Highly cooperative societies can sustain mutual trust without religion.

Evidence

When transferred to the human world, the evolutionary approach might a fortiori suggest that trust would be better understood as a result rather than a precondition of cooperation. Trust would exist in societies and groups which are successful because of their ability to cooperate, and would consist in nothing more than trust in the success of previous cooperation. Cooperation could be triggered not by trust, but simply by a set of fortunate practices, random at first, and then selectively retained (with varying degrees of learning and intentionality). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2781 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Small transparent groups need no moralizing gods to sustain cooperation — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 409; Cooperation can operate independently of trust; Prosocial religious cohesion inherently requires excluding nonbelievers from trust (+5 more)

Related

• Institutions enabling safe cooperation must precede trustworthiness, which precedes trust (similarity 0.87)
• Cooperation is broader than trust and mostly grounded in institutions, not trust. (similarity 0.87)
• Cooperation can occur without trust when incentives align (similarity 0.86)
• Small groups succeed at collective action because dyadic trust motivates cooperation (similarity 0.85)
• Cooperative equilibria are no likelier than noncooperative ones without belief restrictions (similarity 0.84)
• Trust is a small-scale phenomenon that institutions must replace to enable large-scale cooperation (similarity 0.83)
• Institutions substitute for trust by securing trustworthiness coercively. (similarity 0.83)
• Trust should be a by-product of good institutions, not their precondition (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is not a resource depleted by use (similarity 0.82)
• Trust requires both freedom to defect and constraints that make cooperation attractive (similarity 0.82)
• Relying on collective trustworthiness is a collective, not merely individual, problem. (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperation can evolve without any trust being involved. (similarity 0.82)
• Trust is a result rather than a precondition of cooperation (similarity 0.82)
• Explaining trust requires understanding the conditions of cooperation (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperation rests on coercion, interests, values, and personal bonds (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Trust is a result rather than a precondition of cooperation #expands (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2781
• Prosocial religious cohesion inherently requires excluding nonbelievers from trust #contradicts (0.83)
• Cooperation can operate independently of trust #expands (0.82)
• Institutions enabling safe cooperation must precede trustworthiness, which precedes trust #corroborates (0.80)
• Groups induce cooperation through sanctions even without trusting their members #corroborates (0.78) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 808
• Communal trustworthiness can seed willingness to trust in wider society #expands (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 823
• Institutions substitute for trust by securing trustworthiness coercively. #complicates (0.74)