Religion evolved situational cues because chronic internal supernatural awareness is hard to sustain

Evidence

This suggests that religious situations are a more reasonable trust cue than religious persons. It makes more sense to trust that believers who are in church will be less likely to cheat and steal than believers who are at an anonymous intersection. Or as a field study showed (discussed in chapter 3) in Morocco, it would be reasonable to “trust” the Muslim call to prayers as an institution that elicits prosocial acts among the devout. Recognizing this, prosocial religions sprinkle religious reminders at regular time intervals and key places—like call to prayers in Muslim communities, Buddha Eyes in Tibet and Nepal, or church bells or ubiquitous signs of the cross in Christianity. But these religious situations are not unique elicitors of trust—it would be also reasonable to trust secular institutions that encourage nice behavior toward others. However, before the advent of the relatively recent secular institutions, religious cues reflected the wisdom of cultural evolution to harness the power of the situation, rather than rely on internalized chronic awareness of supernatural monitoring, a feat that is difficult to obtain. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 252

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This is exactly the mechanism the reader’s analytical frame needs: Rodrigues’ invisible omniscient God is the ‘internalized chronic awareness’ — and the Japanese authorities weaponize the fragility of that internalization by targeting public situations instead. Directly connects to the fumi-e argument.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the two principles of supernatural monitoring — situational vs dispositional — which anchors the reader’s cross-textual claim.

Related

• Religions evolved to sprinkle situational reminders because internalized monitoring is hard to sustain (similarity 0.94)
• Situational religious reminders, not personal religiosity, drive prosocial behavior (similarity 0.82)
• Religious cues harness situational power where secular institutions are absent (similarity 0.82)
• Belief in supernatural watchers depends on both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission (similarity 0.81)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.80)
• Supernatural monitoring by any religion can extend trust beyond one’s own community (similarity 0.79)
• Supernatural monitoring caused the God-prosociality association, not the reverse (similarity 0.79)
• Supernatural monitoring, not moral emotions alone, scaled prosociality to mass societies (similarity 0.79)
• Religion shapes behavior only when situational cues make it salient. (similarity 0.79)
• Supernatural monitoring causally precedes ideomotor associations, not the reverse. (similarity 0.78)