Benevolent God concepts fail to suppress antisocial behavior, unlike punishing gods.

Evidence

Now, these are correlational findings, so one must be careful with inferring causation. However, Shariff and Rhemtulla were careful to consider and rule out a number of obvious alternative explanations. Their results held after statistically eliminating socioeconomic variables known to be related to criminal behavior or religiosity, such as a nation’s gross domestic product, the level of economic inequality, and a nation’s predominant religious denomination. These findings, together with the experimental results described earlier, are difficult to reconcile with an account that is solely driven by ideomotor processes, which presumably would lead to the opposite expectation. A benevolent and kind God would more clearly fit the prosocial stereotype that should cause greater prosocial behavior and less antisocial behavior, and that reminders of a benevolent God would reduce punishing behavior. Yet we find the exact opposite pattern, which is more consistent with a supernatural punishment explanation. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 174

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s analytical bridge: the punishing-fearsome-God effect vs. paternalistic-benevolent-God effect matters for how Rodrigues’ suffering Christ (a benevolent/punished figure) would fare as a behavioral monitor in the Japanese apostasy context.
• QUESTION: Does the fumi-e ceremony in the novel function as a public reminder of a punishing authority rather than a benevolent God figure — and does that matter for which cognitive mechanism it triggers?