People adopt religious beliefs backed by credible public displays

Evidence

Children and adults do not believe in any idea that is interesting and memorable. They adopt the interesting and memorable religious beliefs of their parents and peers. Of these culturally supported beliefs, they especially gravitate toward those that are backed up by credible displays of devotion—public prayer, painful rites, acts of sacrifice. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 372

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Supports the partner-choice mechanism (Baumard et al.) central to the reader’s stated framing — visible costly display signals commitment to the group, and its public destruction by trampling removes that signal.

Related

• Belief in any idea requires adult testimony and credible displays of devotion (similarity 0.88)
• Costly public displays reliably signal otherwise unfakeable genuine belief (similarity 0.85)
• Public displays of devotion sustain belief in a god while their absence erodes it (similarity 0.83)
• Public displays of costly commitment determine which gods gain believers (similarity 0.83)
• Costly religious displays evolved as honest signals of group commitment. (similarity 0.83)
• Publicly costly acts of devotion serve to convert nonbelievers, not just reassure fellow believers (similarity 0.82)
• Religious belief spreads culturally only when sincerity is publicly displayed, not merely claimed. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.81)
• Religious thought defaults while disbelief requires deliberate cognitive effort (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief spreads through witnessed displays that can also reverse into doubt. (similarity 0.81)
• Credible displays of religious devotion trigger belief cascades and group-level competitive advantage (similarity 0.81)
• Disbelief requires deliberate effort against natural cognitive dispositions. (similarity 0.80)
• Costly religious displays signal hard-to-fake commitment to group beliefs, like romantic love signals fidelity. (similarity 0.80)
• Costly signaling cannot explain why nonbelievers find religious displays costly (similarity 0.79)
• Hard-to-fake devotion rituals screened out religious freeloaders (similarity 0.79)