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Credibility Displays

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Costly displays; Credibility enhancing displays

Definition

A costly display or behavior that provides other individuals with a reliable measure of a person’s beliefs or degree of commitment to a group: an ideology, set of values, or beliefs. Ancestral humans faced the adaptive challenge of verifying culturally transmitted information from other people in order to avoid being exploited or misled. Therefore, individuals evolved the ability to attend to credibility displays because they are indicative of one’s honest commitment to a group, or a group’s beliefs and ideology. Credibility displays promote group cohesion and solidarity because they represent commitment to beliefs that may be collectively beneficial.

Introduction

Researchers have proposed a connection between credibility displays and levels of commitment to group ideologies, religious beliefs, and shared values that promote solidarity and cooperation within groups (Atran and Henrich 2010; Atran and Norenzayan 2004;...

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References

  • Atran, S., & Henrich, J. (2010). The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory, 5, 18–30.

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  • Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713–730.

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  • Henrich, J. (2009). The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: Credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, 244–260.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Adam Tratner

Authors
  1. Adam Tratner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam Tratner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Tratner, A. (2016). Credibility Displays. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_510-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_510-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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