Evolutionary theories of morality, beginning with Darwin, have focused on explanations for altruism. More generally, these accounts have concentrated on conscience to the neglect of condemnation. As a result, few theoretical tools are available for understanding the rapidly accumulating data surrounding third-party judgment and punishment. Here we consider the strategic interactions among actors, victims, and third-parties to help illuminate condemnation. We argue that basic differences between the adaptive problems faced by actors and third-parties indicate that actor conscience and third-party condemnation (...) are likely performed by different cognitive mechanisms. Further, we argue that current theories of conscience do not easily explain its experimentally demonstrated insensitivity to consequences. However, these results might be explicable if conscience functions, in part, as a defense system for avoiding third-party punishment. If conscience serves defensive functions, then its computational structure should be closely tailored to the details of condemnation mechanisms. This possibility underscores the need for a better understanding of condemnation, which is important not only in itself but also for explaining the nature of conscience. We outline three evolutionary mysteries of condemnation that require further attention: third-party judgment, moralistic punishment, and moral impartiality. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks (...) and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysical research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein's objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind. Contents: Introduction (Robert Vinten); Ch.1: 'Wittgenstein, Concepts, and Human Nature' (Roger Trigg); Ch.2: 'On Truth, Language, and Objectivity' (Florian Franken Figueiredo); Ch.3 'Pascal Boyer's Miscellany of Homunculi: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Religion Explained' (Robert Vinten); Ch.4 'The Brain Perceives/Infers' (Hans van Eyghen); Ch.5 'The Imaginary Inner Inside Cognitive Science of Religion' (Christopher Hoyt); Ch.6 'Cognitive Theories and Wittgenstein: Looking for Convergence not for Divergence' (Olympia Panagiotidou); Ch. 7 'Wittgenstein, Naturalism, and Interpreting Religious Phenomena' (Thomas Carroll); Ch.8 'Natural Thoughts and Unnatural Oughts: Lessing, Wittgenstein, and Contemporary CSR' (Guy Axtell); Ch.9 'Normative Cognition in Cognitive Science of Religion' (Mark Addis); Ch.10 'Brains as the Source of Being: Mind/Brain Focus and the Western Model of Mind in Dominant Cognitive Science Discourse' (Rita McNamara); Ch.11 'On Religious Practices as Multiscale Active Inference: Certainties Emerging From Recurrent Interactions Within and Across Individuals and Groups' (Inês Hipólito and Casper Hesp). (shrink)

There has been a striking recent shift in how political discourse seems to work, with, for example, partial information of sometimes dubious accuracy or relevance propagating very rapidly and widely on electronic networks and overriding clearer, more complete, more accurate information. In explanation of such phenomena, we address ways in which highly interconnected electronic networks may create vulnerabilities that involve tapping into special, relatively hard-wired motivational systems in the brain, particularly the security motivation system. We also discuss a mode of (...) communication, sometimes described as “mass hypnosis,” in relation to a motivational system that manages the dominance hierarchy. Rather than just affecting people’s higher cognitions, political messages also tap into these motivation systems, generating surprising avenues for misuse. (shrink)

The cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion offer a standard model of religious representations, but no equivalent paradigm for investigating religiously interpreted altered states of consciousness (religious ASCs). Here, I describe a neo‐Durkheimian framework for studying religious ASCs that centralizes social predictive cognition. Within a processual model of ritual, ritual behaviors toggle between reinforcing normative social structures and downplaying them. Specifically, antistructural ritual shifts cognitive focus away from conventional affordances, collective intentionality, and social prediction, and toward physical affordances and behavioral (...) motivations that make few references to others’ intentional states. Using synchrony and dance as paradigmatic examples of antistructural ritual that stimulate religious ASCs, I assemble literature from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of language to offer fruitful empirical predictions and opportunities for testing based on this framework. Among the empirical predictions is that antistructural ritual may provide for cultural change in religions when religions are construed as complex adaptive systems. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested behavior and increase cooperation amongst group members. To date, research has largely focused on beliefs concerning omniscient moralistic gods in large-scale societies. While there is an abundance of ethnographic accounts documenting fear of supernatural punishment, there is a dearth of systematic cross-cultural comparative quantitative evidence as to whether belief in supernatural agents with limited powers in small-scale societies also exert these effects. Here, we examine information extracted from the Human (...) Relations Area Files on cultural discourse about the recently deceased, local ancestor spirits, and mortuary practices across 57 representative cultures. We find evidence that in traditional small-scale societies ancestor spirits are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, with many attendant practices aimed at mitigating this danger. However, such beliefs do not appear to promote cooperation, as ancestor spirits seem to be concerned with interactions between themselves and the living, and to prioritize their own welfare. Many attendant practices are inconsistent even with bipartite cooperation with ancestors that could be viewed as a model for other relationships. The broader implications of this research for the cultural evolution of religion are discussed. (shrink)

The target article “Thinking Through Other Minds” (TTOM) offered an account of the distinctively human capacity to acquire cultural knowledge, norms, and practices. To this end, we leveraged recent ideas from theoretical neurobiology to understand the human mind in social and cultural contexts. Our aim was bothsynthetic– building an integrative model adequate to account for key features of cultural learning and adaptation; andprescriptive– showing how the tools developed to explain brain dynamics can be applied to the emergence of social and (...) cultural ecologies of mind. In this reply to commentators, we address key issues, including: (1) refining the concept of culture to show how TTOM and the free-energy principle (FEP) can capture essential elements of human adaptation and functioning; (2) addressing cognition as an embodied, enactive, affective process involving cultural affordances; (3) clarifying the significance of the FEP formalism related to entropy minimization, Bayesian inference, Markov blankets, and enactivist views; (4) developing empirical tests and applications of the TTOM model; (5) incorporating cultural diversity and context at the level of intra-cultural variation, individual differences, and the transition to digital niches; and (6) considering some implications for psychiatry. The commentators’ critiques and suggestions point to useful refinements and applications of the model. In ongoing collaborations, we are exploring how to augment the theory with affective valence, take into account individual differences and historicity, and apply the model to specific domains including epistemic bias. (shrink)

In this article, creativity is defined as a semiotic phenomenon, as a process in which the boundaries of habits and norms of social communication are exceeded and by which the challenges offered by the environment are solved. Here it is indicated that there is a direct link between attention and animal creativity and shown that there are at least two possibilities for creativity to work – one that needs attention and one which doesn’t. Animal creativity can work through several different (...) mechanisms, which are here combined into a new model. Adding the Uexküllian concepts of the functional cycle and search tone to the model of creativity makes it possible to describe some additional mechanisms of animal creative behaviours. Additional concepts compared include dual memory systems, the theory of associations, and finally Gregory Bateson’s double description. By considering that approach, it is possible to understand how animals find and adapt new behaviours to their repertoires. Researching the creative behaviours of animals and the spread of innovation between populations is important from a wider perspective to understand how animals can adapt to changing environmental conditions. (shrink)

Ritualistic consumption refers to integrating ritual elements into the process of product design and usage. By conducting three studies, we find that ritualistic consumption can offer new and interesting experiences and help consumers gain a sense of control. Both positive and negative emotions can promote ritualistic consumption tendencies. However, their underlying psychological mechanisms are different. Specifically, positive emotion can arouse consumers’ desire for interesting experience and thus promotes their preference for ritualistic consumption, while negative emotion can arouse consumers’ need for (...) control and thus promote their preference for ritualistic consumption. Our research results offer a theoretical contribution and practical inspiration for emotional marketing. (shrink)

Abstract Employing an extended case method ethnography (Burawoy 1998), the researcher joined five new members forming a spiritualist's group under the leadership of an experienced advocate. Over a period of eighteen months, the researcher attended all the group's activities and events. Data were collected to reflexively interrogate the process theory of conversion proposed by Lewis Rambo (1993). The data revealed conversion to be a multifaceted and dynamic process of cognitive change, mediated by structural, and contextual forces. The results provide a (...) reconceptualization of Rambo's theory, presenting a theoretical expansion of the model emphasizing its mechanisms of action. The paper details the composition of the “Interaction-Commitment” mechanism, operationalized within four submechanisms emanating from Rambo's roles, rituals, rhetoric, and relationships. This longitudinal study shows that most of the hard work toward conversion occurs before any formal interaction with a conversion advocate. Conversion operates most effectively under conditions of cognitive economy wherein the belief path follows a path of least cognitive expenditure. (shrink)

Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural evolutionary processes integrated non-adaptive cognitive byproducts into coherent networks of supernatural beliefs and ritual that encouraged in-group cooperativeness, while adaptationist models assert that the cognitive and behavioral foundations of religion have been selected for at more basic levels. Here, (...) we survey these differing approaches, noting their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then advance a novel model that centers on the ability of language to generate alternative worlds independent of immediate empirical facts, and thus highlight the similarities between religious belief and the modes of cognition that underlie institutions in general. The institutional cognition model of religion accounts for some of the shortcomings of extant approaches and draws attention to the human ability to create non-empirical worlds; that is, worlds that are imaginary. Both religious beliefs and institutional facts—such as jurisdictional borders—are non-empirical assertions, yet they are socially accepted as truths and reified through ritual and behavior. One type of non-empirical, linguistically generated belief—supernatural agent belief—is particularly effective for stabilizing systems of arbitrary norms by rooting them in deontic rather than utilitarian reasoning. The evolutionary roots and continued persistence of religion are thus functions of the capacity for humans to generate cognitive alternatives to empirical reality, and the need to stably coordinate those alternative conceptions. (shrink)

This study examined cognitive representations of routine action, through the assessment of level of agency, in individuals with sub-clinical checking. The level of agency stems from Action Identification Theory [Vallacher, R. R., Wegner, D. M. . Levels of personal agency: Individual variation in action identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57, 660–671], which states that how actions are usually identified reflects the predominant accessibility of internal representation . Furthermore, this framework proposed that altered action regulation is related to low-level (...) of agency . In the current study, the main result indicated that checking symptoms were related to a low-level of agency, that is, individuals with sub-clinical checking identified habitual actions on the basis of instrumental aspects. This seems to indicate that checkers may act with a lack of goal representations. The results are discussed in terms of the role of low-level of agency in checking phenomena and related cognitive dysfunction. (shrink)

Although rituals are believed to lower anxiety, the underlying mechanism of anxiety reduction has not been explained well enough. According to Boyer and Liénard (2006), ritualized behavior decreases the anxiety levels because it swamps working memory. This blocks anxious thoughts’ access to consciousness. As a result, ritualized behavior lowers anxiety temporarily but maintains it in the long run. In the article, I analyze what processes should be engaged in ritualized behavior to bring the aforementioned outcomes. I propose that ritualized behavior (...) has anxiolytic properties if it preoccupies consciousness without placing too many demands on cognitive control. While conscious preoccupation with ritualized behavior should reduce anxiety, cognitive control load related to efforts to concentrate on ritualized behavior may bring immediate paradoxical effects of self-regulation, i.e., anxiety increases. Moreover, since anxiety disrupts attentional control capabilities, ritualized behavior should not be too cognitively demanding if an anxious person is to perform it. (shrink)

Social scientists have long assumed that religion – and more specifically religious rituals – promotes cooperation. It has also been claimed that ritual plays an essential role in enhancing prosociality and cooperation. In this study, using a controlled laboratory experiment, we investigate if a conspicuous and recurrent feature of collective ritualized behaviour, goal-demotion, promotes lasting cooperation. We report that goal-directed collective behaviour is more efficient than goal-demoted behaviour for motivating participants to engage in ulterior cooperation. Plausible interpretations of the data (...) and of the mechanisms involved are discussed. (shrink)

The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future (...) enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans. (shrink)

Purpose:To test the hypothesis that supernatural agents appear in nightmares and dreams in association with evidence of diminished agency within the dreamer/dream ego.Methods:Content analyses of 120 nightmares and 71 unpleasant control dream narratives.Results:We found that SAs overtly occur in about one quarter of unpleasant dreams and about half of nightmares. When SAs appear in a dream or nightmare they are reliably associated with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency within the dreamer occurs in over 90% of dreams that have (...) overt SAs. In about half of nightmare reports the SA appears suddenly with no clear emergence pattern. In some two thirds of unpleasant dreams, however, the SA emerged from a human character. The SA’s gender was indeterminate in most dreams with SAs but the SA communicated with the dreamer in 24% of nightmares and only 13% of unpleasant dreams. In most nightmares, the SA intended to harm the dreamer and in one third of nightmares the dreamer was the victim of physical agression by the SA. SA intentions in unpleasant dreams were more varied and actually benign in 13% of cases.Conclusion:Supernatural agents reliably appear in nightmares and unpleasant dreams in association with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency in an individual may facilitate supernatural agent cognitions. (shrink)

Cognitive science of religion (CSR) has increased influence in religious studies, the resistance of religious protectionists notwithstanding. CSR's most provocative work stresses the role of implicit cognition in explaining religious thought and conduct. Exhibiting explanatory pluralism, CSR seeks integrative accounts across the social, psychological, and brain sciences. CSR reflects prominent trends in the cognitive sciences generally. First, CSR is giving greater attention to the new tools and findings of cognitive neuroscience. Second, CSR researchers have done carefully designed, nonlaboratory studies of (...) experience, incorporating precise physiological measures, obtaining astonishing findings about the experiences of ritual participants and observers. Third, CSR theorists have advanced evolutionary hypotheses about religions from eight perspectives (cross-indexing three levels of selection with three mechanisms of selection). Cultural group selectionists headline credibility enhancing displays and Big Gods in the religious consolidation of large-scale societies. Other CSR researchers marshal counterevidence and advance alternative hypotheses. CSR findings are incompatible with the New Atheists’ projects on two fronts. (shrink)

Although I certainly have differences with some of my commentators, I am grateful for the time, effort, and attention that each has devoted to my book, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. They have helpfully pointed out features of my positions that need clarification and elaboration. I am also grateful to the editor of Zygon, Willem Drees, for this opportunity to undertake that task here.

The consensus in the cognitive science of religion is that some sort of hyperactive agency detection in the human mind is responsible for the origin and spread of beliefs in superhuman agents such as gods, spirits and ancestors among human populations. While it is expressed differently in different authors, they all agree that hyperactive agency detection is a basic function of human cognition. Most well known perhaps is the formulation of this by Justin Barrett as the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (...) or HADD. Problems, however, arise when we begin to consider the neural basis of this: It doesn't add up, or more precisely the HADD does not work that way. Like the magician pulling rabbits from the hat this explanation may be a "self"-conjuring trick, only for us the hat is a HADD and the rabbits are superhuman agents. This paper will try to point to a more parsimonious explanation. (shrink)

The present study was motivated by the hypothesis that inputs from internal states in obsessive–compulsive individuals are attenuated, which could be one source of the pervasive doubting and checking in OCD. Participants who were high or low in OC tendencies were asked to produce specific levels of muscle tension with and without biofeedback, and their accuracy in producing the required muscle tension levels was assessed. As predicted, high OC participants performed more poorly than low OC participants on this task when (...) biofeedback was not available. When biofeedback was provided, the difference between the groups was eliminated, and withdrawing the monitor again reversed this effect. Finally, when given the opportunity, high OC participants were more likely than low OC participants to request biofeedback. These results suggest that doubt in OCD may be grounded in a real and general deficiency in accessing internal states. (shrink)

A central hypothesis to account for the ubiquity of rituals across cultures is their supposed anxiolytic effects: rituals being maintained because they reduce existential anxiety and uncertainty. We aimed to test the anxiolytic effects of rituals by investigating two possible underlying mechanisms for it: cognitive load and repetitive movement. In our pre-registered experiment, 180 undergraduates took part in either a stress or a control condition and were subsequently assigned to either control, cognitive load, undirected movement, a combination of undirected movement (...) and cognitive load, or a ritualistic intervention. Using both repeated self-report measures and continuous physiological indicators of anxiety, we failed to find direct support for a cognitive suppression effect of anxiety through ritualistic behavior. Nevertheless, we found that induced stress increased participants’ subsequent repetitive behavior, which in turn reduced physiological arousal. This study provides novel evidence for plausible underlying effects of the proposed anxiolytic effect of rituals: repetitive behavior but not cognitive load may decrease physiological stress responses during ritual. (shrink)

Rituals are able to transform ordinary objects into extraordinary objects. And while rituals typically do not cause physical changes, they may imbue objects with a particular specialness – a simple gold band may become a wedding ring, while an ordinary dessert may become a birthday cake. To treat such objects as if they were ordinary then becomes inappropriate. How does this transformation take place in the minds of observers, and how do we recognize it when we see it? Here, we (...) suggest that two under-examined elements of ritual need deeper consideration within the context of ritual cognition. We propose a fully integrated operational definition in which these two critical ritual elements – causal opacity and goal demotion – are included. In a pre-registered experiment one-hundred and one adults, in a 2 × 2 mixed-within participants design observed actions performed upon profane objects. These actions were either ordinary or ritualized, and were described as a blessing, a curse, or were not described at all. Contrary to established findings and pre-registered predictions, we found that ritualized actions alone are not enough to influence perceptions of, and attributions towards, objects, and that positive goal information are more behaviorally persuasive than negative information. However, we found that participants recalled ritualized action in greater detail and with more specificity than ordinary actions. In effect, we demonstrate that causal opacity and goal information interact to allow us to recognize a ritual as a ritual. (shrink)

This paper aims to defend the common-sense view that we exempt compulsive agents from responsibility to the extent that they are unable to choose what they do and hence they cannot control their actions by their choices. This view has been challenged in a seminal paper by Gary Watson, who claimed that akratic agents lack control in the same sense but they are responsible nonetheless. In the first part of the paper, I critically examine the arguments Watson advances for this (...) claim first in his original paper and then in some more recent works. I conclude that his account is based on the widely held assumption that both compulsive behavior and weakness of the will must be understood as a direct result of some inner motivational conflict. In the second part, I argue for an alternative understanding of the difference between weakness and compulsion. My claim is that compulsion is a cognitive rather than a motivational deficiency, since the compulsive, unlike the weak-willed, does not desire to perform the action which she actually performs. Furthermore, I argue that compulsive agents cannot control their actions by their choices because they have a distorted view of their own actional abilities. In the final part of the paper, I discuss a consequence of this account to the conditional analysis of free will as a condition of responsibility. (shrink)

This article derives from a paper presented at the Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism Conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, May 22-24, 2014. That paper introduced theories and methods drawn from the ”cognitive science of religion’ and suggested future avenues of research connecting CSR and scholarship on mysticism. Towards these same ends, the present article proceeds in three parts. Part I outlines the origins, aims, and basic tenets of CSR research. Part II discusses one specific causal (...) perspective that informs a wide range of CSR research, Sperber’s ”epidemiological’ approach to cultural expression, and connects this perspective to the example of creator deities. Part III discusses some possible future directions for CSR research concerning mysticism and mystical experience. Finally, a coda addresses two common misunderstandings concerning the ”reductionist’ nature of CSR research. (shrink)

The focus of this study is alternative spiritual groups among the urban population in Slovakia. Those who participate in them may be characterized as “spiritual, but not religious” —people who are not affiliated to a traditional church, and may even have negative opinions on the Church, but who seek a different kind of spiritual experience. As Willard and Norenzayan pointed out the “spiritual, but not religious” have “an experiential relationship to the supernatural, and see themselves as more connected to the (...) universe as a whole”. The authors studied spiritual gatherings containing elements of rituals, dance and narrative sharing and that were charged with different kinds of emotions. We are interested in people’s motivation to seek out alternative spirituality and in their preferences for group experiences. Based on theories of collective rituals and shared emotions, we assume that these gatherings may have a positive impact on general well-being and be a form of social and emotional resilience. (shrink)

Inspired by the idea that cognitive systems evoke cultural phenomena, this study tested a theory suggesting precautionary cognitive mechanisms as both a constraint and an enabler of transmission of cultural concepts such as religious rituals. Using ‘restricted range of themes’ as a link between precautionary cognition and religious rituals, this cross cultural study of Zulu communities in sa tested people’s inferences about implications of failure to perform life-stage rituals in order to identify the nature of the presence of precautionary themes (...) in Zulu rituals and any involvement of environmental factors. The results reflected inferences rather than echoing of formal descriptions of rituals, and revealed a consistent affinity between certain threat-domains and specific Zulu rituals: birth and early age rituals evoked the Contamination/Contagion domain, women’s maturity rituals evoked the Decline in Resources domain, marital rituals evoked a mixture of Decline in Resources and Loss of Status domains, and death rituals evoked the Predation/Assault domain. This suggests that precautionary cognition effect on religious rituals is mediated by life-history strategy rather than by ecology factors, and also, that understanding precautionary cognition is crucial for uncovering the real motivations for religious behaviour, as direct reports cannot be taken at face value. (shrink)

Rituals are part of all religious systems and their transmission and stability have exercised many scholars for decades. Within cognitive anthropology competing views of cultural transmission have emerged in recent years in terms of the mechanisms by means of which cultural forms, including rituals, are transmitted and persist within societies. Two schools of thought focusing on the “epidemiology of representations” and memetic cultural evolution have informed this study’s goal for gaining insight on the plausibility of cultural learning models as opposed (...) to Sperber et al.’s emphasis on meta-representational processes of representation generation. This study examined 11 life-stages Zulu rituals in terms of participants’ knowledge of them; performance of them; and direct observation of them in order to make some initial judgments about the importance of various forms of direct observational learning for ritual transmission. It was found that while knowledge of rituals was high, observance rate was significantly lower, and performance rate was substantially lower. These results tentatively suggest that an emphasis on understanding those cognitive systems that might constrain ritual representations would be the best way to advance justifiable explanations of ritual transmission. (shrink)

The Cognitive Science of Nationalistic Behavior, presented in this paper, integrates the political sciences of nationalities as invented communities with an evolutionary cognitive analysis of social forms as products of the human mind. The framework is modeled after the Cognitive Science of Religion, where decades of cross-disciplinary work has generated standards, predictions, and data about the role of individual cognitive tendencies in shaping societies. We study the nationalistic calendar as a cultural attractor and draw on cue-based behavioral motivation and differential (...) autobiographical memory systems to explain its appeal to the human mind. Calendrical elements are analyzed in the context of essentialist thought patterns and action representation systems. We conclude with the implications of calendrical thinking on the control of elites who aim to forge and reinforce national identities. This paper lays the groundwork for applying a similar approach to the study of other nationalistic elements. (shrink)

We link cleansing effects to contemporary cognitive theories via an account of event representation that provides an explicit, neurally plausible mechanism for encoding objects and their associations across time. It explains separation as resulting from weakening associations between the self in the present and the self in the past.

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy (...) and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste. (shrink)

There is a common assumption that evolutionary explanations of religion undermine religious beliefs. Do etiological accounts similarly affect the rationality of religious practices? To answer this question, this paper looks at two influential evolutionary accounts of ritual, the hazard-precaution model and costly signaling theory. It examines whether Cuneo’s account of ritual knowledge as knowing to engage God can be maintained in the light of these evolutionary accounts. While the evolutionary accounts under consideration are not metaphysically incompatible with the idea that (...) religious rituals engage God, they cast doubt on whether many, if not all, rituals can do this successfully. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the problem of memorization in rituals in light of recent empirical work in memory research. Four hypotheses are put forward in particular: Emotionally laden details will enhance the formation of memories about any detail of the ritual; harsh sensory stimuli will function as attention-magnets, resulting in increased memorization of the stimuli at the cost of remembering other elements of the ritual; the self-relatedness of a ritual will enhance the formation of memories about the ritual, although the positive (...) effect might be limited to details that are self-related; and stress can be understood to function as a “zoom,” limiting the range of details remembered. The effects of stress will be modulated by gender differences and the timing of the ritual within the circadian cycle. The consequences of the four hypotheses are compared with the predictions of the Modes Theory and the Ritual Form Theory. (shrink)

Throughout history, dance has maintained a critical presence across all human cultures, defying barriers of class, race, and status. How dance has synergistically co-evolved with humans has fueled a rich debate on the function of art and the essence of aesthetic experience, engaging numerous artists, historians, philosophers, and scientists. While dance shares many features with other art forms, one attribute unique to dance is that it is most commonly expressed with the human body. Because of this, social scientists and neuroscientists (...) are turning to dance and dancers to help answer questions of how the brain coordinates the body to perform complex, precise, and beautiful movements. In the present paper, we discuss how recent advances in neuroscientific methods provide the tools to advance our understanding of not only the cerebral phenomena associated with dance learning and observation but also the neural underpinnings of aesthetic appreciation associated with watching dance. We suggest that future work within the fields of dance neuroscience and neuroaesthetics have the potential to provide mutual benefits to both the scientific and artistic communities. (shrink)

In this article we examine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We examine and reject two existing models of this disorder: the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference‐Based Approach. Instead, we propose that the main distinctive characteristic of OCD is a hyperactive sub‐personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to trigger conscious checking processes, including speculations about possible harms. (...) We examine the implications of this model for the individual's capacity to control his or her thoughts. (shrink)

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. (...) The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction. (shrink)

The origins of human social cooperation confound simple evolutionary explanation. But from Darwin and Durkheim onward, theorists (anthropologists and sociologists especially) have posited a potential link with another curious and distinctively human social trait that cries out for explanation: religion. This dissertation explores one contemporary theory of the co-evolution of religion and human social cooperation: the signalling theory of religion, or religious signalling theory (RST). According to the signalling theory, participation in social religion (and its associated rituals and sanctions) acts (...) as an honest signal of one’s commitment to a religiously demarcated community and its way of doing things. This signal would allow prosocial individuals to positively assort with one another for mutual advantage, to the exclusion of more exploitative individuals. In effect, the theory offers a way that religion and cooperation might explain one another, but which that stays within an individualist adaptive paradigm. My approach is not to assess the empirical adequacy of the religious signalling explanation or contrast it with other explanations, but rather to deal with the theory in its own terms – isolating and fleshing out its core commitments, explanatory potential, and limitations. The key to this is acknowledging the internal complexities of signalling theory, with respect to the available models of honest signalling and the extent of their fit (or otherwise) with religion as a target system. The method is to take seriously the findings of formal modelling in animal signalling and other disciplines, and to apply these (and methods from the philosophy of biology more generally) to progressively build up a comprehensive picture of the theory, its inherent strengths and weaknesses. The first two chapters outline the dual explanatory problems that cooperation and religion present for evolutionary human science, and surveys contemporary approaches toward explaining them. Chapter three articulates an evolutionary conception of the signalling theory, and chapters four to six make the case for a series of requirements, limitations, and principles of application. Chapters seven and eight argue for the value of formal modelling to further flesh out the theory’s commitments and potential and describe some simple simulation results which make progress in this regard. Though the inquiry often problematizes the signalling theory, it also shows that it should not be dismissed outright, and that it makes predictions which are apt for empirical testing. (shrink)

Religions “in the wild” are the varied set of religious activities that occurred before the emergence of organized religions with doctrines, or that persist at the margins of those organized traditions. These religious activities mostly focus on misfortune; on how to remedy specific cases of illness, accidents, failures; and on how to prevent them. I present a general model to account for the cross-cultural recurrence of these particular themes. The model is based on features of human psychology—namely, epistemic vigilance, the (...) set of systems whereby we evaluate the quality of information and of sources of information, and threat-detection psychology, the set of evolved systems geared at detecting potential danger in the environment. Given these two sets of systems, the dynamics of communication will favor particular types of messages about misfortune. This makes it possible to predict recurrent features of religious systems, such as the focus on nonphysical agents, the focus on particular cases rather than general aspects of misfortune, and the emergence of specialists. The model could illuminate not just why such representations are culturally successful, but also why people are motivated to formulate them in the first place. (shrink)

Research on self-agency emphasizes the importance of a comparing mechanism, which scans for a match between anticipated and actual outcomes, in the subjective experience of doing.This study explored the “feeling of doing” in individuals with checking symptoms by examining the mechanism involved in the experienced agency for outcomes that matched expectations. This mechanism was explored using a task in which the subliminal priming of potential action-effects generally enhances people’s feeling of causing these effects when they occur, due to the unconscious (...) perception of a match between primed and observed outcomes. The main result revealed a negative relationship between checking and self-agency for observed outcomes that were primed prior to actions. This suggests that checking individuals fail to grasp the correspondence between actual outcomes of their actions and expected ones. We discuss the possible role of undermined self-agency in checking phenomena and its relationship with cognitive dysfunction. (shrink)