Supernatural monitoring caused the God-prosociality association, not the reverse

Evidence

Whereas the ideomotor hypothesis posits that the link between religion and prosociality is the consequence of a cultural association, the supernatural monitoring hypothesis speaks to the more basic question of why religion might cause large-scale anonymous prosociality in the first place. If people are less prone to selfishly cheat the system when they feel watched, then beliefs in moralizing gods, who can monitor social interactions even when no humans are watching, may have been instrumental in promoting large-scale human cooperation. Once these supernatural monitors culturally spread in human populations, and practices and institutions were built to promote them, repeated activation of thoughts related to them would have led to the habitual and unconscious cognitive associations between these thoughts and prosocial behaviors, exactly as predicted by the ideomotor hypothesis. Therefore, it is more plausible that ideomotor associations between God and prosociality were the consequence of belief in supernatural monitoring, rather than being a cause. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 175

Categorization

• XREF: Directly integrates with the stated reading purpose: supernatural monitoring here is precisely Norenzayan’s Big God mechanism wired into Rodrigues’ omniscient-gaze experience. — connects to: Belief in supernatural watchers evolved as an adaptive guard against selfishness; Supernatural watchers and rituals jointly forged large-scale moral communities; Supernatural belief works through the same surveillance mechanism that generates prosocial behavior (+9 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 175

Broader Connections

• Supernatural punishment explains religion’s prosocial effects better than ideomotor priming #corroborates (0.85)
• Chronic, communal, in-group religious practice drives the prosociality effect #contradicts (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 183