System circumvention: Dishonest-illegal transgressions are perceived as justified in non-meritocratic societies.

Does believing that "effort doesn't pay" in society shape how people view dishonest-illegal transgressions? Across five studies, we show that when people view societal success as non-meritocratic-that is, more dependent on luck and circumstances than on hard work-they are more lenient in their moral judgements of dishonest-illegal transgressions. Perceiving society as non-meritocratic predicted greater justifiability of dishonest-illegal transgressions in the United States (Study 2), and across 42 countries (N = 49,574; Study 1). And inducing participants to view society as non-meritocratic increased justifiability of others' dishonest-illegal transgressions, via greater feelings of sympathy (Studies 3 and 4). Next, we investigated the contours of these effects. Perceiving societal success as non-meritocratic rather than based on hard work causes people to view dishonest-illegal transgressions as more justifiable if they are perpetrated by the poor, but not the rich (Study 4), and if the dishonest-illegal transgressions are related to economic striving, such as money laundering and dealing illegal drugs (Study 5). In sum, when people see a social system as unfair, they show greater tolerance for dishonest-illegal transgressions perpetrated to circumvent the system.

Religiosity predicts prosociality, especially when measured by self-report: A meta-analysis of almost 60 years of research.

This meta-analysis explores the long-standing and heavily debated question of whether religiosity is associated with prosocial and antisocial behavior at the individual level. In an analysis of 701 effects across 237 samples, encompassing 811,663 participants, a significant relationship of r = .13 was found between religiosity and prosociality (and antisociality, which was treated as its inverse). Nevertheless, there was substantial heterogeneity of effect sizes, and several potential moderators were explored. The effect was most heavily moderated by the type of measurement used to assess prosocial or antisocial behavior. Religiosity correlated more strongly with self-reported prosociality (r = .15) than with directly measured prosocial behavior (r = .06). Three possible interpretations of this moderation are discussed, namely, that (a) lab-based methods do not accurately or fully capture actual religious prosociality; (b) the self-report effect is explained by religious self-enhancement and overreports actual prosociality; or (c) both religiosity and self-reported prosociality are explained by self-enhancement. The question of whether religiosity more strongly positively predicts prosociality or negatively predicts antisociality is also explored. This moderation is, at most, weak. We test additional potential moderators, including the aspect of religiosity and type of behavior measured, the ingroup or outgroup nature of the recipient, and study characteristics. Finally, we recommend a shift in how researchers investigate questions of religiosity and prosociality in the future. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Signals of discipline and puritanical challenges to liberty.

We extend the target authors' moral disciplining theory (MDT) by discussing signaling, proscriptive and prescriptive morality, and the dynamics by which signaling may operate in tandem with proscriptive and prescriptive forms of moral disciplining. We also suggest that MDT can help explain challenges to economic and social progress by revealing fundamental tensions between puritanical intuitions and liberal ideals.

If I Could Do It, So Can They: Among the Rich, Those With Humbler Origins are Less Sensitive to the Difficulties of the Poor.

Americans venerate rags-to-riches stories. Here we show that people view those who became rich more positively than those born rich and expect the Became Rich to be more sympathetic toward social welfare (Studies 1a and b). However, we also find that these intuitions are misguided. Surveys of wealthy individuals (Studies 2a and b) reveal that, compared with the Born Rich, the Became Rich perceive improving one's socioeconomic conditions as less difficult, which, in turn, predicts less empathy for the poor, less perceived sacrifices by the poor, more internal attributions for poverty, and less support for redistribution. Corroborating this, imagining having experienced upward mobility (vs. beginning and staying at the top) causes people to view such mobility as less difficult, reducing empathy and support for those failing to move up (Study 3). These findings suggest that becoming rich may shift views about the poor in ways that run counter to common intuitions and cultural assumptions.

The moralization of effort.

People believe that effort is valuable, but what kind of value does it confer? We find that displays of effort signal moral character. Eight studies (N = 5,502) demonstrate the nature of these effects in the domains of paid employment, personal fitness, and charitable fundraising. The exertion of effort is deemed morally admirable (Studies 1-6) and is monetarily rewarded (Studies 2-6), even in situations where effort does not directly generate additional product, quality, or economic value. Convergent patterns of results emerged in South Korean and French cross-cultural replications (Studies 2b and 2c). We contend that the seeming irrationality of valuing effort for its own sake, such as in situations where one's efforts do not directly increase economic output (Studies 3-6), reveals a "deeply rational" social heuristic for evaluating potential cooperation partners. Specifically, effort cues engender broad moral trait ascriptions, and this moralization of effort influences donation behaviors (Study 5) and cooperative partner choice decision-making (Studies 4 and 6). In situating our account of effort moralization into past research and theorizing, we also consider the implications of these effects for social welfare policy and the future of work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Political differences in free will belief are associated with differences in moralization.

In 14 studies, we tested whether political conservatives' stronger free will beliefs were linked to stronger and broader tendencies to moralize and, thus, a greater motivation to assign blame. In Study 1 (meta-analysis of 5 studies, n = 308,499) we show that conservatives have stronger tendencies to moralize than liberals, even for moralization measures containing zero political content (e.g., moral badness ratings of faces and personality traits). In Study 2, we show that conservatives report higher free will belief, and this is statistically mediated by the belief that people should be held morally responsible for their bad behavior (n = 14,707). In Study 3, we show that political conservatism is associated with higher attributions of free will for specific events. Turning to experimental manipulations to test our hypotheses, we show the following: when conservatives and liberals see an action as equally wrong there is no difference in free will attributions (Study 4); when conservatives see an action as less wrong than liberals, they attribute less free will (Study 5); and specific perceptions of wrongness account for the relation between political ideology and free will attributions (Study 6a and 6b). Finally, we show that political conservatives and liberals even differentially attribute free will for the same action depending on who performed it (Studies 7a-d). These results are consistent with our theory that political differences in free will belief are at least partly explicable by conservatives' tendency to moralize, which strengthens motivation to justify blame with stronger belief in free will and personal accountability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Declines in Religiosity Predict Increases in Violent Crime-but Not Among Countries With Relatively High Average IQ.

Many scholars have argued that religion reduces violent behavior within human social groups. Here, we tested whether intelligence moderates this relationship. We hypothesized that religion would have greater utility for regulating violent behavior among societies with relatively lower average IQs than among societies with relatively more cognitively gifted citizens. Two studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1, a longitudinal analysis from 1945 to 2010 (with up to 176 countries and 1,046 observations), demonstrated that declines in religiosity were associated with increases in homicide rates-but only in countries with relatively low average IQs. Study 2, a multiverse analysis (171 models) using modern data (97-195 countries) and various controls, consistently confirmed that lower rates of religiosity were more strongly associated with higher homicide rates in countries with lower average IQ. These findings raise questions about how secularization might differentially affect groups of different mean cognitive ability.

The Support for Economic Inequality Scale: Development and adjudication.

Past research has documented myriad pernicious psychological effects of high economic inequality, prompting interest into how people perceive, evaluate, and react to inequality. Here we propose, refine, and validate the Support for Economic Inequality Scale (SEIS)-a novel measure of attitudes towards economic inequality. In Study 1, we distill eighteen items down to five, providing evidence for unidimensionality and reliability. In Study 2, we replicate the scale's unidimensionality and reliability and demonstrate its validity. In Study 3, we evaluate a United States version of the SEIS. Finally, in Studies 4-5, we demonstrate the SEIS's convergent and predictive validity, as well as evidence for the SEIS being distinct from other conceptually similar measures. The SEIS is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing perceptions of and reactions to economic inequality and provides a useful tool for researchers investigating the psychological underpinnings of economic inequality.

Asymmetry and empathy: Higher asymmetry is associated with lower levels of mentalizing.

People differ in their mentalizing abilities. Though past research suggests that individual differences in exposure to prenatal testosterone may be able to explain why some people excel at mentalizing, while others struggle, meta-analyses yield a null relationship between 2D:4D ratio (a proxy for prenatal testosterone) and mentalizing. Importantly, however, past research has not examined the asymmetrical differences between the digit ratios on the right and left hands. In the current work, we test whether the difference between the digit ratios of the left and right hands may function as a better predictor of mentalizing than digit ratio alone. In Study 1, we begin by validating an online, self-report measure of 2D:4D ratio, providing test-retest reliability, convergent, and concurrent validity for our measure. In Study 2, we demonstrate that a) 2D:4D is quadratically related to asymmetry, b) asymmetry is negatively associated with mentalizing, and c) the relationship between asymmetry and mentalizing cannot be explained by the relationship between asymmetry and short-term memory. Taken together, our results paint a more nuanced picture of the relationship between digit ratio and mentalizing ability.

What is the association between religious affiliation and children's altruism?

Decety et al.[1] examined the relationships between household religiosity and sociality in children sampled from six countries. We were keenly interested in Decety et al.[1]'s conclusions about a negative relationship between religiosity and generosity - measured with the Dictator Game - as our team has investigated related questions, often with potentially contrasting findings [2-5]. We argue here that, after addressing peculiarities in their analyses, Decety et al.[1]'s data are consistent with a different interpretation.

Income Mobility Breeds Tolerance for Income Inequality: Cross-National and Experimental Evidence.

American politicians often justify income inequality by referencing the opportunities people have to move between economic stations. Though past research has shown associations between income mobility and resistance to wealth redistribution policies, no experimental work has tested whether perceptions of mobility influence tolerance for inequality. In this article, we present a cross-national comparison showing that income mobility is associated with tolerance for inequality and experimental work demonstrating that perceptions of higher mobility directly affect attitudes toward inequality. We find support for both the prospect of upward mobility and the view that peoples' economic station is the product of their own efforts, as mediating mechanisms.

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

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.

The cultural evolution of prosocial religions.

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10-12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate.

Religious Priming: A Meta-Analysis With a Focus on Prosociality.

Priming has emerged as a valuable tool within the psychological study of religion, allowing for tests of religion's causal effect on a number of psychological outcomes, such as prosocial behavior. As the literature has grown, questions about the reliability and boundary conditions of religious priming have arisen. We use a combination of traditional effect-size analyses, p-curve analyses, and adjustments for publication bias to evaluate the robustness of four types of religious priming (Analyses 1-3), review the empirical evidence for religion's effect specifically on prosocial behavior (Analyses 4-5), and test whether religious-priming effects generalize to individuals who report little or no religiosity (Analyses 6-7). Results across 93 studies and 11,653 participants show that religious priming has robust effects across a variety of outcome measures-prosocial measures included. Religious priming does not, however, reliably affect non-religious participants-suggesting that priming depends on the cognitive activation of culturally transmitted religious beliefs.

A question of reliability or of boundary conditions? Comment on Gomes and McCullough (2015).

Gomes and McCullough (2015) are to be commended on their high-powered attempt to replicate our earlier research (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007). We suggest that notable differences between the two studies indicate that Gomes and McCullough were testing a different question. Here we place Gomes and McCullough's results in context with other studies and discuss how their findings may point to an interesting boundary condition of the original effect.

Morality and the religious mind: why theists and nontheists differ.

Religions have come to be intimately tied to morality and much recent research has shown that theists and nontheists differ in their moral behavior and decision making along several dimensions. Here we discuss how these empirical trends can be explained by fundamental differences in group commitment, motivations for prosociality, cognitive styles, and meta-ethics. We conclude by elucidating key areas of moral congruence.

Free will and punishment: a mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution.

If free-will beliefs support attributions of moral responsibility, then reducing these beliefs should make people less retributive in their attitudes about punishment. Four studies tested this prediction using both measured and manipulated free-will beliefs. Study 1 found that people with weaker free-will beliefs endorsed less retributive, but not consequentialist, attitudes regarding punishment of criminals. Subsequent studies showed that learning about the neural bases of human behavior, through either lab-based manipulations or attendance at an undergraduate neuroscience course, reduced people's support for retributive punishment (Studies 2-4). These results illustrate that exposure to debates about free will and to scientific research on the neural basis of behavior may have consequences for attributions of moral responsibility.

Free to punish: a motivated account of free will belief.

Belief in free will is a pervasive phenomenon that has important consequences for prosocial actions and punitive judgments, but little research has investigated why free will beliefs are so widespread. Across 5 studies using experimental, survey, and archival data and multiple measures of free will belief, we tested the hypothesis that a key factor promoting belief in free will is a fundamental desire to hold others morally responsible for their wrongful behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported greater belief in free will after considering an immoral action than a morally neutral one. Study 2 provided evidence that this effect was due to heightened punitive motivations. In a field experiment (Study 3), an ostensibly real classroom cheating incident led to increased free will beliefs, again due to heightened punitive motivations. In Study 4, reading about others' immoral behaviors reduced the perceived merit of anti-free-will research, thus demonstrating the effect with an indirect measure of free will belief. Finally, Study 5 examined this relationship outside the laboratory and found that the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior (as measured by crime and homicide rates) predicted free will belief on a country level. Taken together, these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society.

The emotional toll of hell: cross-national and experimental evidence for the negative well-being effects of hell beliefs.

Though beliefs in Heaven and Hell are related, they are associated with different personality characteristics and social phenomena. Here we present three studies measuring Heaven and Hell beliefs' associations with and impact on subjective well-being. We find that a belief in Heaven is consistently associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction while a belief in Hell is associated with lower happiness and life satisfaction at the national (Study 1) and individual (Study 2) level. An experimental priming study (Study 3) suggests that these differences are mainly driven by the negative emotional impact of Hell beliefs. Possible cultural evolutionary explanations for the persistence of such a distressing religious concept are discussed.