Moralizing gods help societies cooperate

See Why You Just Helped That Stranger by Robert M. Sapolsky. According to Wikipedia, "He is currently a professor of biology, and professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, at Stanford University." Cooperation may be important for economies. How do you get a large number of people in a factory to work together, for example? Excerpts:

"When do religions tend to invent such moralizing gods? A number of researchers—such as Carlos A. Botero of Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues—have shown that moralizing gods become more common in large-group cultures.

Why? Psychologist Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia (UBC), looking at the size of groups, proposes that as cultures grow, something uniquely human emerges—opportunities to act anonymously. To Dr. Norenzayan, that’s when moralizing gods become useful to maintaining the social order. Even if you do something rotten and no one knows, there’s a Someone who does."

"people who play an economic game anonymously, whether they are religious or not, become more pro-social when unconsciously primed to think about God (by having to unscramble jumbled sentences that make religious references)."

"people in cultures with moralizing gods tend to be more pro-social—a hypothesis tested in a recent paper in the journal Nature by psychologist Joe Henrich of UBC and collaborators, including Dr. Norenzayan. The researchers surveyed nearly 600 people around the world, believers in such faiths as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, animism and ancestor worship.

Subjects had to deal with a simple economic scenario: Here is X amount of money. Divide it between yourself and a geographically distant co-religionist whom you don’t know. Or divide it between that distant co-religionist and a local co-religionist whom you do know. Subjects then answered questions about their religion.

After controlling for various economic and demographic variables, back came a clear answer—the more that people considered their god(s) to be moralizing and punitive, the more generously they divvied up money with that stranger. Thus, the threat of moralizing gods may help to explain some of the human capacity for pro-social cooperation among strangers."