A sweeping theory published early November in the journal Science posits a new explanation for the divergent course of Western civilization from the rest of the world: The early Catholic Church, medieval Catholicism, reshaped family structures and, by doing so, changed human psychology forever after.
The researchers assert that they can trace all sorts of modern-day differences among cultures — from donating blood to strangers to paying parking tickets — to the influence of medieval Catholicism.
“The longer the duration under the church will predict greater individualism, less conformity and obedience, and more cooperation and trust with strangers. Our findings have big implications,” said Joseph Henrich, one of the researchers.
The research, conducted by George Mason University economists Jonathan Schulz and Jonathan Beauchamp and Harvard University evolutionary biologists Henrich and Duman Bahrami-Rad, tells a new story about how human cultures turned out so different from one another.
That story begins with kinship networks — the tribes and clans of densely connected, insular groups of relatives who formed most human societies before medieval times. Catholic Church teachings disrupted those networks, in large part by prohibiting marriage between relatives (which had been de rigueur), and eventually provoked a wholesale transformation of communities, changing the norm from large clans into small, monogamous nuclear families.
That cultural overhaul, the researchers argue, prompted tremendous changes to human psychology.
The team analyzed Vatican records to document the extent of a country’s or region’s exposure to Catholicism before the year 1500, and found that longer exposure to Catholicism correlated with low measures of kinship intensity in the modern era, including low rates of cousins marrying each other.
Both measures correlated with psychology, the researchers found by looking at 24 different psychological traits of people in different cultures: Countries exposed to Catholicism early have citizens today who exhibit qualities such as being more individualistic and independent, and being more trusting of strangers.
“This is the only theory that I am aware of that attempts to explain broad patterns of human psychology on a global scale,” University of Pennsylvania associate professor of psychology Coren Apicella wrote in an email. Apicella, who was not associated with this research but has studied the evolution of religion, called the new paper “phenomenal.”
Marrying a cousin was common practice in the large, close-knit networks of kin that dominated societies before Catholicism, the researchers said, and remains normal in many parts of the world today.
Bahmari-Rad, one of the researchers, said that he was raised in Iran, where 30 percent of marriages are to first or second cousins, and that he was surprised when he moved to the United States: “I thought it’s weird that Westerners don’t fall in love with their cousins.”
By contrast, the early Catholic Church was obsessed with preventing incest, even between distant relatives, Schulz said: “Thirteen out of 17 church councils in the 6th century were talking about incest and incest regulation.” Continue reading
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