Abstract
To what extent do supernatural beliefs, group affiliation, and social interaction produce values and behaviors that benefit others, i.e., <em>prosociality</em>? Addressing this question involves multiple variables interacting within complex social networks that shape and constrain the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. We examine the relationships among some of these factors utilizing data from the World Values Survey to inform the construction of an Agent-Based Model. The latter was able to identify the conditions under which – and the mechanisms by which – the prosociality of simulated agents was increased or decreased within an “artificial society” designed to reflect real world parameters. The combined results indicated that prosociality was more related to agents’ group affiliation and social networks than to their worldview beliefs. It also showed that prosociality changed as a function of agents’ worldviews, group affiliation, and social network properties. Individuals with supernatural worldviews had higher levels of active prosociality, but this was primarily directed toward ingroup members. Naturalistic believers and the unaffiliated, on the other hand, tended to have higher levels of trust and tolerance. We describe the potential usefulness of such modeling techniques for addressing complex problems in the study of secularity and nonreligion.
Highlights
Determining the extent to which religion plays a role in the formation and maintenance of group behaviors within large-scale social systems is a complex problem and has generated a great deal of interest
In what follows we review each question in detail first with the World Values Survey (WVS) data, followed by a presentation of the Agent-Based Model (ABM) results and an explanation of the modeling dynamic that produced those results
Can the use of modeling and simulation in conjunction with real-world data lend new perspectives to the types of complex problems involved in the study ofreligion and prosociality? The interaction of numerous variables in dynamic, multi-causal, recursive relationships in these phenomena has made research in this field difficult
Summary
Determining the extent to which religion plays a role in the formation and maintenance of group behaviors within large-scale social systems is a complex problem and has generated a great deal of interest. The “Big Gods” theory conceptualizes religion as a culturally-evolved set of beliefs and practices that feature moralizing, supernatural agents that monitor prosocial behavior and enforce social cohesion (Atkinson & Bourrat 2011; Johnson 2005; Norenzayan 2016; Purzycki et al 2016). Such theories suggest a specific historical role for shared belief in powerful and socially-interested deities who monitor human interactions, which ex hypothesi leads to a greater willingness to treat strangers fairly in exchanges and facilitates the emergence of cooperative norms (Henrich et al 2010)
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