RELIGIOUS BEHAVIORS AS STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZING GROUPS OF PEOPLE - ASOCIAL CONTINGENCY ANALYSIS

A social contingency analysis of religion is presented, arguing that i ndividual religious behaviors are principally maintained by the many p owerful benefits of participating in social groups rather than by any immediate or obvious consequences of the religious behaviors. Six comm on strategies are outlined that can shape the behaviors of large group s of people. More specifically, religious behavior is shaped and maint ained by making already-existing contingencies contingent upon low-pro bability, but socially beneficial, group behaviors. Many specific exam ples of religious themes are then analyzed in terms of these common st rategies for social shaping, including taboos, rituals, totems, person al religious crises, and symbolic expression. For example, a common vi ew is that people are anxious about life, death, and the unknown, and that the direct function of religious behaviors is to provide escape f rom such anxiety. Such an explanation is instead reversed-that any suc h anxiety is utilized or created by groups through having escape conti ngent upon members performing less probable behaviors that nonetheless provide important benefits to most individual group members. These ge neralized beneficial outcomes, rather than escape from anxiety, mainta in the religious behaviors and this fits with observations that religi ons typically act to increase anxiety rather than to reduce it. An imp lication of this theory is that there is no difference in principle be tween religious and nonreligious social control, and it is demonstrate d that the same social strategies are utilized in both contexts, altho ugh religion has been the more historically important form of social c ontrol.