Abstract
This study investigates the evolutionary validity of “unfavored” extreme behaviors of specific religious groups against social expectations, including the Shincheonji Church, during the initial outbreaks of the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea. Those religious groups drew serious criticism from the public due to their noncompliance that resulted a massive number of new COVID-19 cases in the regions. A survey of 1000 Korean residents was conducted to assess feelings of affection, trust, distance, and influence towards at-risk groups such as Daegu residents and Shincheonji Church members. Based on the theory of the Behavioral Immune System (BIS), we compared two hypothesis to explain the social reactions toward those groups: Signal Theory and Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs). The findings suggest that the extreme behaviors of religious groups can be better explained by CREDs. These results indicate that religious customs related to hygiene, purity, and taboos, as well as in-group/out-group bias customs related to BIS, could have produced and developed independently. Moreover, it is necessary to further investigate whether the negative bias towards out-group members serves as an adaptive trait to prevent the spread of epidemics in the future.