Worse Places for Gods: Does Latitudinal Variability Loosen Religiosity?

This multi-level study explores whether greater variability in day length, temperatures, and daily precipitation at higher latitudes has a potential impact on religiosity. Religiosity is measured as the importance of religion experienced by 915,437 inhabitants of 159 countries from 2010 to 2015. Our results show that latitudinal variability is incompatible with personal religiosity, and that this ecological link is mediated by cultural tightness versus looseness rather than parasite stress and national wealth. Geographical analyses add that personal religiosity increases from the North Pole toward the equator, decreases from the equator toward the South Pole, and varies negligibly from east to west. The generalizability of the observed ecology and geography of personal religiosity is demonstrated by replicating the results on 682,405 inhabitants of 147 countries from 2016 to 2021. These findings can be understood as system-theoretical connections between external system variability (stronger latitudinal variability) and internal system flexibility (weaker personal religiosity).