If “Big Gods” evolved in part because of their ability to morally regulate groups of people who cannot count on kin or reciprocal altruism to get along (Norenzayan, 2013), then powerful gods would tend to be good gods. If the mechanism for this cooperation is some kind of fear of supernatural punishment (Johnson & Bering, 2006), then we may expect that mighty gods tend to be punishing gods. The present study is a statistical analysis of superhuman being concepts from 20 countries on five continents to explore whether the goodness of a god is related to its mightiness. Gods that looked more like the God of classical theism and gods that were low in anthropomorphism were more likely to be regarded as morally good and to be the target of religious practices. Mighty gods were not, however, especially likely to punish or to be a “high god.”

如果“大神”的发展部分是因为它们有能力在道德上规范不能依靠亲戚或对立的利他主义相处的人（Norenzayan，2013），那么强大的神将倾向于是善神。如果这种合作的机制是对超自然惩罚的某种恐惧（Johnson＆Bering，2006），那么我们可以预期，强大的神倾向于惩罚神。本研究是对来自五大洲20个国家的超人类观念的统计分析，以探讨神的善良是否与神的威力有关。看起来更像古典有神论的神和拟人化程度较低的神更有可能被认为在道义上是善良的，并且是宗教实践的目标。但是，全能的神特别不可能惩罚或成为“高等神”。