【PsyToday】When God Is Watching You in the Bedroom

The intimate relationship between religion and prosociality.A common theme among the religions of the world is that of a supreme being watching over us, meting out rewards for good behaviors and punishments for bad ones. We see religions organized around such deities among all historical civilizations, and such belief systems remain common around the world today. Observations such as these suggest that belief in God may be a human universal, something built into our DNA.And yet, studies of hunter-gatherer societies indicate that our prehistoric ancestors had no religion. Hunter-gatherers have spiritual beliefs to be sure—notions about invisible divinities behind the forces of nature. But the concept of a supreme being who sits in judgment of us is foreign to them.Indeed, hunter-gatherers have no need for a belief that God is watching them. In their small, close-knit clans, every ………………………………