https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/salvador-gil-guirado/Salvador Gil-GuiradoHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/praying-for-rain/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/praying-for-rain/<p>This paper studies rainmaking as an instrumental religious belief. The central research question is: why do people believe that prayer can bring rain, even though it does not work? The authors develop a model of cultural evolution in which a religious leader prays for rain at an arbitrary time, and people update their beliefs about whether the leader can cause rainfall based on whether rain follows. The key mechanism is the local rainfall hazard function — the probability of rain conditional on how many days have passed since the last rainfall. In environments where the hazard is increasing (rain becomes more likely the longer a drought continues), a leader who prays during a drought will tend to be followed by rain, creating the illusion of efficacy. In environments with a flat or declining hazard, prayer cannot be systematically followed by rain in a persuasive way. The model yields five predictions: rain ritual traditions will select for prayers correlated with rainfall; the level of average rainfall does not determine persuasiveness; constant-hazard environments cannot support persuasive prayer; increasing-hazard environments are more likely to adopt rainmaking; and higher net benefits of rainfall (e.g., settled agriculture) further increase the likelihood of ritual.</p>