Rituals that are expensive, painful or time-consuming can signal commitment that free riders find hard to fake, and thereby support cooperation.
Sosis's comparative work on nineteenth-century American communes found that religious communes outlasted secular ones, and that among religious communes the number of costly requirements predicted longevity. The proposed mechanism is screening rather than piety: a person unwilling to pay the entry price is unlikely to have contributed later.
In practice
- A society whose membership requires a weekend of unpaid work each year has fewer members and almost no free riders.
- A startup that pays below market attracts people who want the thing itself, and cannot tell which of them simply had no offers.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is that a signal is credible when faking it costs more than the benefit of joining, so painful, expensive or time-consuming requirements screen out those who would free-ride.
- In its favour
- Sosis's comparative work on nineteenth-century communes found religious ones outlasting secular ones, with longevity rising in the number of costly requirements, which is the pattern the theory predicts.
- Against it
- The direction of causation is contested, since groups that already have strong commitment may be the ones able to impose demanding requirements, and the theory does not say which costs count as signals rather than as ordinary practice.
- Standing
- Supported by comparative work on commune longevity and religious groups, and contested on direction of causation: the demanding groups that survive may differ in other ways too.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change