Supernatural monitoring substitutes cheaply for costly human enforcement in trust networks.

Evidence

One powerful tool (although certainly not the only one), no doubt, was a credible fear of a God, a God who knows and monitors moral behavior, and doles out rewards and punishments. Sincere belief in a Supernatural Monitor is like agreeing to be followed by a powerful judge, 24/7, 365 days a week! In addition, while human judges are prone to error and costly to the system, a supernatural judge is failsafe and comes for free. Strangers who showed sincere belief in being monitored were, therefore, more likely to be invited to join these networks and were trusted more. If people trust each other even when no one is monitoring them, then human monitoring mechanisms, which are costly and difficult to enforce, can be supplemented and reinforced with supernatural monitoring. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 204

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly bridges the reader’s stated analytical purpose — the Supernatural Monitor mechanism that Father Rodrigues operates under in Silence; also connects to Norenzayan’s earlier chapters on watched-people-are-nice.
• DEFINE: Defines the Supernatural Monitor concept and its economic logic (failsafe, zero cost vs. fallible, costly human judges).

Related

• Belief in a supernatural monitor lowers the cost of trusting strangers in trade networks (similarity 0.91)
• Supernatural monitoring by any religion can extend trust beyond one’s own community (similarity 0.83)
• Supernatural monitoring caused the God-prosociality association, not the reverse (similarity 0.81)
• Supernatural monitoring causally precedes ideomotor associations, not the reverse. (similarity 0.81)
• Secular institutions substitute for supernatural monitoring by enabling trust in strangers. (similarity 0.81)
• Costly belief in supernatural watchers evolved to prevent worse social-detection errors (similarity 0.81)
• Supernatural belief works through the same surveillance mechanism that generates prosocial behavior (similarity 0.80)
• Supernatural monitoring evolves to solve cooperation problems in large anonymous groups (similarity 0.80)
• Effective secular monitoring can erode the root cause of atheist distrust. (similarity 0.79)
• Supernatural watcher beliefs check selfish behavior once social worlds grew transparent (similarity 0.78)
• Perceived accountability to supernatural monitors extends trust beyond one’s own religious community (similarity 0.78)