title: What does God know? Supernatural agents' access to socially strategic and non-strategic information.
abstract: Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents' socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents' knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents--God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens--that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents' socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, Storrs, CT 06269-2176, USA. benjamin.purzycki@uconn.edu
authors.forename: Benjamin G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Purzycki
authors.forename: Daniel N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Finkel
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shaver
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wales
authors.forename: Adam B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sosis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003071:Cognition; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012067:Religion; D012919:Social Behavior; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055815:Young Adult