nih | A social contingency analysis of religion is presented, arguing that
individual religious behaviors are principally maintained by the many
powerful benefits of participating in social groups rather than by any
immediate or obvious consequences of the religious behaviors. Six common
strategies are outlined that can shape the behaviors of large groups of
people. More specifically, religious behavior is shaped and maintained
by making already-existing contingencies contingent upon
low-probability, but socially beneficial, group behaviors. Many specific
examples of religious themes are then analyzed in terms of these common
strategies for social shaping, including taboos, rituals, totems,
personal religious crises, and symbolic expression. For example, a
common view is that people are anxious about life, death, and the
unknown, and that the direct function of religious behaviors is to
provide escape from such anxiety. Such an explanation is instead
reversed—that any such anxiety is utilized or created by groups through
having escape contingent upon members performing less probable behaviors
that nonetheless provide important benefits to most individual group
members. These generalized beneficial outcomes, rather than escape from
anxiety, maintain the religious behaviors and this fits with
observations that religions typically act to increase anxiety rather
than to reduce it. An implication of this theory is that there is no
difference in principle between religious and nonreligious social
control, and it is demonstrated that the same social strategies are
utilized in both contexts, although religion has been the more
historically important form of social control.
