Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR
<p><em>Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion</em> is the official journal of the <a href="https://iacesr.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Association for the Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of Religion</a> (IACESR)<a href="https://iacesr.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">.</a> The Association was founded in 2006 and since then has sponsored a number of international collaborative projects and biennial conferences.</p>Equinox Publishing Ltd.enJournal for the Cognitive Science of Religion2049-7555<p>Equinox Publishing Ltd.</p>Vastness as an Embodied Representation of Existential Concepts
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/26061
<p style="font-weight: 400;">This project explores the nature of the representation of non-agentic qualities that are associated with the Christian God (e.g., peace, love, joy, existence, unity, etc.). Specifically, we propose that these existential words maintain an embodied representation that involves visuo-spatial vastness. In four experiments, participants saw an image followed by words and non-words. The words were either existential words (e.g., peace, hope, unity, joy, etc.) or positively-valenced abstract concepts (e.g., luck, wealth, success, fun, etc.). Participants indicated whether the string of letters was a word or not by pressing a “yes” or “no” key as quickly as possible. Response times were recorded. In Experiments 1 and 2, images of nature depicting visuo-spatial vastness or close-up images of nature, respectively, facilitated responses to existential words compared to control words. However, in Experiment 3, when the images were presented for a much briefer duration (i.e., 250 msecs), only vast images facilitated responses to existential words. Finally, Experiments 4A and 4B demonstrated that the priming effect between vast images and existential words varied as a function of posture. Specifically, the facilitation to existential words following vast images remained when participants maintained a vast posture (i.e., arms open) but was eliminated with a constricted posture (e.g., arms crossed). The overall pattern of results across the four experiments supports the notion that existential words are associated with visuo-spatial, and perhaps, proprioceptive vastness. The results hint at the possibility that vastness is an important component of the embodied representation of existential concepts and may also relate to the representation of the Christian God.</p>
Articlesembodied knowledgeGodrepresentationGod conceptsconcept memoryembodied representationGod conceptsmemory representationGodcognitive psychologyMary Harmon-VukićKate Spitalnic
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-082024-01-0853110.1558/jcsr.26061Religion Devolving?
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/23578
<p>This article highlights several of the valuable contributions in <em>Religion Evolving</em> by Benjamin Purzycki and Richard Sosis (2022) and offers some material and methodological reflections that are intended to complement their efforts. Their book offers a clear and useful operationalization of religion, emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomena in question, and makes great strides in overcoming the polarizing debate between proponents of the “by-product” and “adaptationist” camps in the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion. The bulk of the current article argues for the importance of building on their efforts by also attending to the conditions under which – and the mechanisms by which – religion can become “maladaptive” in contemporary contexts.</p>
Invited Essayreligionadaptationmaladaptationnaturalismsecularismreligion as by-productby-productadaptationmaladaptationnaturalismsecularismreligionCognitive science of religionF. LeRon Shults
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-06-262023-06-2610.1558/jcsr.23578Raising the Buddha’s Hand
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22811
<p>Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism involving visualizations that have the normative goal of “becoming one” with a supernatural being. During the practice, practitioners report experiencing that their own body transforms into the body of the deity. This paper offers a potential cognitive explanation of how such an experience is possible. Applying findings from cognitive science on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, we argue that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause an experience analogous to the famous “rubber hand illusion” in which one misattributes their ownership to a fake hand. In this paper, we 1) introduce deity yoga practice and its key aspects; 2) discuss illusory ownership and its explanation embedded in a predictive processing framework; 3) argue that visualization in deity yoga may induce the experience of illusory ownership; and 4) conclude with a short discussion of the hypothesis’ limitations and of ways to test our hypothesis. Overall, the paper suggests how the practice of visualization in deity yoga may lead to an experience of a transfer of identity onto an imagined supernatural agent.</p>
Articlesdeity yogaillusory ownershipreligious experiencevisualizationrubber handsupernatural agentreligiondeity yogacognitive science of religionPiotr SzymanekMatylda Ciołkosz
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-082024-01-08325310.1558/jcsr.22811Embodiment, Deity Yoga, Cognitive and Evolutionary Approaches to Religion
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/26507
EditorialEmbodimentDeity YogaCognitiveEvolutionary Approaches to ReligionReligioncognitive science of religioncognitive and evolutionary approaches to religionArmin W Geertz
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-082024-01-081410.1558/jcsr.26507The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion, edited by Jason D. Slone and James A. Van Slyke.
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18776
<p>The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion, edited by Jason D. Slone and James A. Van Slyke. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. xvi, 252 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1350005280</p>
Book Reviews/Review EssaysSexual SelectionReligionEvolutionary PsychologySexual SelectionEvolutionary Psychology of ReligionCognitive Science of ReligionEvolutionary PsychologyReligious StudiesIsmael Apud
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-0311211410.1558/jcsr.18776Supernatural: Death, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World, by Clay Routledge.
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18788
<p>Supernatural: Death, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World, by Clay Routledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 216pp., $29.95, ISBN 9780190629427</p>
Book Reviews/Review Essaysafterlifedeathsupernatural thinkingSupernatural thinkingStudy of religionSiria Kohonen
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-0311912210.1558/jcsr.18788Hearing Voices, Interpreting Words
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/19502
<p>In this commentary I will be exploring a number of implications that McCauley and Graham’s theses about the interrelationship of normal, religious, and mentally disordered cognition have for an interpretative methodology that has been fruitfully utilized by empirically-oriented scholars of religion. I argue that that methodology imposes some important constraints on the type of theorizing McCauley and Graham propose, and that their findings in turn suggest some important modifications to that methodology.</p>
Book Panelcognitionbehaviorinterpretationreligionmental disorderreligionphilosophystudy of religionphilosophical semanticsMark Q. Gardiner
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-0392010.1558/jcsr.19502 The Processes of Believing, Mental Abnormalities, and Other Matters of the Mind
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/19559
<p>Two categories of mental events – ecstatic or indescribable religious revelations and bizarre beliefs or behavior with related mental abnormalities – have been compared and contrasted in order to understand whether they are manifestations of different basic neural and psychological processes, or fundamentally the same. In popular terms, such comparisons point to the issue of the relationship between being religious and being mentally ill. McCauley and Graham (2020) have argued for a benign “maturational naturalism” (MN) as an over-arching concept to subsume and understand the two approaches. MN rests on the assumption that for purposes of understanding the processes that mediate any “matters of the mind,” it makes no difference whether they are labeled religious or not. All must be functions of maturationally natural processes, or else they would not occur. Whether they are labeled “religious” or “mental illness,” or whether an extra-world agent or spirit was involved, is left for others to discuss. There is a gap in their analysis, however: They refer to beliefs (religious, delusional, evidence-based), but do not adequately clarify the processes from which they spring or what believing is even for. The present article completes the picture by explaining the fundamental processes of believing that underpin all they say, and more. The keyword for the processes of believing is the term credition, a neologistic variant of credible or believable. This article elaborates how believing processes make possible religious, esoteric, and logical and evidence-based beliefs; where they come from and how they are constructed: and what they are good for, i.e., why humans do what is called believing at all.</p>
Book Panelbeliefbelievingbrain functionneuropsychologycreditionfundamental mental processmeaningmeaning makingmental abnormalitymental disordersreligious experiencereligious cognitionnaturalismBelievingBeliefsBrain FunctionNeuropsychologyMeaning MakingMental DisordersReligious CognitionNaturalismCognitive NeurosienceNeuropsychiatryTheologyPsychologyRüdiger J. SeitzHans-Ferdinand AngelRaymond F. Paloutzian
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-03547210.1558/jcsr.19559Religious Experiences Are Interpreted through Priors from Cultural Frameworks Supported by Imaginative Capacity Rather Than Special Cognition
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/19803
<p>In this commentary of McCauley and Graham’s book on mental abnormalities and religions, we identify a number of challenges, and present possible extensions of their proposed research. Specifically, we argue that no specialized religious cognition should be assumed, and instead suggest that the cases of mental abnormalities discussed in the book specify particular instances of religious content, and that other disorders may show a more causal relationship to religiosity. We argue that the discussed religious content may be best explained in the context of cultural frameworks and their contribution to experiencing the world through priors and predictive processing. Moreover, cognition required to understand and engage with religion, but not special to it, might crucially involve our capacity for imagination, supported by memory. Disorders in imagination are therefore expected to show likewise dysfunctions in religious phenomena.</p>
Book PanelCognitive ScienceReligionMental disordersPredictive processingImaginationcultural frameworksReligionMental disordersImaginationCulturecognitive sciencepsychologyValerie van MulukomMartin Lang
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-03395310.1558/jcsr.19803Naturalism, Religion, and Mental Disorders
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/19935
<p>This article explores the analysis developed in the book, Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us about Religions, by Robert N. McCauley and George Graham. In the book, the authors develop a model of the relationship between religious cognition and cognition associated with mental illness. Their model is based on the longstanding consensus that many classical mystical experiences appear to overlap phenomenologically with pathological states. This article argues that the model presented in the book, while compelling, could be strengthened by extending it to include discussion not only of the cognitive association between religious experiences and mental disorders, but also about how religious cognitions can similarly be associated with mental wellness. Such occurrences are seen, for example, in the positive mental health outcomes that can be associated with the religious/spiritual experiences of mystics, in contrast to the negative outcomes experienced by psychotics.</p>
Book Panelcognitive sciencereligious experiencemental disorderspsychoticsmysticsCognitive science of religionreligious experiencemental illnessmental wellnessnaturalismReligious StudiesPsychologyNeuropsychologyCognitive ScienceDaniel Cohen
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-03213810.1558/jcsr.19935Corrigendum
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/20215
<p>Hallin, N., Västfjäll, D., & Andersson, G. (2020). Bias against atheists and religious persons in Sweden. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 5(2), 205–223. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.41002. The article erroneously states on page 215: “Swedish participants made significantly fewer conjunction errors than Finnish participants when the target was atheist.” The correct text should read: “Swedish participants made significantly more conjunction errors than Finnish participants when the target was atheist."</p>
Corrigendumreligionatheismconjunction fallacybiascultural evolutionErratumPsychologyNathalie Hallin
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-0312712710.1558/jcsr.20215Can Science Explain Religion? The Cognitive Science Debate, by James W. Jones.
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/20676
<p>Can Science Explain Religion? The Cognitive Science Debate, by James W. Jones. Oxford University Press, 2015. 236 + xii pp. Hb., $31.95. ISBN: 9780190249380</p>
Book Reviews/Review Essayscognitive sciencedebunkingscience debatephysicalismBreligious studiesphilosophyHalvor Kvandal
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-08-032021-08-0311511810.1558/jcsr.20676Towards Synthesis
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/26333
<p><em>The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion</em>, edited by Yair Lior and Justin Lane. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. xv + 523 pages, $163.22. ISBN: 9781138331679</p>
Book Panelcognitionevolutionary psychologycultural evolutionCognitive science of religionEvolutionary Psychology of Religioncultural evolutionsynthetic approachescognitive and evolutionary approaches to religionLauritz Holm Petersen
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-082024-01-08617110.1558/jcsr.26333Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, by Gabriel Levy
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/26235
<p><em>Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion</em>, by Gabriel Levy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022. xiii + 249 pages, $45.00. ISBN: 9780262543248</p>
Book Reviews/Review EssaysMetaphysicsmethodologyCognitive Science of ReligionPhilosophy of ReligionAnastasiia Shabalina
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-082024-01-08474910.1558/jcsr.26235Somethings New and Somethings Old
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/26228
<p><em>The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Religion</em>, edited by James R. Liddle and Todd K. Shackelford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xii + 386 pages, £115.00. ISBN: 9780199397747</p>
Book Panelevolutionary psychologycognitive science of religionevolutionary psychologycognitive science of religionevolutionary psychologycognitive science of religionArmin W Geertz
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-06-202023-06-20546010.1558/jcsr.26228Representing Group Rituals
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22038
<p>In Harvey Whitehouse’s book (2021), he argues that humans are ritual animals, and that rituals can be the glue shaping group bonds. <br />Whitehouse argues further that rituals are embedded in our routines and have become habitual. In this article, I add the idea of embodiment and social representations as a supplement to Whitehouse’s studies of rituals, group identities, and their interactions in society. In my view, these ideas may answer the following questions: 1) why people still practice group rituals, even though they are not attached to the group; 2) why people are ready to die defending their group even though they are not active in the community and rarely practice group rituals; and 3) why people are so fanatical about their religion that they are ready to die defending it, and how to alleviate such fanaticism.</p>
Book PanelRitualsReligous FundamentalismSocial RepresentationsembodimentAbout RitualsSocial Psychology of interreligious contextIdhamsyah Eka Putra
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1612212810.1558/jcsr.22038Rituals, Music, and the Landscape Metaphor
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22389
<p>In this commentary, we discuss two aspects of The Ritual Animal’s (2021) rich and multidimensional framework which may be further developed: the role of music and euphoric rituals within Harvey Whitehouse’s modes theory, and the use of the landscape model for studying sociocultural systems. We note the strong, cross-cultural association of music and religious rituals, consider the suitability of music for such practices, and suggest further research on how the use of music may accommodate both imagistic and doctrinal rituals. We then describe the social landscape model used by Whitehouse and consider his proposal to extend the model through the consideration of multiple landscapes at different levels. We accept his suggestion to explicitly include underlying and overlying networks of inputs but argue that since the interacting networks are not external to but constitutive of the landscape, a single landscape with multiple causal, constraining, and constitutive networks may better capture the integrated nature of social systems.</p>
Book Panelmusicevolutionritualmodes theoryThe Ritual Animalmusicevolutionary landscapecultural evolutionDor ShiltonEva Jablonka
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-10-032022-10-0312913910.1558/jcsr.22389Doctrines of Neolithic Religiosity
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22542
<p>As a prehistoric archaeologist working on the Neolithic of southwest Asia, I focus on Harvey Whitehouse’s evolutionary theory of the emergence of the doctrinal mode of religiosity in the context of the emergence of “agricultural intensity” and “social inequality” in the Neolithic period, and quite specifically in the latest phase of the occupation of the settlement of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. I find those difficult phrases ill-defined in the book, and in the author’s published papers on which the book depends. And I contend that the evidence for intensive agricultural production and of institutionalized social inequality is to be found post-Neolithic and associated with the emergence of the first urban societies. I believe that Whitehouse’s idea of the emergence of doctrinal religiosity needs to be argued in the context of the earliest (literate) civilizations of southern Mesopotamia and Egypt.</p>
Book PanelPrehistoric archaeologyCatalhöyüksouthwest AsiaNeolithicagricultural intensitysocial inequalitycultural evolutionmodes of religiosityagricultural intensitysocial inequalityPrehistoric archaeologyNeolithicTrevor Watkins
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-10-032022-10-0317118110.1558/jcsr.22542An Overview of Harvey Whitehouse’s The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2021)
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22039
<p>In the book The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2021), Harvey Whitehouse presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ritual that is remarkable in range and versatility. Embedded in evolutionary principles, his theories hold vast explanatory potential, asking pertinent questions about the evolutionary functions and psychological substrates of ritual behaviour and its pivotal role in the origins of cultural and social complexity. Moreover, he compellingly discusses how the research outlined, resulting from many collaborations over several decades, can serve as a basis for meaningful policy making as well as the bridging of various fields within academia, hence demonstrating its potential for making contributions toward some of the most pressing issues currently faced by humanity.</p>
Book Panelritual and religioncooperation and socialityevolution of social complexitypsychology of social learningritualsocialitycooperationcultureanthroplogycognitive scienceevolutionRobert Jagiello
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1610211410.1558/jcsr.22039How Ritual an Animal? Harvey Whitehouse on Ritual, Trust, and Cooperation
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22515
<p>Harvey Whitehouse documents the great variety of ritual in human life, while offering a unified framework. Ritual’s essential social role is to support social cohesion and cooperation, but it does so via distinct mechanisms: through social fusion and through social identification. For, despite variation, ritual clusters at two poles: rare, intense, often aversive rituals; and frequent, low arousal rituals. Those frequent rituals operate through social identification primed by mutual recognition of common doctrine. In principle, this mechanism is scale independent. Rare, intense rituals generate cohesion through social fusion, itself triggered by shared, congruent autobiographical memory. This is intrinsically a small-scale mechanism. In this paper, I (i) argue that cost-based analyses of the function of ritual have a larger scope than Whitehouse supposes, (ii) offer a modified view of social fusion and the role of autobiographical memory, and (iii) argue that the primary upshot of doctrinal ritual is the legitimation of hierarchy rather than social cohesion over large social scales.</p>
Book Panelritual and costly signalsritual and autobiographical memorysocial hierarchyritual and social hierarchyHarvey Whitehouseevolution of religioncultural evolutionKim Sterelny
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1614015210.1558/jcsr.22515Cognitively Accessible Words Associated with God as Effective Lexical Primes
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/22679
<p>Do the words used to prime the concept of God in psychology of religion research studies accurately reflect a mental representation of God? To examine this, two samples completed a free-association task, where they listed 10 words that came to mind when they thought about God (Studies 1a–1b). We found that more than half of the lexical primes used in previous studies were rarely or never produced (< 5 times) in the 2,610 free-association responses. Using a false memory paradigm, Study 2 revealed that the most frequent free-association words produced in Studies 1a and 1b more effectively primed the concept of God than a set of prime words used in previous religious priming studies that were not frequent free-association words in Studies 1a and 1b. This research advances the methodological practices in religious priming research and contributes to an understanding of people’s thoughts about God.</p>
ArticlesGodFree-AssociationReligionPrimingWord-AssociationGodFree-AssociationReligionPrimingWord-AssociationPsychologyReligion & SpiritualityMichael B KitchensIsabella M LangSydney E PetrasicBrian C RemperBrittany M Wilson
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-167810110.1558/jcsr.22679Ritual Animals also Require Pedagogy, Communication, and Social Reasoning
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/23448
<p>Harvey Whitehouse offers a complex and stimulating theory of rituals that bind people together and propagate via affiliative imitation. The Ritual Animal argues that fundamental problems of group cooperation can be solved by causally opaque and goal-demoted behaviors which produce arbitrary cultural conventions, honest signals of membership, and collective fused identities. This amply evidenced and compelling account explains a broad variety of prominent examples, yet other key causal mechanisms emerge from the ethnographic literature and analytical reflection on affiliation and groups. Taking a glance at some widespread and unusual rituals, this paper highlights the importance of cultural transmission via pedagogy with or without copying, costly signaling and coordination without coalitional groups, and meta-representations of impenetrable ritual efficacy. Future research can explain how bonding rituals become central features of social interaction without relying upon a quite debatable adaptive function of ritual behavior for cooperation – or anything else.</p>
Book PanelPedagogyCommunicationReasoningCultural TransmissionCoordinationEpistemic VigilanceEpistemic DeferenceSignallingCostly SignallingCoalitionsRitualImitationConventionsMagicReligionChildrenCooperationGroupsAffiliationCargo CultsRitual ChangeTechnologyThe Ritual AnimalAnthropologyEthnographyEvolutionary PsychologyRadu Umbreș
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1615317010.1558/jcsr.23448The (Most) Algorithmic Animal
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/23612
<div class="page" title="Page 1"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> <p>Rituals are a means of regulation – they are a means for maintaining coherence and attaining long-term goals, including social coherence. But does their efficacy depend entirely, or at all, on their opacity? In this requested commentary on Harvey Whitehouse’s new book, The Ritual Animal, I discuss the utility of costly rituals in an evolutionary context, and suggest that causal opacity is only one, potentially substitutable cost. I relate this to the urgent topical concerns of polarization and of regulating sustainability globally.</p> </div> </div> </div>
Book Paneltransparencysustainabilitysocial coherenceritualAbout RitualsEvolutionary AnthropologyBehavioural EcologyTechnology PolicyJoanna J Bryson
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1611512110.1558/jcsr.23612The Ritual Animal
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/23748
<p>This is a response to six reviews of The Ritual Animal (Whitehouse, 2021). The reviews covered a wide range of topics, from evolutionary theory (e.g., Bryson; Shilton and Jablonka), to group psychology (e.g., Putra) and development (e.g., Umbres), and the evidence from archaeology and deep history on the role of ritual in the evolution of socio-political complexity (e.g., Watkins). Some of the reviewers spanned all these topics in various ways (e.g., Sterelny). I am grateful for the high quality of engagement and the many generous remarks. Although I also disagree with some of the arguments advanced in the reviews, I argue that they have collectively opened up a variety of important questions worthy of further research.</p>
Book PanelEvolutioncognition and historygroup identityPrehistoric archaeologyritualmodes of religiosityAbout Ritualscultural evolutionBF309-499 cognitionCognitive Psychologydevelopmental psychologyPrehistoric archaeologyDeep HistoryAnthropologyHarvey Whitehouse
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-11-162022-11-1618219510.1558/jcsr.23748Editorial Note
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18971
<p>.</p>
Editorial Notecognitive science of religionexperimental psychologymethod and theoryBF1-990PSYCHOLOGYBL1-2790RELIGIONS. MYTHOLOGY. RATIONALISMReligious StudiesCognitive Science of ReligionPsychologyArmin W. Geertz
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2020-12-312020-12-3113513510.1558/jcsr.42611The Nordic Issue
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18973
<p>.</p>
Guest Editorialcognitive science of religionexperimental psychologymethod and theoryBF1-990PSYCHOLOGYBL1-2790RELIGIONS. MYTHOLOGY. RATIONALISMReligious StudiesCognitive Science of ReligionExperimental PsychologyIngela Visuri
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2020-12-312020-12-3113614110.1558/jcsr.42612Peering into the Minds of Gods
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18974
<p>Cross-cultural beliefs about gods’ concerns point to local socioecological challenges. Such appeals to gods’ concerns provide insights for understanding religious cognition specifically and the evolution of religious systems more generally. Here, we review case studies to this effect, and introduce the “god-problem problem”: to the extent that gods are concerned with local socioecological problems, which criteria does a problem need to satisfy in order to become an object of supernatural attention? We offer some preliminary solutions to this puzzle, which leads to a related, but often-overlooked, question: granted that features of religions may culturally evolve to adaptively fit to and resolve aspects of the local socioecological environment, what are the psychological processes through which this adaptation could occur? We wager that in order to answer the question satisfactorily, contemporary evolutionary approaches need to work together. Psychologically, the socioecological environment provides the initial impetus for a belief or practice by increasing the cognitive salience of a corresponding local problem and its costs. This increased receptivity makes such ideas and corollary behaviors easier to learn and transmit along the routes posited by dual-inheritance theorists. Behaviors feed back to beliefs and can offset the costs of social life in a variety of ways. As such, examining how cognition, social learning, behavior, and ecological pressures inform each other is especially crucial for understanding the persistence, diffusion, and evolution of religious ideas and practices.</p>
Nordic Articlescognitive science of religioncultural evolutionbehavioral ecologyminds of godscultural evolutionary psychologycognitive anthropologyReligious StudiesReligious StudiesTheiss BendixenBenjamin Grant Purzycki
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2020-12-312020-12-3114216510.1558/jcsr.40951The Wraths of Fire
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18976
<p>The way people understand and encounter illnesses include influences from human cognition as well as from their cultural surroundings. A conception of illness termed “the wraths of fire” (tulen vihat in Finnish) was a general explanation for severe skin burns in early modern Finland and Karelia, and it included ideas about personified fire and its magically contagious essence. However, the academic conversation on this notion has mostly concentrated on the socio-cultural influences behind it. In this article, I argue that the intuitive level of human cognition (e.g., Kahneman and Frederick 2005; Evans and Frankish 2009) has formed the basic guidelines for this conception of illness. The research materials consist of approximately six hundred archive units of narrated memories on healing events and healing instructions. As the materials are not based on empirical observations by the author, the article also introduces certain methodological questions important for connecting the cognitive perspective with historical materials, such as questions on the reliability of the descriptions of past events.</p>
Nordic Articlesethno-medicinedual-process theorymagical thinkingFinlandKareliafolkloreReligious StudiesReligious StudiesSiria Kohonen
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2020-12-312020-12-3116618610.1558/jcsr.41026The Contagious Muhammad
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18978
<p>This article utilizes a cognitive science of religion framework in approaching the cultural phenomena of relics from the prophet Muhammad in Islamic tradition. The basic arguments are that a contagion aspiration system that underlies the phenomenon of relics in general could hypothetically be construed as an evolutionary exaptation of a contagion avoidance system within a framework of social learning, and that the specific phenomenon of relics can be seen as a by-product of this exaptation. This explanatory model is used to make sense of two specific complexes of beliefs and practices: (1) the notion that physical contact with prophetic relics results in transfer substance, baraka, with this-worldly beneficial effect, and (2) the fact that prophetic relics throughout history has been used by political and religious dignitaries as a means to boost social prestige and authority.</p>
Nordic ArticlesIslamrelicsMuhammad (prophet)contagionprestige psychologyBP1-253 ISLAMBP174-190 THE PRACTICE OF ISLAMBP187-187.9 Shrines, sacred places, etc.Religious StudiesIslamic StudiesPsychologyJonas Svensson
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2020-12-312020-12-3118720410.1558/jcsr.40987Bias against Atheists and Religious Persons in Sweden
http://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCSR/article/view/18979
<p>Religion is viewed as necessary for moral behaviour in many parts of the world. Today, however, many societies are becoming more secular and the view of atheists as immoral might therefore change. This study investigated anti-atheist and anti-religious bias in Sweden, by replicating Gervais et al. (2017). The study used an online version of the conjunction fallacy test, which investigates whether a description, in this case of extremely immoral behaviour, is viewed as representative of a category or group. In this study we chose atheists and religious believers as targets. The sample consisted of 268 Swedish participants. The results showed no significant difference between conditions. However, the anti-atheist bias was lower than in the original American sample from the replicated study, while the anti-religious bias was higher. Further research can investigate differences between cultures, using the conjunction fallacy test.</p>
Nordic Articlesreligionatheismconjunction fallacybiascultural evolutionBL51-65PsychologyPsychology of ReligionCognitive Science of ReligionNathalie HallinDaniel VästfjällGerhard Andersson
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2020-12-312020-12-3120522310.1558/jcsr.41002