The cultural evolution of prosocial religions
@article{Norenzayan2014TheCE, title={The cultural evolution of prosocial religions}, author={Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff and Will M. Gervais and Aiyana K. Willard and Rita Anne McNamara and Edward Slingerland and Joseph Henrich}, journal={Behavioral and Brain Sciences}, year={2014}, volume={39} }
Abstract We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10–12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by…
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