Many religions offers plenty of positive incentives to their followers - the promise of life after death, for instance. But why have religions that involve self-sacrifice and punishment survived? The link between support for a religion and a willingness to inflict punishment may point to the answer. To study this link, Ernst Fehr at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his team enrolled 304 people, mainly students. They were sorted into pairs and played 20 rounds of a game in which the first player was shown a monetary reward, and had to choose one of two ways to split it with their partner: they could either share it equally or take a greater share for themselves.
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