One of my favorite films is Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” because of its philosophical exploration of justice, guilt, and human behavior (also because it tells a great story). In the narrative, Judah (Martin Landau) is a successful ophthalmologist who contemplates murder to preserve his social status. Though he is not a religious man, he was raised a pious Orthodox Jew, and the memory of that time stays his hand, at least for a while. He tells someone, “I remember my father telling me, ‘The eyes of God are on us always.'” Eyesight and vision are key themes in the film; in this particular instance, Judah behaves a certain way because he fears that a being he no longer believes in observes everything he does, and will not let him get away with murder.

When the power of that fear fades in Judah, we are confronted by the bleak truth that absent belief in God, moral behavior becomes a matter of what you can both get away with in your society, and what you can rationalize away. Now, scientists are testing the idea that “supernatural monitoring” is key to producing pro-social behavior. Here’s a look at some recent findings:

The supernatural monitoring hypothesis doesn’t portray religious morality in the purest light: doing the right thing because you feel it’s the right thing is quite different from doing the right thing because someone’s looking over your shoulder, be that God or your neighbour. Yet irrespective of why people do good and refrain from doing bad, any mechanism that encouraged both would provide community benefits. There might be less cheating, more trust, and greater scope for working together for common goals as part of a larger moral community. One obvious mechanism for a social species like ours is punishment by peers who have found out that we’ve been violating moral norms — free-riding on the efforts of others or stealing from our neighbours — and experimental studies confirm that we are indeed punitive in just this way³. The importance of reputation and standing have given rise to a social psychology keenly attuned to how we’re seen by others, and what others see of us. When we’re watched, we’re better.

So what did the experiment this piece reports on discover? “It’s a bit of a mixed bag.” But:

These are still early days in the cognitive science of religion. It would make life easier if there was a neat and conclusive story to tell here, but there’s no reason to expect that this is how things will pan out, and even less that initial forays in this area will be free from ambiguity. The more important point is to come up with good questions, of the sort addressed by Gervais and Norenzayan. The answers will be revised, clarified, and extended by others over time — and following this evolving story is where the fun’s at.