Benjamin Grant Purzycki

TL;DR: The results support the hypothesis that beliefs in moralistic, punitive and knowing gods increase impartial behaviour towards distant co-religionists, and therefore can contribute to the expansion of prosociality.

TL;DR: Data on cross-cultural perceptions of facial masculinity and femininity are presented and it is found that in less developed environments, typical “Western” perceptions are attenuated or even reversed, suggesting that Western perceptions may be relatively novel.

TL;DR: There is a significant gulf between expressed beliefs and intuitive religious cognition and evidence for a moralization bias of gods' minds, which is demonstrated the farther away from spirits' place of governance a moral behavior takes place, the less they know and care about it.

TL;DR: Support is provided for the hypothesis that beliefs in monitoring and punitive gods help expand the circle of sustainable social interaction, and open questions about the treatment of religious outgroups.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine variation in the contents of supernatural minds across cultures and the social correlates of this variation, concluding that communities which endorse omniscient supernatural agents that are highly concerned with moral behavior will emphasize the importance of shared beliefs (cultural consensus), whereas communities which possess supernatural agents with limited social knowledge who are concerned with ritual actions will emphasize shared behavioral patterns (social consensus).