Material insecurity predicts greater commitment to moralistic and less commitment to local deities: a cross-cultural investigation

The existential security hypothesis predicts that in the absence of more successful secular institutions, people will be attracted to religion when they are materially insecure. Most assessments, however, employ data sampled at a state-level with focus on world religions. Using individual-level collected societies varied community sizes diverse religious traditions including animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, we conducted systematic cross-cultural test (N = 1820; 14 societies) relationship between material insecurity (indexed by food insecurity) commitment both beliefs practices). Moreover, examined individuals’ two types deities (moralistic local), thus providing first simultaneous across co-existing traditions. Our results indicate while is associated greater moralistic deities, it less local deity