It is the nature of all developmental accounts that there will be fewer at the high end than at the base; in the case of morality, more sinners than saints. Given that fact, a belief in a moralizing punitive God could be expected to have a beneficial effect on many people’s behavior; providing as it does, a panopticon for the soul.
According to studies involving getting people from various cultural backgrounds to play an economics game with opportunities to cheat one’s opponents, hunter gatherers cheat without a conscience if they are playing against someone they do not know, while those people who believe in a moralizing God were much more honest with regard to strangers. We have evolved to play relatively nicely with family members and people we know well. Beyond about 150 people, known as the Dunbar number, explicit rules become necessary. Larger communities have a military advantage – big armies generally beat small ones – so human beings had to make an adjustment to living around people whose names one might not even know. Belief in a moralizing God who judges you and keeps an eye on your behavior is helpful in that context and most larger societies have developed such a belief.
In Lawrence Kohlberg’s terminology, this moralizing God is applicable to those who are at the lowest, pre-conventional level of moral development. Such people are more or less amoral. They refrain from acting badly only out of a fear of punishment, not because they have a conscience per se. Morally, the reason why someone does or does not do something is crucial.
To keep reading:
The Orthosphere 
Well-written and accessible even to my non-academic brain. Thanks Richard.
You and your colleagues are doing better than me. When I realized the only way out is through, I got too bored and frustrated to put together good monographs.
Thanks, theantignostic. It’s much appreciated.
I get some satisfaction about trying to understand things that I can’t change – kind of like being slowly killed and being informed of what the killer’s reason for doing it was.