[jiriknesl]

Sorry for a super late answer.

The reason those studies are just correlational, is because in social sciences, you don't really have many other tools.

There are no axioms, deduction is impossible. So that part of the argument is not really all that much valid. You have no mechanism to make social sciences more exact.

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Yes, there are also negative outcomes. But positive ones are stronger than the negative ones.

And also, some of your examples are not negative at all. The point of fear of damnation for example is the reason why ethics were enforceable for hundreds or thousands of years, when the state was significantly weaker, there weren't real courts, etc. Shame and guilt are important motivators. They developed in humans to make correction of antisocial behaviors possible if you don't want just violently punish people for everything. Having no shame and guilt is an attribute of psychopaths.