Belief in supernatural watchers depends on both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission

Evidence

The scientific project of explaining religion can make great progress when we appreciate that the workings of human minds belong to cultural inheritance as much as to genetic inheritance. Belief in supernatural watchers is no exception. Devoted followers of prosocial religions rely on mental mechanisms that make gods an intuitive concept. But they also heavily lean on cultural learning mechanisms that enable particular cultural variants of religious beliefs and practices to rapidly propagate across minds. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 123