Self-denial by shamans promotes perceptions of religious credibility
July 5, 2019 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/kvtqp (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Vignette-based quantitative study |
|---|---|
| Population | Mentawai people of Siberut Island, Indonesia, including rainforest horticulturalists and shamans known as sikerei |
| Key points | Mentawai participants inferred that self-denying shamans are more cooperative, more sincere believers in religious rules, and more dissimilar from normal humans with greater supernatural powers. The authors argue this supports all three proposed mechanisms of religious credibility and provides novel quantitative evidence that self-denial promotes perceptions of practitioners' religious credibility. |
Abstract
Religious leaders refrain from sex and food across human societies. Researchers argue that this self-denial promotes perceptions of credibility, invoking such associations in explanations of shamanism and prosocial religion, but few, if any, quantitative data exist testing these claims. Here we show that shamans in a small-scale society observe costly prohibitions and that observers infer three dimensions of credibility – cooperativeness, religious belief, and supernatural power – from shamans’ self-denial. We investigated costly prohibitions on shamanic healers, known as sikerei, among the rainforest horticulturalist Mentawai people of Siberut Island. We found that shamans must observe permanent taboos on various animals, as well as prohibitions on sex and food during initiation and ceremonial healing. Using vignettes, we evaluated Mentawai participants’ inferences about self-denial, testing three mechanisms of religious credibility: cooperative costly signaling, credibility-enhancing displays, and supernatural otherness. We found support for all three mechanisms: Mentawai participants infer self-denying shamans to be (1) cooperative, (2) sincere believers in the religious rules, and (3) dissimilar from normal humans and with greater supernatural powers. These data provide novel, quantitative evidence that self-denial develops to promote perceptions of practitioners’ religious credibility.