Religious Norms: Their 8 Types, and Examples

A woman steps off the plane in a new city and checks her phone for the nearest place that serves halal food. Two rows behind her, a man quietly tucks a small cap onto his head before the afternoon prayer. Down the street, a family is deciding whether the Friday dinner can wait until after sundown. None of these people are breaking a law. Each of them is following a religious norm, a rule of conduct that feels as ordinary as brushing teeth and as weighty as a promise.

Outsiders tend to notice the surface, what someone eats, wears, or skips. Insiders experience something deeper: a sense of belonging to a community, of daily life arranged around something larger. The same norm can read as a gift in one household and a burden in another, and both reactions are legitimate. Psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have spent more than a century asking how these rules form, why they stick, and what they do to people.

No universal list exists.

But a practical framework with eight categories covers most of what people mean.

This article lays out the 8 types of religious norms, with concrete examples from several faiths, plus the psychology of why these norms matter and when they help or hurt.

What are religious norms, and why do religions have them?

A religious norm is a rule or expectation of behavior that members of a faith community believe comes from a sacred source, such as a deity, scripture, a prophet, or a tradition they hold holy. Psychologists studying children’s moral thinking define religious norms as norms perceived to derive from religious authorities, whose violation carries no obvious harm beyond breaking the rule itself. That’s what separates them from moral norms (don’t hit people) and social conventions (don’t talk with your mouth full).

Why do such norms exist? Sociologist Émile Durkheim offered the classic answer in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). He defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, which unite all who adhere to them into a single moral community. For Durkheim, the sacred is what’s set apart and forbidden, and shared rituals produce what he called collective effervescence, an emotional energy that binds people together. In his view, religious norms don’t merely express belief; they make a group a group.

A modern, more empirical version comes from psychologist Ara Norenzayan, whose book Big Gods argues that belief in watchful, morally concerned deities helped large societies cooperate among strangers. Working with Azim Shariff, he found in a 2007 experiment that people primed with religious words gave an average of $4.22 of a $10 stake to an anonymous stranger, compared with $1.84 for a control group. The finding comes with caveats (priming effects are debated, and some replications have been weaker), but it fits the broader idea that perceived supernatural monitoring nudges prosocial behavior.

Think of norms as a shared operating system. They coordinate behavior, signal commitment, and give daily life shape. They also carry meaning: observing a fast, a prayer time, or a dress code can feel like a conversation with something sacred.

Here is the eight-part framework this article uses. It isn’t an official taxonomy, since scholars carve the territory differently, but it covers the ground most readers have in mind.

Some norms straddle categories. A fast is both calendar and dietary; a veil is both dress and modesty. Treat the table as a map, not a set of walls.

Type 1: Which dietary norms do religions set?

Dietary norms specify what, how, and when believers may eat. They’re among the most visible religious rules in daily life, and they follow people into supermarkets, airports, and office lunches. Taken together, they make eating a moral and spiritual act and not just a biological one.

In Islam, foods are divided into halal (lawful) and haram (forbidden). Pork and its byproducts, blood, alcohol and other intoxicants, and meat from animals not slaughtered according to Islamic requirements are prohibited. In Judaism, kosher laws regulate permitted animals, the separation of meat and dairy, and slaughter practices. For Hindus, cows are revered, and eating beef is prohibited for many; one study of children noted that for Hindus, but not Muslims, eating beef is forbidden, while for Muslims, but not Hindus, fasting in Ramadan is required.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas offered an influential reading of such rules in Purity and Danger (1966). She argued that dietary laws, such as those in the biblical book of Leviticus, can be understood as part of a classification system: animals that fit neatly into a category are clean, while those that blur boundaries are marked unclean. Her interpretation is elegant and widely discussed, though it has been challenged, and other scholars stress symbolism, ethics, or ecology instead. No single explanation has won out.

Examples across traditions include:

• Halal and haram in Islam, covering meat, gelatin, alcohol, and processed foods.
• Kosher practice in Judaism, with separate dishes and certified products.
• Vegetarianism among many Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists, grounded in non-harm.
• Meatless Fridays during Lent for many Catholics.
• Abstinence from alcohol and caffeine in some Christian denominations, such as the Latter-day Saints.

Psychologically, food rules do something interesting. They turn an ordinary, repeated, necessary act into a daily reminder of identity. Each meal asks: who am I, and to whom do I belong? For many believers, this is a source of comfort and discipline. For people living in minority communities, it can also mean extra planning, friction at work events, or awkward conversations at family dinners.

Imagine Amir (an illustrative composite), the only Muslim on a project team. At the team lunch, he asks about the ingredients, orders the vegetarian option, and says nothing more. It takes five seconds. Across years, those seconds add up to a quiet, constant act of identity maintenance.

Type 2: What do dress and appearance norms look like?

Dress norms govern what believers wear and how they present their bodies, including hair, head coverings, jewelry, and symbols. They signal membership to others and, often, a sense of reverence or modesty to oneself. They’re also among the most debated religious norms in public life.

Some familiar examples: many Muslim women wear a hijab or other forms of head covering; many Orthodox Jewish men wear a kippah, and married Orthodox Jewish women may cover their hair; Sikh men and women who are initiated into the Khalsa observe the Five Ks, namely uncut hair (kesh), a comb (kangha), a steel bracelet (kara), a short sword (kirpan), and a particular undergarment (kachera). Buddhist monks and nuns wear robes that signal renunciation. Amish communities favor plain dress that reflects humility and separation from the world.

Dress also appears in worship contexts across traditions: removing shoes before entering a mosque, temple, or gurdwara; covering the head in a gurdwara; dressing formally for church; wearing white at certain festivals.

Why do these norms matter so much psychologically? Dress is the most public form of religious identity. It tells strangers who you are before you say a word, and it tells you, every morning, who you intend to be. For some people, that visibility is empowering. For others, it can bring scrutiny, discrimination, or pressure, especially in places where their dress is a minority practice or where it’s imposed instead of chosen.

Choice is a significant dividing line. Wearing a religious garment because it expresses faith differs from wearing it under compulsion, and the emotional experience differs accordingly. Research and lived accounts show wide variation: some women describe a head covering as freedom from objectification, while others describe it as a constraint. Both stories are real, and it’s worth resisting the urge to pick one.

A short vignette (illustrative): Dana, a university student, begins wearing her hijab at 19, after thinking it over for a year. Her grandmother, who didn’t wear one, is surprised. Her roommate asks whether it’s hot. Dana says she’s used to it, and means it.

The lesson, if there is one, is simple: ask people what their dress means to them before assuming you know.

Type 3: How do worship and prayer norms shape daily life?

Worship norms specify how, when, and with whom believers pray, meditate, or honor the sacred. They structure the day, the week, and the year, and they’re the most direct way many people experience their faith. The scope runs from a private whisper before sleep to a million pilgrims moving together.

Scholars distinguish personal worship from corporate worship, which takes place in a group, sometimes open to all and sometimes restricted to initiated members. Muslims perform the five daily prayers (salat), facing Mecca, and many attend congregational prayer on Fridays. Many Christians gather weekly for services, with sermons, hymns, and communion. Jewish worship includes daily prayers and Sabbath services. Hindus often worship at home shrines and temples, offering flowers, lamps, and food. Buddhists practice meditation and chanting, often at temples or in monasteries.

Norms of this type often include:

• Timing: prayers at set hours or weekly gatherings.
• Posture and gesture: kneeling, bowing, prostration, folded hands.
• Language: Arabic for Islamic prayer, Hebrew for many Jewish prayers, Latin in some Catholic settings.
• Pilgrimage: the hajj to Mecca, the Kumbh Mela in India, Christian journeys to Jerusalem or Santiago.

The psychological effects have been studied for decades. Regular prayer and meditation can offer a sense of calm, structure, and meaning, and some research finds associations between religious practice and better wellbeing, though findings vary and depend on how religion is measured and on the culture studied. Durkheim’s collective effervescence offers a social explanation: synchronized movement, chanting, and shared emotion produce intense feelings of connection.

It’s worth noting the darker side too. For people with scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder centered on religious or moral concerns, prayer rituals can become sources of distress, with repeated checking, fear of having done something wrong, and exhausting repetition. That’s a clinical issue, not a sign of devout faith, and treatment such as exposure and response prevention, delivered by a therapist who respects the person’s beliefs, can help.

Consider Marcus (an illustrative composite), who finds his Thursday evening meditation group the calmest hour of his week. Same practice, different person: Lena finds that she can’t leave a prayer without repeating it, afraid she said a word wrong. The norm is identical. The experience isn’t.

Type 4: What are calendar, fasting, and holy-day norms?

These norms mark time as sacred. They designate certain days, weeks, or seasons for rest, celebration, mourning, or abstinence, and they give believers a shared rhythm that runs under ordinary life like a second calendar.

Take Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslims who are able abstain from food, drink, and other activities from dawn until sunset, typically breaking the fast with iftar, a shared evening meal, and the month ends with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. In Judaism, the Sabbath (Shabbat) runs from Friday evening to Saturday night, a day of rest with restrictions on work, and Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and repentance. Christians observe seasons such as Advent, Lent, and Easter. Hindus celebrate festivals like Diwali and Holi. Buddhists mark Vesak, commemorating the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death.

Anthropologists describe commemorative and calendrical rites as a type of ritual performed at regular intervals, often yearly, to affirm and strengthen bonds of solidarity. Their function is partly emotional and partly structural: shared time makes a community visible to itself.

The psychology of shared time is potent. Ritual fasting, for example, combines a physical experience (hunger), a communal one (everyone doing it together), and a meaning (devotion or discipline). Many people describe fasting months as clarifying or humbling, while others find them hard, particularly those with eating disorders, diabetes, pregnancy, or demanding jobs. Most traditions provide exemptions for illness, travel, pregnancy, and other circumstances, and health professionals can help believers plan safely.

A few practical realities of observing a calendar norm in a majority-different society:

Employers and schools may not schedule around holy days. Exams land on festivals. Shared lunches fall during fasts. Navigating these requires small acts of negotiation, and the stress of repeatedly asking for accommodation is real. Workplaces that build flexibility into scheduling tend to report fewer conflicts.

For those who don’t observe, a useful courtesy is simply asking: “Is this a good time for you?” Few questions do more to lower the temperature.

Type 5: How do rites of passage mark life’s big transitions?

Rites of passage are rituals that mark a person’s move from one stage or status in life to another, such as birth, adulthood, marriage, and death. They’re religion’s way of saying: something has changed, and the community is here for it. Nearly every tradition has them.

French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep named and analyzed these rituals in his 1909 book Les rites de passage. He observed that they typically have three phases: separation from the old status, a transition (or threshold) period, and incorporation into the new status. Think of a wedding: the couple leaves their single identities, passes through the ceremony, and returns as a married pair recognized by the community.

Anthropologist Victor Turner extended the idea, focusing on the middle phase, which he called liminality, a betwixt-and-between state in which ordinary rules loosen. In his book The Ritual Process, he described how people in liminal states, such as initiates, often form intense bonds of equality and shared experience, which he called communitas. It’s an evocative idea, and it helps explain why retreat weeks, confirmation classes, and initiation camps often leave lasting friendships.

Examples from various faiths:

• Birth and naming: baptism or christening, Jewish brit milah and naming ceremonies, Islamic aqiqah.
• Coming of age: bar and bat mitzvah, Christian confirmation, the Hindu upanayana (sacred thread ceremony), Sikh Amrit initiation.
• Marriage: nikah in Islam, Christian weddings, Hindu saptapadi.
• Death: funerals, Jewish shiva, Hindu cremation rites, Buddhist memorial services.

Why do these rituals matter psychologically? They provide structure at moments of uncertainty. A funeral tells the bereaved what to do on the worst day of their lives. A coming-of-age ceremony tells a teenager that the community now expects more of them, and recognizes them. Research on ritual and grief suggests that rituals can reduce the sense of loss of control, though evidence on specific outcomes varies and some studies are small.

Imagine Noor (an illustrative composite) at her grandfather’s funeral. She doesn’t remember the readings. She remembers her aunts handing her tissues, someone setting out food, the quiet routine of washing cups afterward. The rite carried her.

That’s what rites of passage do at their best: they hold people while they change.

Type 6: What counts as a religious moral conduct norm?

Moral conduct norms are rules about right and wrong behavior that a faith teaches as divinely backed: don’t lie, don’t kill, don’t steal, be generous, be faithful. They’re the type most people think of first when they think of religion, and the type most likely to overlap with secular morality.

Examples are everywhere. The Ten Commandments in Judaism and Christianity cover honoring parents, prohibitions on murder, theft, and false witness. Buddhists follow the Five Precepts: refraining from harming living beings, taking what isn’t given, sexual misconduct, false speech, and intoxicants that cloud the mind. Islam stresses honesty, justice, and kindness, with detailed teachings in the Qur’an and Hadith. Hinduism and Jainism emphasize ahimsa, non-violence. Sikhism teaches honest work, sharing with others, and remembering God.

Here’s where psychology gets interesting. Developmental psychologists Larry Nucci and Elliot Turiel studied how children think about religious rules compared with moral ones. In a 1993 study of Christian and Jewish children, they found that children generally treated rules like Sabbath observance as contingent on God’s word and applying to the faithful, while moral rules such as not hitting or stealing were seen as wrong regardless of what any authority said. In other words, even religious children distinguish between “this is what my community does” and “this is just wrong.”

That distinction matters. It suggests that many believers hold religious norms as obligations of membership, while holding core moral prohibitions as binding on everyone. It also helps explain why people from different faiths often agree about basic morality while disagreeing about ritual.

The broader debate about whether religion makes people more moral is unsettled. Studies find that religious people report more charitable giving in some contexts, and experiments such as Shariff and Norenzayan’s suggest priming effects, but results vary across cultures and measures, and secular communities show strong prosocial norms too. A fair summary is that religion can support moral behavior, particularly toward members of one’s own group, while the data on strangers and outgroups are more mixed.

Moral norms can also produce guilt and shame, which can be healthy when they motivate repair, and unhealthy when they become harsh or chronic. A therapist can help distinguish between guilt that points to a real wrong and shame that attacks the whole self.

Type 7: How do religions regulate family, marriage, and sexuality?

Almost every religious tradition has norms about family life: who may marry whom, how marriage is conducted, how children are raised, what roles men and women play, and which sexual behaviors are permitted. These are among the most emotionally charged norms because they touch intimacy, identity, and generational loyalty.

Examples include rules about marriage within the faith (endogamy), expectations of premarital abstinence, norms about modesty between unrelated men and women, teachings on divorce (Catholic doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage, versus provisions for divorce in Islam and Judaism), and expectations about child-rearing, including religious education. Many traditions have formal marriage ceremonies and expectations of lifelong commitment.

Views within each tradition differ considerably. Some denominations and communities within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have changed their positions on divorce, women’s leadership, and LGBTQ+ inclusion, while others maintain traditional positions, and many believers hold personal views that differ from their institution’s official stance. It’s a mistake to treat any faith as monolithic.

The psychological stakes are high. Norms in this domain can provide stability, shared expectations, and extended family support. They can also create conflict for people whose identities, relationships, or choices fall outside the norm. LGBTQ+ people raised in conservative religious communities, people who’ve divorced, and interfaith couples may face pressure, rejection, or a painful split between faith and family. Research consistently links family rejection to worse mental health outcomes, particularly for LGBTQ+ youth.

Here’s a gentler way to think about it:

1. Family norms often serve to protect and stabilize the community’s next generation.
2. They can also restrict individual choice, especially when enforced through shame or exclusion.
3. Most people live somewhere in between, negotiating tradition and personal conviction.

Take Priya (an illustrative composite), whose parents hope she’ll marry within their faith. She loves her partner, who comes from a different background. They don’t ask her to choose; they ask her to meet him. A year later, the dinner table has a new seat. Not every story ends that way, but many do, slowly.

If you’re caught in this tension, a counselor who respects both your faith and your autonomy can help. Many religious leaders also offer pastoral counseling.

Type 8: What are community, charity, and social norms?

This last type covers the rules about how believers treat each other and outsiders: giving to the poor, welcoming strangers, respecting elders, honoring religious authority, and following norms of speech and conduct. It’s where religion becomes a social institution, and where its practical effects are often most visible.

Examples abound. Islam includes zakat, obligatory almsgiving usually calculated at 2.5 percent of qualifying savings, and encourages voluntary charity (sadaqah). Sikh gurdwaras run langar, a free communal kitchen open to everyone regardless of background. Christians practice tithing and charitable outreach, and Jewish tradition emphasizes tzedakah, often translated as charity or justice. Hindus and Buddhists value dana, generosity. Hospitality to strangers is a strong norm in many traditions.

Social norms also cover speech and conduct (avoiding gossip, blasphemy, or profanity), respect for religious leaders, and expectations of attendance and participation. In tight-knit communities, these norms are enforced through reputation, social approval, and, in some cases, exclusion.

Anthropologist Richard Sosis studied how costly religious demands help communities hold together. In a 2003 study of nineteenth-century American communes, he and Bethany Bressler found that religious communes lasted longer than secular ones, and that, within religious communes, the number of costly requirements (such as dietary restrictions and bans on alcohol) predicted longevity. The idea, known as costly signaling, is that demanding norms weed out free riders and signal real commitment, which builds trust.

It’s a neat finding with limits: the sample was small, the communes were historical and specific to one time and place, and the argument concerns group survival, not individual wellbeing. But it captures something intuitive. When people are willing to follow difficult norms together, others can trust them.

The same mechanisms that build trust can also build barriers. Strong in-group norms can lead to exclusion of outsiders, social pressure to conform, and difficulty leaving. Research on religious communities shows both sides: high social support and cooperation within the group, and sometimes tension or discrimination toward those outside it.

Picture a gurdwara kitchen on a Sunday: dozens of volunteers rolling dough, chopping vegetables, serving anyone who walks in. A stranger who wandered in for the music leaves with a full stomach and a sense that someone noticed him. That is a community norm doing exactly what it was designed to do.

What would your own community’s version look like?

When do religious norms help, and when do they hurt?

Religious norms help when they provide meaning, community, structure, and support, and they hurt when they’re enforced through fear, shame, or exclusion, or when they conflict with a person’s basic safety and wellbeing. Most real lives contain both.

On the positive side, research links religious involvement with several benefits in some populations, including social support, a sense of purpose, and in some studies lower rates of depression and substance use. Norms contribute to this by structuring time, providing rituals for hard moments, and tying individuals into networks of mutual care. For many people, religious norms are a source of comfort, stability, and identity that they wouldn’t trade.

On the negative side, problems tend to cluster around a few themes:

• Coercion: norms enforced through threats, punishment, or social shunning instead of conviction.
• Scrupulosity and chronic guilt: rigid rule-following driven by anxiety, sometimes meeting criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Religious trauma: lasting psychological harm after experiences of abuse, fear-based teaching, or expulsion from a community, an area where research is still developing.
• Exclusion and stigma: harm to people whose identities or choices fall outside the norm, including LGBTQ+ members, divorced people, and those who leave the faith.
• Harmful practices: any norm that causes physical harm, denies medical care, or violates a person’s rights is a matter for the law and for child and adult protection services, regardless of its religious basis.
• Delay in help-seeking: some people avoid mental health care because they fear their faith will be judged, or believe prayer alone should be enough.

How you relate to a norm matters as much as the norm itself. Psychologists distinguish between internalized, freely endorsed motivation and pressured, externally controlled motivation, and a long line of research suggests that people who hold values as their own tend to fare better than those following them out of fear or obligation. Two people can follow the same rule and experience it very differently.

For families and clinicians, a few principles help: ask about meaning, not just behavior; take the person’s faith seriously as a source of strength and identity; and avoid treating religious norms as automatically pathological or automatically sacred. Many therapists receive training in religiously and spiritually integrated care, and many clergy work with mental health professionals.

If religious shame, guilt, or fear has brought you to a dark place, please reach out. In the US, call or text 988; in Canada, 9-8-8; in the UK or Ireland, Samaritans at 116 123 (Ireland also has Pieta at 1800 247 247); in Australia, Lifeline at 13 11 14; in New Zealand, call or text 1737. For immediate danger, call 911, 999, 112, 000, or 111, depending on where you live.

Whatever you decide about any particular norm, you can ask who it serves, and whether it’s bringing you toward life or away from it.

FAQs about Religious Norms

What are religious norms?

Religious norms are rules or expectations about behavior that believers see as coming from a sacred source, such as a deity, scripture, a prophet, or revered tradition. They cover things like what to eat, how to dress, when and how to pray, how to mark life events, and how to treat others. Psychologists who study how children think about rules describe religious norms as those perceived to derive from religious authorities and whose violation has no obvious intrinsic harm beyond breaking the rule. That’s what distinguishes them from moral norms, which are about harm and fairness, and from social conventions, which are about local customs.

What are the main types of religious norms?

There’s no single official list, but a practical framework identifies eight: dietary norms, dress and appearance norms, worship and prayer norms, calendar and fasting norms, rites of passage, moral conduct norms, family and sexuality norms, and community or social norms. Real practices often cross categories. For example, Ramadan combines fasting, calendar, and worship, while a wedding blends rite of passage with family norms. Different scholars organize the territory differently, so treat any list as a convenient map and not a definitive taxonomy.

What is an example of a religious norm?

Plenty exist. Observant Muslims avoid pork and alcohol and fast during Ramadan. Observant Jews keep kosher and rest on the Sabbath. Many Hindus avoid beef, and many Buddhists follow the Five Precepts. Sikhs who are initiated observe the Five Ks, including uncut hair and a steel bracelet. Many Christians attend weekly worship and observe Lent. Each of these is a behavior followed because it’s understood to come from a sacred source, not because a secular law demands it, which is what makes it a religious norm.

How are religious norms different from moral norms?

Moral norms concern harm, fairness, and rights, and people usually see them as binding regardless of what any authority says. Religious norms are rules believers trace to a sacred source, and often treat as binding on the faithful specifically. Larry Nucci and Elliot Turiel found in a 1993 study that religious children generally viewed rules like Sabbath observance as dependent on God’s word, while they saw moral rules, such as not hitting, as wrong regardless. The two can overlap, as with prohibitions on murder or theft, but the psychological flavor differs: moral norms feel universal, while religious norms feel like obligations of membership.

Why do religions have so many rules?

Researchers offer several complementary explanations. Emile Durkheim argued that shared rules and rituals create social cohesion and a moral community. Ara Norenzayan suggests that beliefs in watchful, moral deities helped large groups of strangers cooperate. Richard Sosis found that costly requirements were linked to the longevity of religious communes, consistent with the idea that demanding norms signal commitment and build trust. Mary Douglas emphasized classification and symbolic order. Each explanation captures a piece, and none is universally accepted. Rules also provide meaning and structure to daily life, which many believers value for its own sake.

Can religious norms be bad for mental health?

Sometimes, depending on how they’re taught and enforced. Norms experienced as meaningful and freely held are often linked with support and wellbeing, while norms enforced through fear, shame, or exclusion can contribute to anxiety, guilt, and depression. Scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder involving religious or moral concerns, can make rituals distressing. Some people also describe lasting harm after fear-based religious upbringings or expulsion from communities, an area where research is still developing. Evidence-based therapy that respects the person’s beliefs can help, and many therapists are trained to work with religious clients.

Do religious norms change over time?

Yes, though at different speeds in different communities. Practices around divorce, women’s leadership, dress, music, technology, and LGBTQ+ inclusion have shifted in many traditions, while others hold firm. Within any one faith there’s often a spectrum, from strict to liberal, and individual believers frequently hold views that differ from their institutions’ official positions. Migration, education, media, and generational change all influence what’s expected. Core beliefs may remain stable while the everyday application of norms evolves, and internal debate about what a norm really requires is a normal feature of living traditions.

How should I respond to someone’s religious norms at work or school?

Ask politely and avoid assumptions. If a colleague fasts, prays at set times, or avoids certain foods, a simple question like “Is there anything that would make this event easier for you?” goes a long way. Offer flexibility where you can, such as scheduling around major holy days, providing suitable food options, and allowing short prayer breaks. Don’t pressure people to explain or defend their practices, and don’t assume that all members of a faith observe the same norms. Many workplaces and schools have policies on religious accommodation, and local laws vary, so check the rules where you live.

Bibliography

• Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Durkheim, E. (1912/1995). The elementary forms of religious life (K. E. Fields, Trans.). Free Press.
• Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press.
• Nucci, L., & Turiel, E. (1993). God’s word, religious rules, and their relation to Christian and Jewish children’s concepts of morality. Child Development, 64(5), 1475-1491.
• Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803-809.
• Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211-239.
• Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Aldine.
• van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. L. Caffee, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1909)