Fictive kinship terminology activates altruistic norms toward co-religionists

Evidence

I see three different possibilities of how this could work. It could be just a manner of speech with no palpable consequence for how people treat each other. At the other extreme, invoking kinship in religious groups may cause believers to actually confuse their co-religionists with real brothers and sisters. Or, a third, more plausible possibility is that invoking kinship terminology, with its associated altruistic tendencies, reminds believers of the proper social norms to follow when treating others. “In this group,” the norm says, “we treat each other as if we are brothers and sisters.” I do not know of any psychological studies exploring the implications of these different possibilities, but there are good reasons to suspect that kinship psychology is a factor that binds people in prosocial religions. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 385

I see three different possibilities of how this could work. It could be just a manner of speech with no palpable consequence for how people treat each other. At the other extreme, invoking kinship in religious groups may cause believers to actually confuse their co-religionists with real brothers and sisters. Or, a third, more plausible possibility is that invoking kinship terminology, with its associated altruistic tendencies, reminds believers of the proper social norms to follow when treating others. “In this group,” the norm says, “we treat each other as if we are brothers and sisters.” — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 385

Categorization

• SEED: The three-possibility framing — inconsequential speech vs. actual confusion vs. norm reminder — is a template for thinking about how public religious rituals (like the fumi-e trampling) could sever these kinship-based altruistic ties.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s project: fictive kinship and costly signaling as partner-choice mechanisms in Norenzayan’s account. — connects to: Potawatomi extends family kinship grammar to the whole living world — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 196; Naming beings by name is how humans forge relationship and forestall species loneliness — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 753; Sects substituted for kinship networks as credit foundations — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 628 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the operative function of ‘kinship terminology’ as norm-reminder, not literal kin confusion.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 385