Resource Stress Predicts Changes in Religious Belief and Increases in Sharing Behavior
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Resource Stress Predicts Changes in Religious Belief and Increases in Sharing Behavior Ian Skoggard 1 & Carol R. Ember 1 & Emily Pitek 1 Joshua Conrad Jackson 2 & Christina Carolus 3
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# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We examine and test alternative models for explaining the relationships between resource stress, beliefs that gods and spirits influence weather (to help or harm food supply or punish for norm violations), and customary beyond-household sharing behavior. Our model, the resource stress model, suggests that resource stress affects both sharing as well as conceptions of gods’ involvement with weather, but these supernatural beliefs play no role in explaining sharing. An alternative model, the moralizing high god model, suggests that the relationship between resource stress and sharing is at least partially mediated by religious beliefs in moralizing high gods. We compared the models using a worldwide sample of 96 cultures from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), newly coded data on supernatural involvement with weather, and previously coded data on food and labor sharing. We conducted three types of analysis: multilevel and society-level regressions, and mediational path modeling using Monte Carlo simulations. Resource stress shows a robust effect on beliefs that high gods are associated with weather (and the more specific beliefs that high gods help or hurt the food supply with weather), that superior gods help the food supply through weather, and that minor spirits hurt the food supply through weather. Resource stress also predicts greater belief in moralizing high gods. However, no form of high god belief that we test significantly predicts more sharing. Mediational models suggest the religious beliefs do not significantly explain why resource stress is associated with food and labor sharing. Our findings generally accord with the view that resource stress changes religious belief and has a direct effect on sharing behavior, unmediated by high god beliefs. Keywords Resource stress . Moralizing high gods . Cooperation . Sharing . Belief that gods
control weather Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-02009371-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Ian Skoggard [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Human Nature
Across the ethnographic record, gods are believed to either help or hurt food supply by controlling the weather; in some cases, moral intent is ascribed to such divine acts (Roncoli et al. 2009). However, the belief in gods’ involvement with weather is not universal, so this variation is in need of explanation. We argue and test for the idea that resource stress may explain greater belief in both supernatural involvement with weather and moralizing high gods. Also, given that resource stress predicts more customary beyond-household seasonal sharing (Ember et al. 2018), we test a broade
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