Fear of supernatural punishment harmonises human societies with nature

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Authors

Shota Shibasaki , Yo Nakawake, Wakaba Tateishi, Shuhei Fujii, Ryosuke Nakadai 

Abstract

Human activities largely impact the natural environment negatively and radical changes in human societies would be required to achieve their sustainable relationship with nature. Although frequently overlooked, previous studies have suggested that supernatural beliefs can protect nature from human overexploitation via beliefs that supernatural entities punish people who harm nature. Studies of folklore and ethnology have shown that such supernatural beliefs are widely found. However, whether and how such beliefs can be maintained in human society remains a question, because overexploiting natural resources without supernatural beliefs produces the greatest benefits. The current study aimed to build a mathematical model based on the evolutionary game theory and derive the conditions under which supernatural beliefs can spread in society, thereby preserving natural resources. To maintain supernatural beliefs, the fear of supernatural punishment invoked by scarce natural environments would, on one hand, be strong enough to prevent overexploitation but, on the other, be weak enough for the supernatural belief to spread in society via missionary events. Our results supported that supernatural beliefs would facilitate sustainable relationships between human societies and nature. In particular, the study highlighted supernatural beliefs as an essential driver for achieving sustainability by altering people’s interaction with nature.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X21P63

Subjects

Life Sciences

Keywords

evolutionary game theory, supernatural beleif, enviornmental feedback game, tragedy of commons, Mathematical model

Dates

Published: 2024-09-02 12:29

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
None

Data and Code Availability Statement:
The codes and simulation data used in this study are available at the Github repository at: https://github.com/ShotaSHIBASAKI/Cooperation_and_Supernatural_Punishment.