and conversely, greater difficulties of cooperation will result in more costly
religious institutions (Irons, 2001, p. 299).
Irons’theory has been empirically tested and extended, especially by Richard
Sosis and Joseph Bulbulia. Some of the empirical studies are helpful in
connecting the theory to historical materials. In thefirst study (Sosis, 2000;
Sosis & Bressler, 2003), Sosis found that among utopian societies (communes)
established in the United States between 1663 and 1937, secular (e.g., anarch-
ist) communes were three times more likely to dissolve in any year than
religious communes and the number of requirements in religious communi-
ties was a strong predictor of longevity. Sosis (2000, pp. 82–4) also found that
religious kibbutzim in Israel fared better economically than non-religious
ones. In another study (2003), members of religious and secular kibbutzim
participated in an economic game that modeled the sharing of resources,
which is a fundamental aspect of kibbutz life. Male members of religious
kibbutzim were found to be more cooperative than any other participants.
Sosis and Ruffle (2003, p. 718) argued that this was explained by the extent
of participation in communal rituals. In modern Orthodox Judaism, men are
expected to pray communally three times daily, whereas there is no such
obligation for women. For women, attending synagogue is not a collective
ritual. In an ethnographic study, Sosis and collaborators (2007) found that the
costs of male initiation rites in a society predicted how frequently the society
engaged in warfare, considered the par excellence problem of cooperation and
defection.
An important insight that Sosis (2003, p. 103, 2006, pp. 73–4) added to the
theory, strengthening its cognitive dimension, is that theperceived costsof
participating in a ritual are lower for religious than non-religious participants,
because the former believe in a range of benefits (such as a better fate in the
afterlife) that are non-existent for others. We can add that for believers rituals
can convey (positive) subjective experience that they do not yield for others (see
Chapter 7). Committed believers are thus more prepared to perform rituals
and willing to incur higher costs than non-committed outsiders. Sosis (2006,
pp. 74–5) also suggested that participation in rituals strengthens beliefs even if
one initially participates in them without strong commitment (such as for
expected gain or under social pressure). Here Sosis borrows from cognitive
dissonance theory, which emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining beliefs that
contradict those of one’s close social environment. It has to be noted, however,
that this argument introduces a different perspective on rituals (as a tool of
transmittingideas), which we will deal with below in more detail. In later
publications, Iron’s ideas have been brought into connection with the use of
“costly signals”in other contexts (such as sexual selection) and the emerging
body of theorizing is often called thecostly signaling theoryof rituals and the
signals used in rituals are often calledhard-to-fake signals—that is, signals that
are difficult to produce without actual underlying commitment.
Ritual 101