Sacred values bind group identity and give groups advantage through non-rational commitment.

Evidence

Humans define the groups to which they belong in abstract terms. Often they strive for lasting intellectual and emotional bonding with anonymous others, and make their greatest exertions in killing and dying not to preserve their own lives or to defend their families and friends, but for the sake of an idea – the transcendent moral conception they form of themselves, of “who we are” (Bowles & Polanía-Reyes 2012). This is “the privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only” of which Hobbes wrote in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651/1982, Pt. 1, Ch. 5). In The Descent of Man, Darwin cast it as the virtue of “morality … the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy” (Darwin 1871, p. 66) with which winning groups are better endowed in history’s spiraling competition for survival and dominance. Across cultures, primary group identity is bounded by sacred values, often in the form of religious beliefs or transcendental ideologies, which lead some groups to triumph over others because of non-rational commitment from at least some of its members to actions that drive success independent, or all out of proportion, from expected rational outcomes (Atran & Ginges 2012). — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 264

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Big God / partner-choice research theme and to Atran & Ginges’ sacred-values work on moral commitment beyond rational self-interest. — connects to: Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict; Prosocial religious groups outcompeted rivals through internal cooperation.; The social scale a religion can bind grows with the deity’s remoteness (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Defines ‘sacred values’ as the bounded core of primary group identity across cultures.

Related

• Sacred values can form quickly through ritual and perceived group threat. (similarity 0.86)
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred values and identity fusion interact to drive sacrificial self-interest. (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred-value commitment produces costly sacrifice that lets weak groups beat stronger foes. (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. (similarity 0.82)
• Religious ritual participation increases sacred values even on non-religious topics. (similarity 0.82)
• Participation in religious ritual creates sacred values, especially under group threat. (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred values resist cost-benefit correction unlike ordinary preferences (similarity 0.81)
• Perceived out-group threat amplifies ritual-driven sacralization of values. (similarity 0.81)
• External threat drives groups to ritualize preferences into sacred values (similarity 0.81)
• Sacred values are processed as unconditional rules, not cost-benefit calculations. (similarity 0.81)
• Sacredness is a functional universal that anchors compliance and resists secular contamination. (similarity 0.81)
• Moralizing gods and costly rituals coevolved to boost in-group cooperation and out-compete rivals. (similarity 0.81)
• Moral intuitions bind strangers into sacred communities that outcompete rivals (similarity 0.81)
• Participation in religious ritual and perceived group threat jointly make people sacralize preferences. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Prosocial religious groups outcompeted rivals through internal cooperation. #corroborates (0.82)
• The social scale a religion can bind grows with the deity’s remoteness #expands (0.78)