Marking a decade since the publication of “The weirdest people in the world,” this special
issue is dedicated to exploring how to improve the quality of the science produced by the …

The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem
in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in …

Highlights•Cognitive biases and cultural transmission both explain some religious
variation.•Cultural evolution provides a unified account of recurrence and diversity in …

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use
of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary …

Why do humans believe in moralizing gods? Leading accounts argue that these beliefs
evolved because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent …

Starting from the premise that religion is a human endeavour that can be analysed and
compared across time and cultures, What Is Religion? brings the most up-to-date …

Moralizing religions encourage people to anticipate supernatural punishments for violating
moral norms, even in anonymous interactions. This is thought to be one way large-scale …

Abstract Four experiments (total N= 3591) examined how thinking about Karma and God
increases adherence to social norms that prescribe fairness in anonymous dictator games …

Does moral culture contribute to the evolution of cooperation? Here, we examine individuals'
and communities' models of what it means to be good and bad and how they correspond to …

As economic games have spread from experimental economics to other social sciences, so
too have critiques of their usefulness for drawing inferences about the 'real world'. What …