Ordeals worked only because defendants believed in an omniscient moral watcher

Evidence

But to the extent that this piece of cultural technology worked, it did because, and only because, the faithful sincerely believed in the presence of a powerful supernatural watcher who sees everything and directly intervenes in matters of human morality. While the trial by ordeal may appear to be a strange vestige of the medieval past, a critical feature that made it work continues to affect the lives of billions of people around the world. This feature is rooted in an evolutionarily ancient mechanism that reliably generates prosocial behavior: social surveillance keeps people in line. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Directly the reader’s Norenzayan ‘Big God’ anchor: the perceived omniscient gaze that Rodrigues operates under is exactly the surveillance presumed by ordeal. Both require the watcher to be real to the subject, whether or not He exists.