Evidence supporting a cultural evolutionary theory of prosocial religions in contemporary workplace safety data.

ABSTRACT: A prominent line of cultural evolutionary theory hypothesizes that religiously inspired prosocial behavior enhances the fecundity of pious groups, causing them to outcompete non-religious communities and spread their prosocial values. We present evidence concerning contemporary workplace safety, in the United States, that unexpectedly tested implications of this cultural evolutionary hypothesis. Avoiding workplace injury requires cooperation and injury influences fitness, thus cultural evolutionary theory would anticipate that religious communities should exhibit fewer workplace injuries. Indeed, we find that the proportion of a community adhering to a religion correlates negatively with rates of workplace injury in its private-sector establishments. This correlation emerges primarily when

SUBMITTER: Gu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8960878 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature