membership in a bowl-ing league—secular, but social—is just as muchof a boost to charitable giving as is affiliationwith a religious community.

The importance of sociality—and the rela-tive unimportance of religious belief—is alsoreflected in the data from the Scandinaviancountries. These data were framed above asshowing that religion isn’t needed for a societyto be civil, nonviolent, and, by most standards,morally good. But we can now think about itin a more nuanced way as having to do withthe type of religion that is relevant. Zuckerman(2008) points out that most Danes and Swedeshave their babies baptized, give some of theirincome to the church, and feel attached to theirreligious community—they are Christian, theyjust don’t believe in God. (He suggests thatScandinavian Christians are a lot like AmericanJews, who are also relatively secularized inbelief and practice, have strong communalfeelings, and tend to be well behaved.) TheScandinavians might be atheists, then, but they

are also religious—in precisely the sense thatmatters for morality.

Community can also explain the uglier sideof religion. Recall the Ginges et al. (2009)findings discussed above. Religious devotion,as measured by frequency of prayer, had noeffect on support for suicide bombing, butreligious participation did. Contrary to theclaims of Dawkins (2006), Harris (2004), andothers, Ginges et al. (2009) conclude, “therelationship between religion and supportfor suicide attacks is real, but is orthogonalto devotion to particular religious belief ”(p. 230). It is commitment to the social groupthat matters, as reflected by participation ingroup activities and religious rituals. Thiscommitment might also motivate milder formsof denigration of outgroups, as reflected in theattitudes toward American atheists.

This last point raises a question: If reli-gion is such an insular force, why isn’t therea greater effect of religion on prejudice in thestudies of Americans? As noted above, such aneffect exists, but it is small, restricted to cer-tain sorts of religious orientations, and perhapsa by-product of the fact that religiosity is corre-lated with other traits, such as certain politicalattitudes.

One explanation has to do with the sortof prejudice that these studies explore. Theresearch reviewed above was done with whiteChristians, exploring their attributes andbehaviors toward blacks. Even if religionnaturally reduces one’s compassion towardother groups, then it might not have a negativeeffect in this case because these blacks are seenas in fact belonging to their group—they arealso, for the most part, Christian.3 Religion canestablish boundaries then, but it can also dis-solve them. As Allport (1954, p. 444) famouslyput it, “The role of religion is paradoxical. Itmakes prejudice and it unmakes prejudice.”

3This predicts that one would find more antiblack prejudicein the United States by Jews and Hindus, because these in-dividuals don’t tend to share the same religion as Americanblacks.


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Much of this is consistent with the evolu-tionary theory reviewed above, where religionis a solution to the problem of free-riders, amechanism to bring people together. To put itdifferently, if it turned out that religion has nopositive ingroup moral effects—or no negativeoutgroup effects—this evolutionary accountwould be effectively refuted. The finding thatsocial aspects of religion are so linked to theirmoral effects supports the hypothesis that thisis their evolved function, though of course itdoes not prove it.

What about the claim that supernaturalbeliefs—belief in gods, afterlife, spirits, mira-cles, and so on—have also evolved to motivatemoral behavior? This hypothesis fares lesswell. The increased generosity that one findswhen people are exposed to religious primesis sometimes attributed to the notion of asupernatural watcher—the primes make onethink of the presence of God, one’s behavioris no longer anonymous, and so people actnicer. But the problem with this account is thatsecular moral primes—relating to the legalsystem, say, or to honor codes—have the sameeffect as religious primes. It doesn’t seem, then,that a belief in a supernatural being plays anydistinctive role here.

Note also that the idea of omniscient moralGod is a relatively recent invention—the godsof hunter-gatherers were far less impressive(Wright 2009). Moreover, many current hu-mans do not believe in an omnipotent God;they instead hold animistic or polytheistic be-liefs. For these reasons, a propensity to believein a moralizing God is unlikely to be the prod-uct of natural selection.

DEBATING THE MORALRELEVANCE OF BELIEFS

The most controversial claim made aboveis that religious beliefs play little substan-tive role in religion’s moral effects. I want toconclude by considering, and responding to,counter-arguments.

The importance of religious beliefs mightseem obvious to some. It seems perverse to

deny, after all, that some religious beliefs moti-vate how people think and act. Consider suicideattacks. Ginges et al. (2009) found that levelsof devotion to religious belief are unrelated tosupport for suicide attacks, but as Liddle et al.(2010) point out in response, this doesn’t en-tail that religious belief itself is irrelevant. Itis likely, after all, that someone who believesthat God wants them to kill infidels is goingto be a lot more sympathetic toward killinginfidels than someone who doesn’t believe inGod. Dawkins (2006, p. 348) might be rightthen when he concludes: “Suicide bombers dowhat they do because they really believe whatthey were taught in their religious schools: thatduty to God exceeds all other priorities, andthat martyrdom in his service will be rewardedin the gardens of Paradise.”

Consider as an analogy that one mightengage in a demonstration or counter-demonstration at an abortion clinic for all sortsof reasons. But surely one relevant considera-tion is what one thinks about abortion. It mightwell be that the intensity of one’s abortion-related beliefs doesn’t correlate well with thelikelihood that a demonstrator will show up orturn violent, in the same way that the inten-sity of religious devotion doesn’t correlate withsupport for suicide bombings. But it would bea mistake to conclude from this that the beliefitself is irrelevant.

Some would take this further and argue thatthe moral effects of religious beliefs are par-ticularly potent, and pernicious, because theyare unmoored from the everyday world. Re-ligion, after all, traffics in notions such as lifeafter death, the desires of invisible deities,and the demands of thousand-year-old texts.The argument of Timothy Dwight, the Pres-ident of Yale from 1795 to 1817, against themorality of the smallpox vaccine (“If Godhad decreed from all eternity that a certainperson should die of smallpox, it would bea frightful sin to avoid and annul that de-cree by the trick of vaccination”) seems like aspecifically religious argument (see Hitchens2007). As the physicist Steven Weinberg(1999) put it, “With or without religion, you

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would have good people doing good things andevil people doing evil things. But for good peo-ple to do evil things, that takes religion.”

The defense of the relevance of religious be-lief has so far been framed in terms of its neg-ative effects. But it is also defended by schol-ars who think that religious belief has hada uniquely positive effect on our lives. Legalscholar Jeremy Waldron (2010, p. 10) providesan articulate defense of this view:

Challenging the limited altruism of comfort-able community has been one of the greatachievements of the Western religions. I knowthe Jewish and Christian traditions best, andwhat I have in mind are the prescriptions ofthe Torah, the uncompromising preaching ofthe Prophets and the poetry of the Psalmistaimed specifically to discomfit those whoseprosperity is founded on grinding the facesof the poor, on neglecting the stranger, andon driving away the outcast. I have in mindtoo the teaching and example of Jesus Christin associating with those who were marginaland despised, and in making one’s willingnessto feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take inthe stranger, and visit those who are in prisona condition of one’s recognition of Him. Andit’s not just scripture: it is the whole edificeof (say) Catholic natural law reasoning aboutneed, and church doctrine on the perils ofcomplacent and exclusive community.

Waldron concedes that religious convictionis no guarantee of a universalist mentality andcan fuel hatred and division. But he suggeststhat, for most people, religion is the only routeavailable for the sort of broad-spectrum moral-ity that many would aspire to, one that re-jects traditional and seemingly natural socialand economic boundaries. The notion that re-ligion can ground a cosmopolitan worldview isdefended by Appiah (2006) as well, who notesthat Christianity in particular has had a uni-versalist ethos. He quotes Saint Paul: “Thereis neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bondnor free, there is neither male nor female, for yeall one in Christ Jesus.” One might sympathize

with physicist Freeman Dyson’s (2006) addi-tion to the Weinberg quote above, “And for badpeople to do good things—that takes religion.”

It turns out then that scholars who disagreeradically about the valence of the moral effectsof religion would nonetheless agree that reli-gion has its effects, at least in part, through thesubstantive claims that it makes about what isright and what is wrong. If the relevance ofreligious belief doesn’t show up in the stud-ies and surveys of empirical researchers, it isbecause the researchers are asking the wrongquestions—for instance, by confusing intensityof belief with the presence of belief.

Alternatively, though, we might be overes-timating the power of belief. Nobody coulddoubt that some actions—good and bad—aremotivated by specific religious beliefs. But ourintuitions about specific cases cannot be trustedhere. Indeed, one of psychology’s contributionsto the theory of human nature, starting withFreud and continuing through contemporarysocial psychology, is that we are often wrongabout the reasons for our own actions—andwe tend to err in the direction of assumingthat we do things because of rational justifica-tions (see Haidt 2001). To return to an exam-ple given previously, people might believe thatthey prefer a welfare plan based on its objec-tive merits and be unaware of how much theyare influenced by their knowledge that it is pro-posed by the political party that they belong to(Cohen 2003). Similarly, people might sin-cerely believe that their disapproval toward ho-mosexuals is rooted in the teachings of Biblicaltexts. But they might just be mistaken—theymight have some animus toward homosexualsfor other reasons and then justify this animusby reference to religious faith.

More generally, Wright (2009) argues thatalthough people frequently try to explain theiractions through appeals to the Bible or theKoran or other religious texts, the actual causalforce is more situational. If individuals are in azero-sum relationship, they find scriptural mo-tivation for hatred and war; when their fatesare intertwined in a positive way, they findtolerance and love. For Wright, it is not that


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people get their moral views from religious textsand authorities; rather, their moral views aredetermined by the “the facts on the ground”;people shop around for justifications after thefact.

This is consistent with the data reviewedin this article. In the lab and in the world,

moral actions such as suicide bombings, racialprejudice, honest behavior, and generosity tostrangers are related to religion—but not to re-ligious belief. Although it is often claimed thatthe moral ideas encoded in the world’s religionshave an important effect on our moral lives,there is little evidence for this popular view.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is unaware of any affiliation, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived asaffecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Konika Banerjee, Susan Fiske, Jonathan Haidt, Ara Norenzayan, Mark Sheskin, andChristina Starmans for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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PS63-FrontMatter ARI 10 November 2011 9:52

Annual Review ofPsychology

Volume 63, 2012 Contents

Prefatory

Working Memory: Theories, Models, and ControversiesAlan Baddeley � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Developmental Psychobiology

Learning to See WordsBrian A. Wandell, Andreas M. Rauschecker, and Jason D. Yeatman � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �31

Memory

Remembering in Conversations: The Social Sharingand Reshaping of MemoriesWilliam Hirst and Gerald Echterhoff � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �55

Judgment and Decision Making

Experimental PhilosophyJoshua Knobe, Wesley Buckwalter, Shaun Nichols, Philip Robbins,

Hagop Sarkissian, and Tamler Sommers � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �81

Brain Imaging/Cognitive Neuroscience

Distributed Representations in Memory: Insights from FunctionalBrain ImagingJesse Rissman and Anthony D. Wagner � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 101

Neuroscience of Learning

Fear Extinction as a Model for Translational Neuroscience:Ten Years of ProgressMohammed R. Milad and Gregory J. Quirk � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 129

Comparative Psychology

The Evolutionary Origins of FriendshipRobert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 153

Emotional, Social, and Personality Development

Religion, Morality, EvolutionPaul Bloom � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 179

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Adulthood and Aging

Consequences of Age-Related Cognitive DeclinesTimothy Salthouse � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 201

Development in Societal Context

Child Development in the Context of Disaster, War, and Terrorism:Pathways of Risk and ResilienceAnn S. Masten and Angela J. Narayan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 227

Social Development, Social Personality, Social Motivation, Social Emotion

Social Functionality of Human EmotionPaula M. Niedenthal and Markus Brauer � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 259

Social Neuroscience

Mechanisms of Social CognitionChris D. Frith and Uta Frith � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 287

Personality Processes

Personality Processes: Mechanisms by Which Personality Traits“Get Outside the Skin”Sarah E. Hampson � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 315

Work Attitudes

Job AttitudesTimothy A. Judge and John D. Kammeyer-Mueller � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 341

The Individual Experience of UnemploymentConnie R. Wanberg � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 369

Job/Work Analysis

The Rise and Fall of Job Analysis and the Future of Work AnalysisJuan I. Sanchez and Edward L. Levine � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 397

Education of Special Populations

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and Reading Fluency:Implications for Understanding and Treatment of Reading DisabilitiesElizabeth S. Norton and Maryanne Wolf � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 427

Human Abilities

IntelligenceIan J. Deary � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 453

Research Methodology

Decoding Patterns of Human Brain ActivityFrank Tong and Michael S. Pratte � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 483

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Human Intracranial Recordings and Cognitive NeuroscienceRoy Mukamel and Itzhak Fried � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 511

Sources of Method Bias in Social Science Researchand Recommendations on How to Control ItPhilip M. Podsakoff, Scott B. MacKenzie, and Nathan P. Podsakoff � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 539

Neuroscience Methods

Neuroethics: The Ethical, Legal, and Societal Impact of NeuroscienceMartha J. Farah � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 571

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 53–63 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 593

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 53–63 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 598

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Psychology articles may be found athttp://psych.AnnualReviews.org/errata.shtml

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