It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically
universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in�…

Uncompromising wars, revolution, rights movements, and today's global terrorism are in part
driven by “devoted actors” who adhere to sacred, transcendent values that generate actions�…

The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem
in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in�…

Anthropological research on water and economy has a long and rich history, especially
among archaeologists and political economy scholars. In this review article, we discuss�…

Understanding the expansion of human sociality and cooperation beyond kith and kin
remains an important evolutionary puzzle. There is likely a complex web of processes�…

Abstract Four experiments (total N= 3591) examined how thinking about Karma and God
increases adherence to social norms that prescribe fairness in anonymous dictator games�…

Cognitive and evolutionary research has focused on the powerful deities of large-scale
societies, yet little work has examined the smaller gods of animist traditions. In a study of the�…

A widely accepted view in the cultural evolutionary literature is that culture forms a dynamic
system of elements (or 'traits') linked together by a variety of relationships. Despite this, large�…

Religion shapes the nature of intergroup conflict, but conflict may also shape religion. Here,
we report four multimethod studies that reveal the impact of conflict on religious belief: The�…

Does moral culture contribute to the evolution of cooperation? Here, we examine individuals'
and communities' models of what it means to be good and bad and how they correspond to�…