The Cultural Evolution of Religion and Cooperation

Abstract

Abstract Since the earliest days of the social sciences, the relationship between religion and cooperation has been a central topic. In this chapter, we critically review popular cultural evolutionary perspectives on religion and cooperation and consider how they frame the relationships between religious beliefs, behaviours, and the moral rules that motivate cooperation. We then offer an account of how religious systems can contribute to the stability of social life more generally, with cooperative dilemmas occupying a subset of a broader range of socioecological challenges that supernatural appeals might help resolve. We also provide a critical overview of methods used throughout much of the contemporary work on religion and cooperation. In doing so, we provide useful ways forward for testing how appeals to gods, spirits, and other supernatural forces can, in at least some cases, address locally important challenges to cooperation.