Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:29:00.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parochial prosocial religions: Historical and contemporary evidence for a cultural evolutionary process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

Ara Norenzayan ,
Azim F. Shariff ,
Will M. Gervais ,
Aiyana K. Willard ,
Rita A. McNamara ,
Edward Slingerland  and
Joseph Henrich
Ara Norenzayan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4Canada. [email protected]@psych.ubc.cahttp://www.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/
Azim F. Shariff
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403. [email protected]://sharifflab.com/
Will M. Gervais
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506. [email protected]
Aiyana K. Willard
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. [email protected]
Rita A. McNamara
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4Canada. [email protected]@psych.ubc.cahttp://www.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/
Edward Slingerland
Affiliation:
Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2Canada. [email protected]://eslingerland.arts.ubc.ca
Joseph Henrich
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychology & Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T [email protected]://www.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In our response to the 27 commentaries, we refine the theoretical claims, clarify several misconceptions of our framework, and explore substantial disagreements. In doing so, we (1) show that our framework accommodates multiple historical scenarios; (2) debate the historical evidence, particularly about “pre-Axial” religions; (3) offer important details about cultural evolutionary theory; (4) clarify the term prosociality; and (4) discuss proximal mechanisms. We review many interesting extensions, amplifications, and qualifications of our approach made by the commentators.

Type
Authors' Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e29
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Assmann, J. (2003) The mind of Egypt: History and meaning in the time of the pharaohs. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Atran, S. (2011) War, martyrdom, and terror: Evolutionary underpinnings of the moral imperative to extreme group violence. In: Applied evolutionary psychology, ed. Roberts, S. C., pp. 222–38. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Atran, S. & Henrich, J. (2010) The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition 5:18–30.Google Scholar
Atran, S. & Norenzayan, A. (2004) Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27:713–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Banerjee, K. & Bloom, P. (2014) Why did this happen to me? Religious believers' and non-believers' teleological reasoning about life events. Cognition 133:277–303. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.06.017.Google Scholar
Banerjee, K. & Bloom, P. (2015) “Everything happens for a reason:” Children's beliefs about purpose in life events. Child Development 86:503–18.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. L. (2004) Why would anyone believe in God? AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2012) What goes around comes around: The evolutionary roots of the belief in immanent justice. Journal of Cognition and Culture 12(1):67–80.Google Scholar
Baumard, N., Hyafil, A., Morris, I. & Boyer, P. (2015) Increased affluence explains the emergence of ascetic wisdoms and moralizing religions. Current Biology 25(1):10–15. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.063.Google Scholar
Bell, A. V., Richerson, P. & McElreath, R. (2009) Culture rather than genes provides greater scope for the evolution of large-scale human prosociality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106:17671–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bentzen, J. S. (2013) Origins of religiousness: The role of natural disasters. Discussion Paper No. 13-02. Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2221859.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackmore, S. J. (1999) The meme machine. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. (2008) Conflict: Altruism's midwife. Science 456:326–27.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1990b) Group selection among alternative evolutionarily stable strategies. Journal of Theoretical Biology 145:331–42.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2002) Group beneficial norms can spread rapidly in a structured population. Journal of Theoretical Biology 215:287–96.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2009) Voting with your feet: Payoff biased migration and the evolution of group beneficial behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology 257:331–39.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (1994) The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. W. (1973a) Cultural versus biological inheritance – phenotypic transmission from parents to children – a theory of the effect of parental phenotypes on children's phenotypes. American Journal of Human Genetics 25(6):618–37.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. W. (1973b) Models for cultural inheritance .1. Group mean and within group variation. Theoretical Population Biology 4(1):42–55.Google Scholar
Chudek, M., Brosseau, P., Birch, S. & Henrich, J. (2013) Culture-gene coevolutionary theory and children's selective social learning. In: The development of social cognition, ed. Banaji, M. & Gelman, S., pp. 181–85. Oxford.Google Scholar
Chudek, M., Heller, S., Birch, S. & Henrich, J. (2012) Prestige-biased cultural learning: Bystander's differential attention to potential models influences children's learning. Evolution and Human Behavior 33(1):46–56.Google Scholar
Claidiere, N. & Sperber, D. (2007) The role of attraction in cultural evolution. Journal of Cognition and Culture 7:89–111.Google Scholar
Clingingsmith, D., Khwaja, A. I. & Kremer, M. (2009) Estimating the impact of The Hajj: Religion and tolerance in Islam's global gathering. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(3):1133–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corriveau, K. H., Chen, E. E. & Harris, P. L. (2015) Judgments about fact and fiction by children from religious and nonreligious backgrounds. Cognitive Science 39(2):353–82.Google Scholar
Corriveau, K. H., Fusaro, M. & Harris, P. L. (2009) Going with the flow: Preschoolers prefer nondissenters as informants. Psychological Science 20(3):372–77.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976) The selfish gene. Oxford University Press (new edition with additional material, 1989).Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (2006) The god delusion. Mariner Books.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. (1997a) Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. Norton.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. & Fischbacher, U. (2004b) Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior 25:63–87.Google Scholar
Fletcher, J. A. & Doebeli, M. (2009) A simple and general explanation for the evolution of altruism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276:13–19.Google Scholar
Flynn, E. (2008) Investigating children as cultural magnets: Do young children transmit redundant information along diffusion chains? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363(1509):3541.Google Scholar
Francis, L. J., Gibson, H. M. & Robbins, M. (2001) God images and self-worth among adolescents in Scotland. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture 4:103–108.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H. (1988) Passions within reason. Norton.Google Scholar
Furnham, A. (2003) Belief in a just world: Research progress over the past decade. Personality and Individual Differences 34(5):795–17.Google Scholar
Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2012b) Reminders of secular authority reduce believers' distrust of atheists. Psychological Science 23:483–91.Google Scholar
Gervais, W. M. & Norenzayan, A. (2013) Religion and the origins of anti-atheist prejudice. In: Intolerance and conflict: A scientific and conceptual investigation, ed. Clarke, S., Powell, R. & Savulescu, J., pp. 126–45. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guzman, R. A., Rodriguez-Sickert, C. & Rowthorn, R. (2007) When in Rome, do as the Romans do: The coevolution of altruistic punishment, conformist learning, and cooperation. Evolution and Human Behavior 28:112–17.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1975) Innate social aptitudes of man: An approach from evolutionary genetics. In: Biosocial anthropology, ed. Fox, R., pp. 133–53. Malaby Press.Google Scholar
Harris, P., Pasquini, E. S., Duke, S., Asscher, J. J. & Pons, F. (2006) Germs and angels: The role of testimony in young children's ontology. Developmental Science 9(1):76–96.Google Scholar
Harris, P. L. & Koenig, M. A. (2006) Trust in testimony: How children learn about science and religion. Child Development 77(3):505–24.Google Scholar
Harris, S. (2005) The end of faith: Religion, terror and the future of reason. Norton.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2004) Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 53:3–25.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2006) Cooperation, punishment, and the evolution of human institutions. Science 312:60–61.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2009) The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: Credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior 30:244–60.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2015) The secret of our success: How learning from others drove human evolution, domesticated our species, and made us smart. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2002) On modeling cultural evolution: Why replicators are not necessary for cultural evolution. Journal of Cognition and Culture 2(2):87–112.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2008) Division of labor, economic specialization, and the evolution of social stratification. Current Anthropology 49(4):715–24.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2008) Five misunderstandings about cultural evolution. Human Nature 19(2):119–37.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (2012) The puzzle of monogamous marriage. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367:657–66.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Ensimger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D. & Ziker, J. (2010a) Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science 327:1480–84.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Gil-White, F. (2001) The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior 22(3):1–32, 165–96.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Henrich, N. (2014) Fairness without punishment: Behavioral experiments in the Yasawa Island, Fiji. In: Experimenting with social norms: Fairness and punishment in cross-cultural perspective, ed. Ensminger, J. & Henrich, J., pp. 225–58. Russell Sage Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, N. & Henrich, J. (2007) Why humans cooperate: A cultural and evolutionary explanation. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann, B., Thoni, C. & Gächter, S. (2008) Antisocial punishment across societies. Science 319(5868):1362–67.Google Scholar
Herrmann, P. A., Legare, C. H., Harris, P. L. & Whitehouse, H. (2013) Stick to the script: The effect of witnessing multiple actors on children's imitation. Cognition 129:536–43.Google Scholar
Hopper, L. M., Flynn, E. G., Wood, L. A. N. & Whiten, A. (2010) Observational learning of tool use in children: Investigating cultural spread through diffusion chains and learning mechanisms through ghost displays. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 106(1):82–97.Google Scholar
Hoppitt, W. & Laland, K. N. (2013) Social learning: An introduction to mechanisms, methods, and models. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hruschka, D., Efferson, C., Jiang, T., Falletta-Cowden, A., Sigurdsson, S., McNamara, R., Sands, M., Munira, S., Slingerland, E. & Henrich, J. (2014) Impartial institutions, pathogen stress, and the expanding social network. Human Nature 25:567–79.Google Scholar
Hruschka, D. & Henrich, J. (2006) Friendship, cliquishness, and the emergence of cooperation. Journal of Theoretical Biology 239(1):1–15.Google Scholar
Ironson, G., Stuetzle, R., Ironson, D., Balbin, E., Kremer, H., George, A. & Fletcher, M. A. (2011) View of god as benevolent and forgiving or punishing and judgmental predicts HIV disease progression. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 34:414–25.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. (1953) The origin and goal of history. Trans. Bullock, M.. Yale University Press. (Original work, Vom Urspring und Ziel der Geschichte, published in 1949.)Google Scholar
Johnson, K. A., Li, Y. J., Cohen, A. B. & Okun, M. A. (2013) Friends in high places: The influence of authoritarian and benevolent God-concepts on social attitudes and behaviors. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 5:15–22.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1785/1964) Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals. Trans. Paton, H. J.. Harper Torchbooks. (Original work published in 1785.)Google Scholar
Katz, R. (1999) The straight path of the spirit: Ancestral wisdom and healing traditions in Fiji. Park Street Press.Google Scholar
Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D. & Galinsky, A. D. (2009) Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science 18:264–68. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x.Google Scholar
Kelemen, D. (2004) Are children “Intuitive Theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science 15:295–301.Google Scholar
Keltner, D., Kogan, A., Piff, P. K. & Saturn, S. (2014) The sociocultural appraisals, values, and emotions (SAVE) framework of prosociality: Core processes from gene to meme. Annual Review of Psychology 65:425–60.Google Scholar
Kinzler, K. D., Corriveau, K. H. & Harris, P. L. (2011) Children's selective trust in native-accented speakers. Developmental Science 14(1):106–11.Google Scholar
Kline, M. A. (2015) How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38.Google Scholar
Kline, M. A., Boyd, R. & Henrich, J. (2013) Teaching and the life history of cultural transmission in Fijian villages. Human Nature 24(4):351–74.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N. (2004) Social learning strategies. Learning and Behavior 32(1):4–14.Google Scholar
Laurin, K., Kay, A. C. & Fitzsimons, G. M. (2012a) Divergent effects of activating thoughts of god on self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102:4–21.Google Scholar
Laurin, K., Shariff, A. F., Henrich, J. & Kay, A. C. (2012b) Outsourcing punishment to God: Beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279:3272–81.Google Scholar
Lehmann, L., Keller, L., West, S. & Roze, D. (2007) Group selection and kin selection: Two concepts but one process. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104:6736–39.Google Scholar
Lopez, D. S. (ed.) (2005) Critical terms for the study of Buddhism. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCullough, M. E. & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009) Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin 135:69–93. doi: 10.1037/a0014213.Google Scholar
McElreath, R. & Boyd, R. (2007) Modeling the evolution of social behavior. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McNamara, R. A. (2014) Powers interview: Sau, borisi, mana, sorcery, traditional medicine, totem beliefs in Yasawa, Fiji. unpublished raw data.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2009) How cultural evolutionary theory can inform social psychology and vice versa. Psychological Review 116:929–52.Google Scholar
Miller, J. H. & Page, S. E. (2007) Complex adaptive systems: An introduction to computational models of social life (illustrated edition). Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, T. J. H. & Laland, K. (2012) The biological bases of conformity. Frontiers in Neuroscience 6(87):1–7.Google Scholar
Morgan, T. J. H., Rendell, L. E., Ehn, M., Hoppitt, W. & Laland, K. N. (2012) The evolutionary basis of human social learning. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 279(1729):653–62.Google Scholar
Moya, C., Boyd, R. & Henrich, J. (in press) Reasoning about cultural and genetic transmission: Developmental and cross-cultural evidence from Peru, Fiji, and the US on how people make inferences about trait and identity transmission. Topics in Cognitive Science.Google Scholar
Nakahashi, W., Wakano, J. Y. & Henrich, J. (2012) Adaptive social learning strategies in temporally and spatially varying environments how temporal versus spatial variation, number of cultural traits, and costs of learning influence the evolution of conformist-biased transmission, payoff-biased transmission, and individual learning. Human Nature 23(4):386–18.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A. (2013) Big Gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A. (2015) Big questions about Big Gods: Response and discussion. Religion, Brain and Behavior 4:327–42.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A. (2016) Theodiversity. Annual Review of Psychology 67:21.1–21.24.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A., Dar-Nimrod, I., Hansen, I. G. & Proulx, T. (2009) Mortality salience and religion: Divergent effects on the defense of cultural values for the religious and the non-religious. European Journal of Social Psychology 39:101–13.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A. & Gervais, W. M. (2015) Secular rule of law erodes believers' political intolerance of atheists. Religion, Brain and Behavior 5:3–14.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A. & Hansen, I. G. (2006) Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32:174–87.Google Scholar
Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2004) Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E. & Wilson, E. O. (2010) The evolution of eusociality. Nature 466:1057–62.Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, G. (2002) Imagining karma: Ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oishi, S. & Diener, E. (2014) Residents of poor nations have a greater sense of meaning in life than residents of wealthy nations. Psychological Science 25:422–30.Google Scholar
Payne, R. K. & Tanaka, K. K., eds. (2004) Approaching the land of bliss: Religious praxis in the cult of Amitåabha (No. 17). University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. (2013) The minds of gods: A comparative study of supernatural agency. Cognition 129:163–79.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. & Arakchaa, T. (2013) Ritual behavior and trust in the Tyva Republic. Current Anthropology 54:381–88.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G., Haque, O. & Sosis, R. (2014) Extending evolutionary accounts of religion beyond the mind: Religions as adaptive systems. In: Evolution, religion, and cognitive science: Critical and constructive essays, ed. Watts, F. & Turner, L., pp. 74–91. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. G. & McNamara, R. A. (2016) An ecological theory of gods' minds. In: Advances in religion, cognitive science, and experimental philosophy, ed. Cruz, H. De & Nichols, R.. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Richerson, P., Hillis, V., Newson, L., Baldini, R., Frost, K., Bell, A., Demps, K., Mathew, S., Newton, E., Narr, N., Ross, C., Smaldino, P., Waring, T. M. & Zefferman, M. (in press) Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38.Google Scholar
Sarkissian, H. (2015) Supernatural, social, and self-monitoring in the scaling-up of Chinese civilization. Religion, Brain and Behavior 5:323–27.Google Scholar
Seabright, P. (2004) The company of strangers: A natural history of economic life. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shariff, A. F. & Aknin, L. B. (2014) The emotional toll of hell: Cross-national and experimental evidence for the negative well-being effects of Hell beliefs. PLOS ONE 9(1):e85251.Google Scholar
Shariff, A. F. & Norenzayan, A. (2007) God is watching you: Priming god concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science 18:803–809.Google Scholar
Shutts, K., Kinzler, K. D. & DeJesus, J. M. (2013) Understanding infants' and children's social learning about foods: Previous research and new prospects. Developmental Psychology 49(3):419–25.Google Scholar
Sibley, C. G. & Bulbulia, J. (2012) Faith after an earthquake: A longitudinal study of religion and perceived health before and after the 2011 Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake. PLOS ONE 7:e49648. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049648.Google Scholar
Slingerland, E. (2003) Confucius: Analects: With selections from traditional commentaries. Hackett.Google Scholar
Slingerland, E. & Sullivan, B. (in press) Durkheim with data: The database of religious history (DRH). Journal of the American Academy of Religion.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. E. (2014) The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37:243–95.Google Scholar
Solt, F., Habel, P. & Grant, J. T. (2011) Economic inequality, relative power, and religiosity. Social Science Quarterly 92:447–65.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., Kress, H. & Boster, J. (2007) Scars for war: Evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs. Evolution and Human Behavior 28:234–47.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (1996) Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stark, R. (1996) The rise of Christianity: How the obscure, marginal, Jesus movement became the dominant religious force. HarperOne.Google Scholar
Turchin, P. (2005) War and peace and war: The life cycles of imperial nations. Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Turchin, P. (2009) A theory for formation of large empires. Journal of Global History 4:191–17.Google Scholar
Turchin, P. (2011) Warfare and the evolution of social complexity: A multilevel selection approach. Structure and Dynamics 4:1–37.Google Scholar
Tuzin, D. (1976) The Ilahita Arapesh. University of California.Google Scholar
Tuzin, D. (2001) Social complexity in the making: A case study among the Arapesh of New Guinea. Routledge.Google Scholar
Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J. & Gray, R. D. (2015) Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282(1804). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2556.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H. (1995) Inside the cult: Religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. (2002) The vines of complexity. Current Anthropology 43:233–69.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P. & Tumu, A. (1998) Historical vines. Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Willard, A. K. & Norenzayan, A. (2013) Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life's purpose. Cognition 129:379–91. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.07.016.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Wilson, E. O. (2007) Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology. Quarterly Review of Biology 82:327–48.Google Scholar
Winans, C. S. & Bassler, B. L., eds. (2008) Chemical communication among bacteria. ASM Press.Google Scholar
Xygalatas, D., Mitkidis, P., Fischer, R., Reddish, P., Skewes, J., Geertz, A. W., Roepstorff, A. & Bulbulia, J. (2013) Extreme rituals promote prosociality. Psychological Science 24:1602–605.Google Scholar