People apply the same mental machinery to supernatural watchers as human watchers

Evidence

If the most subtle of monitoring cues—such as dots arranged to look like schematic faces—can change social behavior, it is no surprise that the presence of actual human observers affects prosocial tendencies. The evidence is clear that various forms of social monitoring are a key factor in encouraging nice behavior among strangers. As we have seen earlier, people mentally represent supernatural monitors—gods and other supernatural beings—in ways that are strikingly similar (though certainly not identical) to the ways they think about monitoring human beings. Social monitoring is the precursor of supernatural monitoring, one of the key features of prosocial religions. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 93

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the crucial definitional move: supernatural monitoring piggybacks on social monitoring, not on a dedicated ‘God part of the brain’.
• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s purpose: Rodrigues experiences the omniscient gaze via the same social-monitoring machinery that makes witnessed apostasy devastating. — connects to: An advanced alien observer functions as the big Other of the human species — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 627