A new study published in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality suggests that believing in hell might be linked to more conservative sexual behaviors across different societies. The findings indicate that while religious beliefs help shape romantic choices, the fear of supernatural punishment tends to act as a stronger societal deterrent against casual sex and infidelity than the hope of heavenly reward.
Across many different cultures and historical periods, human societies have embraced the concept of an afterlife where actions on Earth face divine judgment. The study authors, Samudera Fadlilla Jamaluddin and Fakhirah Inayaturrobbani of the Faculty of Psychology at Universitas Gadjah Mada, wanted to explore why these specific religious ideas persist so strongly in the modern world.
They proposed that expectations of moral consequences after death frequently apply directly to human sexuality. “Much of the psychology-of-religion literature treats religiosity as a single, undifferentiated construct,” Jamaluddin said. “While there is strong evidence that fear of supernatural punishment promotes cooperation, far less is known about how afterlife beliefs specifically relate to romantic and sexual behavior.”
In many traditions, short-term mating behaviors and infidelity are labeled as sins deserving of eternal punishment. Long-term committed relationships usually receive praise and validation as a sacred obligation. Religious frameworks tend to moralize monogamy by framing marital commitment as a holy duty rather than a mere social contract.
“We were struck by the fact that short-term mating is so often moralized as ‘sin’ while long-term commitment is praised,” Jamaluddin said. “We wanted to test whether beliefs in heaven and hell might steer people toward relationship choices that support stability, which could help explain why these beliefs have persisted for so long.”
Monogamous relationships tend to offer numerous adaptive benefits for human survival and community building. By concentrating parental investment, monogamous unions lower the risk of resource deprivation and child malnourishment. These family structures foster paternal certainty and promote efficient resource pooling among partners. Stable marriages also create a structured environment where parents can easily pass down their religious values to their children.
The scientists proposed that specific afterlife beliefs encourage monogamy, which in turn ensures those same beliefs survive across generations. To capture both broad cultural patterns and individual psychology, the scientists conducted two separate investigations.
The first study examined macrolevel associations across different countries to understand the broader societal climate. The authors analyzed data from the World Values Survey and a large cross-cultural relationship data set. They looked at information from 27 countries, including 37,349 participants for the belief measures and 21,400 participants for the sexual behavior measures.
For each country, the researchers calculated the national averages for belief in heaven and belief in hell. They also gathered national data on relationship preferences, casual sexual experiences, emotional infidelity, and relationship satisfaction.
To ensure statistical accuracy, the models controlled for several national socioeconomic factors. These included gross domestic product per capita, a metric known as the Gini index which measures income inequality, national unemployment rates, and attitudes about gender equality.
The analysis produced distinct patterns for belief in hell compared to belief in heaven. At the societal level, a higher national prevalence of belief in hell predicted lower rates of casual sexual behavior. Countries with stronger beliefs in hell also reported much lower rates of sexual infidelity and lower societal acceptance of casual sex.
“Belief in hell, more than belief in heaven, is consistently linked to sexual restraint, including lower casual sex, more conservative attitudes, and less infidelity,” Jamaluddin told PsyPost. “At the societal level this holds even after accounting for wealth, inequality, and gender equality.”
Interestingly, the general biological desire for casual sex did not significantly decrease in these regions. This suggests that people in these societies experience similar impulses but choose not to act on them due to the fear of supernatural punishment. “Notably, these beliefs do not seem to reduce sexual desire itself; rather, they appear to shape whether people act on it,” Jamaluddin said. “This fits the idea that the threat of punishment is a more reliable behavioral constraint than the promise of reward.”
When looking at belief in heaven at the national level, the associations with lower infidelity and casual sex were much weaker. These positive links largely disappeared after adjusting for the economic and equality factors. Other relationship dynamics, such as intimacy, passion, and commitment, did not show reliable links to either belief once socioeconomic conditions were factored in. This provides evidence that socioeconomic context strongly shapes relationship dynamics alongside religious climate.
The authors then shifted their focus to the individual level for their second study. This shift helped them avoid the ecological inference fallacy. This fallacy is a logical error where one incorrectly assumes that broad societal trends apply perfectly to every single individual within that society.
The researchers used data from the United States General Social Survey collected between 1972 and 2024. The sample size for this second study varied from 388 to 4,788 participants depending on the specific survey questions being analyzed. This variation occurred because the survey uses a split-ballot design, meaning not all questions are asked to all participants in every single year.
Participants reported their personal beliefs in heaven and hell, alongside their attitudes toward premarital sex and infidelity. The survey also asked respondents to report their number of lifetime sexual partners, marital satisfaction, and total number of children. The scientists controlled for the age and income of each individual respondent. This allowed them to isolate the specific psychological effect of the religious beliefs from demographic influences.
At the individual level, both belief in heaven and belief in hell predicted more sexually and romantically conservative orientations. Stronger personal belief in either concept was associated with a lower acceptance of premarital sex. Participants who believed in an afterlife also reported having fewer lifetime sexual partners than those who did not.
Individual belief in heaven and hell also positively predicted a higher number of children. This finding aligns with broader trends linking higher religiosity to higher fertility rates and family formation. These family-oriented behaviors help facilitate the intergenerational continuity of religious values.
Neither belief reliably predicted an individual’s overall marital satisfaction or their likelihood of getting divorced. This indicates that afterlife beliefs function more specifically to regulate sexual behavior rather than shaping overall relationship quality. The punishment aspect of hell and the reward aspect of heaven both seem to motivate pro-family behavior at the individual level.
“The most striking result was how differently the beliefs behaved across levels of analysis,” Jamaluddin said. “At the societal level, belief in hell stood out as the unique predictor of sexual restraint, but at the individual level both heaven and hell predicted greater fertility and more conservative attitudes. It was a useful reminder that country-level patterns and individual psychology are not the same thing.”
The authors suggest that the prospect of supernatural punishment functions as a high-stakes prohibitive cost. This mechanism is somewhat analogous to loss aversion, a psychological concept where people prefer avoiding negative outcomes over acquiring equivalent gains.
The threat of hell serves as a consistent moral constraint against violating relationship norms. The abstract rewards of heaven can sometimes lead to moral licensing, where individuals justify minor transgressions because they feel their overall good deeds have earned them a reward.
Readers should avoid assuming that religious beliefs are the sole cause of monogamous behavior or relationship stability. The socioeconomic environment plays a massive role in shaping human relationships. In regions lacking strong government support systems, religious communities often provide the essential social and economic support that helps keep families together.
The threat of divine damnation might simply reinforce the behaviors that keep this communal support intact. “The effects are modest and correlational, so they describe tendencies across groups rather than destiny for any individual,” Jamaluddin said. “The societal analysis also rests on only 27 countries, so those estimates should be read as suggestive.”
He added that the individual-level associations were statistically robust and replicated the broad pattern, which gave the team more confidence. The study also relies on self-reported survey data spanning several decades. This methodology can obscure specific generational shifts in how religious beliefs interact with evolving sexual norms over time.
The reliance on correlational data also means the researchers cannot definitively prove that belief in hell directly causes a person to avoid casual sex. “First, this is correlational, not causal, so we are not claiming that belief in hell makes people faithful,” Jamaluddin said. “Second, and most importantly, readers should avoid the ecological inference fallacy: a pattern that appears across countries does not mean individuals within those countries behave that way.”
He also noted that the findings are not a value judgment about religious or non-religious people. Future investigations might track individuals over extended periods to see how changing religious beliefs influence sexual behavior as a person ages. Scientists could also explore how these specific afterlife beliefs operate in non-Abrahamic religious traditions that view the afterlife differently.
“We would like to move toward designs that can better address mechanism and change over time, such as cohort or longitudinal analyses and cross-cultural individual-level data,” Jamaluddin said. He hopes future studies will test the idea that these beliefs operate through deliberate, reflective moral reasoning rather than by altering impulse or desire.
The study, “From Damnation to Devotion: A Multilevel Investigation of Hell Versus Heaven Beliefs and Sexual Fidelity,” was authored by Samudera Fadlilla Jamaluddin and Fakhirah Inayaturrobbani.