Supernatural monitoring and compassion independently drive prosocial behavior.

Evidence

Compassionate prosociality in nonbelievers: Saslow et al., 2013. Results also showed that among people reporting low feelings of compassion, believers were more prosocial than nonbelievers. However, this trend, if anything, was reversed among people reporting high levels of compassion. Religiosity and feelings of compassion were statistically unrelated—neither religion, nor atheism, appear to have a monopoly on these feelings. The implication is that supernatural monitoring and compassion can independently encourage nice behavior toward others. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 743

Categorization

• XREF: Gives a boundary condition to the Big God mechanism: compassion can substitute for supernatural monitoring, relevant to how the reader distinguishes apostate vs. morally self-driven characters.