Religions consist of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioral, and developmental traits
that form a complex adaptive system. The underlying adaptive goal of religious systems is to …

Many aspects of religious rituals suggest they provide adaptive benefits. Studies across
societies consistently find that investments in ritual behaviour return high levels of …

Witchcraft beliefs are historically and geographically widespread, but little is known about
the cultural inheritance processes that may explain their variation between populations. A …

Objectives Human childrearing is cooperative, with women often able to achieve relatively
high fertility through help from many individuals. Previous work has documented …

Life history theory anticipates that organisms trade offspring quantity for offspring quality. In
modern human societies this tradeoff is particularly acute because of increased returns on …

This article considers the application of sexual selection theory to the study of religion by
discussing the basic concepts and theories in sexual selection and then outlines …

Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently
debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists …

Recent theorizing suggests that religious people's moral convictions are quite strategic
(albeit unconsciously so), designed to make their worlds more amenable to their favored …

Perhaps because groupishness comes so easily to humans, clear operational definitions of
the phenomena and justifications for the claim that it is deep‐seated are lacking in much of …

In low fertility settings, religious people tend to have larger families than non-religious
people. One way religious individuals may achieve larger relative family sizes is through …