Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures

Abstract Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive monitoring gods care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest belief supernatural punishment generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect a deity's explicitly postulated concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report pre-registered set analyses assess whether perceiving locally relevant deity as moralistic predicts play two permutations economic games using data from up 15 diverse field sites. Across games, results gods’ do not direct, cross-culturally reliable role motivating behaviour. The study contributes substantially current literature by testing central hypothesis cognitive science religion with large culturally dataset behavioural ethnographically rich methods.