Do religious and market-based institutions promote cooperation in Hadza hunter-gatherers?

Abstract

Humans’ willingness to bear costs to benefit others is an evolutionary puzzle. Cultural group selection proposes a possible answer to this puzzle—cooperative norms and institutions proliferate due to group-level benefits. For instance, belief in knowledgeable, moralizing deities is theorized to decrease selfishness and favoritism through threat of supernatural punishment. Similarly, norms of fairness and cooperation are theorized to have coevolved with engagement in markets, which necessitate anonymous exchanges. We investigate these theories among the Tanzanian Hadza who, until recently, have had minimal exposure to markets or major world religions. Engagement with Western tourists, village markets, and Christian missionaries is increasingly leading researchers to ask how such interactions have affected cooperative behavior. We interviewed 172 Hadza from 15 camps varying in market proximity, and measured cooperative decision-making using economic games. We find that exposure to missionaries is associated with increased belief in a knowledgeable and punitive deity, with mixed evidence that these beliefs, in turn, affect game play. In contrast, we find some evidence that those living in market-adjacent regions exhibit less in-group favoritism when cooperating. These results support the claim that market-norms, and to some degree religious beliefs, facilitate greater cooperation and fairness in social interactions.