In a recent Mind & Society article, Evans (2005) argues for the social and communicative function of conditional statements. In a related article, we argue for satisficing algorithms for mapping conditional statements onto social domains (Eur J Cogn Psychol 16:807–823,2004). The purpose of the present commentary is to integrate these two arguments by proposing a revised pragmatic cues algorithm for pragmatic conditionals.

Atran & Norenzyan (A&N) claim that an appreciation of the evolved inferential machinery underlying supernatural beliefs can greatly aid us in understanding regularities in culturally shared conceptions of religion. I explore how their model provides insight into why culturally shared tales of horror (e.g., horror movies) often combine religious and predatory content.