The fairness of hell

"Recent work has also tentatively proposed that certain religious institutions, beliefs, and rituals may have coevolved with the norms that support large-scale societies and broad exchange. Intersocietal competition may have favored those religious systems that galvanize prosocial behavior in broader communities, perhaps using both supernatural incentives (for example, hell) and recurrent rituals that intensify group solidarity."

This is part of a brand new article, published in Science, that uses field behavioral experiments to explore the relationship of market, religion, community size and the evolution of fairness and punishments.