Communes, Religion and Cooperation Sosis (2000) ; Sosis & Bressler (2003) Vikki Chiang & Jasmine Yip University of Washington.

Communes, Religion and Cooperation

Sosis (2000) ; Sosis & Bressler (2003)Vikki Chiang & Jasmine YipUniversity of Washington

Sosis (2000): Religion and Intragroup Cooperation: Preliminary Results of a Comparative Analysis of Utopian CommunitiesAbstract:● Testing whether religious beliefs acts as a way of

communicating commitment and loyalty to in-group members and its role in the promotion of intra-group cooperation and overcoming of the “free-rider” problem

Introduction● Dilemma in human social interactions: inability

to guarantee a commitment to cooperate● Large-scale cooperation difficult to achieve

without social mechanisms in place● The role of trust and advertisement of

willingness to cooperate● Religion as a “costly-to-fake” credible

commitment signal

Hypothesis

● To evaluate if religion promotes intra-group cooperationo By comparing how religious and nonreligious groups

solve collective action problemso Looking specifically at utopian communities

longevity

Methods ● Building upon Kanter’s work (1968,1972)● Using Oved’s list of U.S. communes

o Data set consisted of 200 of the original 277 communes Concentrated the analysis on 19th century and

early 20th century communes All Hutterite Colonies eliminated from this analysis Cases with insufficient information on whether a

commune is ideologically secular or religious eliminated.

● “Socialist,” “Anarchist,” “Owenite, or “Fourierist” classified as non- religious or secular communes and communes coded as “Religious” or “Shaker” classified as religious communes

● Each commune’s year founded and year dissolved checked against Pitzer’s compilation

Results● Significant

difference of religious longevity over the secular longevity

● Religious communes better at solving problems of collective action?

Results● Owenism

o Socialist (non-religious)

● Foureieristo Transcendentalist

ideals (non-religious)o From Charles Fourier

● Shakerso Christian (religious)

Results continued...

● Secular communes twice as likely to dissolve in first 5 years

● 4 times more likely to dissolve in first 2 years

Discussion

● Religious longevity > secular longevity ● Limitations

o Assumption that communes dissolved as a result of inability to overcome collective-action problem of cooperative labor

o Alternative hypotheses of religion promoting intra-group cooperation has not been eliminated (group selection)

Costly Rituals and Kibbutz● Celibacy = super costly● Kanter (1972)● Secular groups and costly rituals?

o Fraternities/armieso Initiation rites to increase commitment, but not

sustaining lifetime commitment● Israeli Kibbutz = second most successful

o Predominantly secular

Sosis and Bressler (2003): Cooperation and Commune Longevity: A Test of the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion

Abstract:● Testing rituals and taboos of religious

vs secular communes and the effect on solving collective action problem

Introduction● Function of religion: increase intra-group

solidarity and cohesion ● Costly-to-fake commitment signals in religious

behaviors (ie. Islamic ritual obligations)● 3,000 utopian experiments (especially in the

19th century and 60’s)● Shared goals of survival and longevity are used

as a measure of commune ability to overcome problems of collective action

Hypotheses

1) Communes imposing greater costly requirements on members will have higher survivorship than communes with less costly requirements

2) Communes imposing costlier requirements on members are less likely to dissolve as a result of inability to overcome collective action problems than communes with less costly requirements

Method● Survey = 50 questions and 14 topics● Undergraduate students collected data

independtlyo Reliability r = 0.81

● N = 83 (30 religious and 53 secular) ● Data omission bias(F= 0.16, N = 83, p =

0.69)● Available information bias (F = 0.39, N = 83,

p = 0.53)● Costly Signals

Costly Signal Requirements● Costly requirements must exhibit:

o behaviors required by a communed entailing time. energy or financial costs not directed towards accomplishing somatic or reproductive goals OR limits an individual’s ability to achieve these benefits from non group members

o behaviors entailing somatic or reproductive benefits that are restricted by a commune or restrictions that limit an individual's ability to achieve these benefits from non group members

● Requirements/Constraints codingo Prohibited: not allowed under normal circumstanceso Restricted: rules regulating free use of items o Not prohibit or restrict

Cause of Commune Dissolution

● Internal dispute (n = 48) and economic failure (n = 43) were cited more than twice as often as other causes

● Both causes interpreted as a measure of communal reluctance to cooperate and inability to overcome problems of collective action

Results● Both religious and secular communes in this subsample

survived slightly longer than in the data set used in the preliminary analyses (Sosis, 2000)

Results

Results

Results

Results

Discussion● Mixed support for the costly signaling theory of religion● Costliness may be a necessary condition to promote group

solidarity, but it is not a sufficient conditiono Roy Rappaport: Ritual and Sanctity

Communicative abilities of secular and religious rituals

“Whereas the semantic content of the secular ritual is exhausted by the psychological, physiological, or social information transmitted in the ritual, this is not so in religious rituals. Religious rituals always include, in addition to messages of social import, implicit or explicit reference to some idea, doctrine, or supernatural entity.”

Discussion ● d’Aquili and Newberg (1999)

o Not only are religious experiences perceived as true, they

“appear to be ‘more real’ than baseline reality and are vividly described as such by experiencers after they return to baseline reality..So real do these experiencers appear when recalled in baseline reality that they have the ability to alter the way the experiencers live their lives.”

● The role of how communication within the ritual language occurs

Limitations

● It is assumed in this analysis that each constraint has an equal impact on increasing trust and commitment.o It is obvious that come constraints are costlier than

others - but how to operationalize the differential costs of constraints?

● Did not take into consideration the impact of social structure and leadership style on commune longevity