Mirroring Processes, Religious Perception and Ecological Adaptation
Toward an Empathic Theory of Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i3.307Keywords:
Religion, animism, empathy, mirror neurons, evolution, ecology, environmental anthropologyAbstract
The theory of mind hypothesis is the basis by which biologically based theories of religion typically explain beliefs in supernatural agents and, in turn, religion. Recent advances in neuroscience suggest that social cognition also involves the mirror neuron system and simulation. This paper summarizes these advances and offers an additional hypothesis regarding the neurological basis for supernatural agents and religion. According to this hybrid hypothesis: religion’s neurobiological basis is (1) the mirror neuron system and simulation based processes, which respond to expressive objects in the natural environment and produce embodied knowledge that imply sentience, and (2) inferential knowledge-based systems, which interpret these intuitions in terms of beliefs in animism and/or supernatural agents. This hypothesis places the mirror neuron system and simulation based processes (i.e. processes conjectured to underlie a direct embodied form of empathy) in an instigating role, and places inferential knowledge-based systems in a secondary, albeit crucial, role. Consequently, this hypothesis is an empathic theory of religion. Moreover, these processes are hypothesized to have selective value insofar as they help small-scale cultures manage their natural resource base more sustainably.
References
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Cheng, Yawei, Chia Y. Yang, Ching P. Lin, Po L. Lee, and Jean Decety. 2008. ‘The Perception of Pain in Others Suppresses Somatosensory Oscillations: A Magnetoencephalography Study’, NeuroImage 40: 1833-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.01.064.
Csibra, Gergely, Gy?rgy Gergely, Szilvia Biro, Orsolya Koos, and Margaret Brockbank. 1999. ‘Goal Attribution without Agency Cues: The Perception of “Pure Reason” in Infancy’, Cognition 72: 237-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00039-6.
Davis, Mark H. 1994. Empathy: A Social Psychological Approach (Boulder: Westview Press).
Di Dio, Cinzia, Emiliano Macaluso, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2007. ‘The Golden Beauty: Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures’, PLoS ONE 2.11: e1201.
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Eisenberg, Nancy, Tracy L. Spinrad, and Adrienne Sadovsky. 2006. ‘Empathy-related Responding in Children’, in M. Killen and J. Smetana (eds.), Handbook of Moral Development (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum): 517-49.
Fogassi, Leonardo, Pier F. Ferrari, Benno Gesierich, Stefano Rozzi, Fabian Chersi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2005. ‘Parietal Lobe: From Action Organization to Intention Understanding’, Science 308: 662-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1106138.
Freedberg, David, and Vitorio Gallese. 2007. ‘Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11: 197-203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003.
Gallese, Vitorio. 2001. ‘The “Shared Manifold” Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 8.5-7: 33-50.
———. 2005. ‘Embodied Simulation: From Neurons to Phenomenal Experience’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 23-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-005-4737-z.
Gallese, Vitorio, Morris N. Eagle, and Paolo Migone. 2007. ‘Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relations’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 55: 131-76.
Gazzola, Valeria, Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, and Christian Keysers. 2006. ‘Empathy and the Somatotopic Auditory Mirror System in Humans’, Current Biology 16: 1824-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.072.
Gazzola, Valeria, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Bruno Wicker, and Christian Keysers. 2007. ‘The Anthropomorphic Brain: The Mirror Neuron System Responds to Human and Robotic Actions’, Neuroimage 35: 1674-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.003.
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Goldman, Alvin I., and Chandra S. Sirpada. 2005. ‘Simulationist Models of Face-based Emotion Recognition’, Cognition 94: 193-213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.005.
Guthrie, Stewart. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162: 1243-48.
Heider, Fritz, and Marianne Simmel. 1944. ‘An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior’, American Journal of Psychology 57: 243-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1416950.
Iacoboni, Marco. 2009. ‘Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons’, Annual Review of Psychology 60: 653-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163604.
Iacoboni, Marco, Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Vittorio Gallese, Giovanni Buccino, John C. Mazziotta, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2005. ‘Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System’, Plos Biology 3: 529-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079.
Ingold, Tim. 1996. ‘The Optimal Forager and Economic Man’, in P. Descola and G. Palsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Routledge): 25-44.
Johnson-Frey, Scott H., Farah R. Maloof, Roger Newman-Norlund, Chloe Farrer, Souheil Inati, and Scott T. Grafton. 2003. ‘Actions or Hand–Object Interactions? Human Inferior Frontal Cortex and Action Observation’, Neuron 39: 1053-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00524-5.
Keysers, Christian, and Valeria Gazzola. 2007. ‘Integrating Simulation and Theory of Mind: From Self to Social Cognition’, Trends in Cognitive Science 11.5: 194-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.002.
Keysers, Christian, Bruno Wicker, Valeria Gazzola, Jean L. Anton, and Vittorio Gallese. 2004. ‘A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch’, Neuron 42.2: 335-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4.
Lansing, J. Stephen. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Lansing, J. Stephen, and James N. Kremer. 1995. ‘A Socio-Ecological Analysis of Balinese Water Temples’, in D.M. Warren, L.J. Silikkerveer, and D. Brokensha (eds.), Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Cultural Dimension of Development (London: Intermediate Technology Publications): 258-68.
Marigonda, Enzo. 1968. ‘Contributo Sperimentale allo Studio della Percezione dei Rapporti Interpersonali’, in G. Kanizsa and G.B. Vicario (eds.), Ricerche Sperimentali sulla Percezione (Trieste: University of Trieste): 145-60.
Martin, Alex. 2009. ‘Circuits in Mind: The Neural Foundations for Object Concepts’, in A. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences (Cambridge: MIT Press): 1031-45.
Medin, Douglas L., and Scott Atran. 2004. ‘The Native Mind: Biological Categorization, Reasoning and Decision Making in Development across Cultures’, Psychological Review 111.4: 960-83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.4.960.
Medin, Douglas L., Norbert O. Ross, and Douglas G. Cox. 2006. Culture and Resource Conflict: Why Meanings Matter (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
Morrison, India, Donna Lloyd, Guiseppe di Pellegrino, and Neil Roberts. 2004. ‘Vicarious Responses to Pain in Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Is Empathy a Multisensory Issue?’, Cognitive and Affective Behavioral Neuroscience 4: 270-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/CABN.4.2.270.
Pavlova, Marina, Arseny A. Sokolov, and Alexander Sokolov. 2005. ‘Perceived Dynamics of Static Images Enables Emotional Attribution’, Perception 34: 1107-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5400.
Premack, David. 1995. ‘The Infant’s Theory of Self-propelled Objects’, Cognition 36: 1-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90051-K.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1967. ‘Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People’, Ethnology 6: 17-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3772735.
———. 1979. Ecology, Meaning and Religion (Richmond: North Atlantic).
———. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Laila Craighero. 2005. ‘Mirror Neuron: A Neurological Approach to Empathy’, in J.P. Changeux, A.R. Damasio, W. Singer, and Y. Christen (eds.), Neurobiology of Human Values (Berlin: Springer): 107-23.
Schachter, Stanley, and Jerome Singer. 1962. ‘Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State’, Psychological Review 69: 379-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0046234.
Singer, Tania, and Chris Frith. 2005. ‘The Painful Side of Empathy’, Nature Neuroscience 8: 845-46.
Tremlin, Todd. 2006. Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Trivers, Robert. 1971. ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/406755.
Uddin, Lucina Q., Marco Iacoboni, Claudia Lange, and Julian P. Keenan. 2007. ‘The Self and Social Cognition: The Role of Cortical Midline Structures and Mirror Neurons’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11: 153-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.01.001.
Ulloa, Erlinda R., and Jaime A. Pineda. 2007. ‘Recognition of Point-light Biological Motion: Mu Rhythms and Mirror Neuron Activity’, Behavioral Brain Research 183: 188-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2007.06.007.
Umilta, M. Alessandra, Evelyne Kohler, Vittorio Gallese, Leonardo Fogassi, Luciano Fadiga, Christian Keysers, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2001. ‘“I Know what you Are Doing”: A Neurophysiological Study’, Neuron 32: 91-101.
Urgesi, Cosimo, Valentina Moro, Matteo Candidi, and Salvatore M. Aglioti. 2006. ‘Mapping Implied Body Actions in the Human Motor System’, Journal of Neuroscience 26: 7942-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1289-06.2006.
van Baaren, Rick B., Rob W. Holland, Kerry Kamakami, and Ad van Knippenberg. 2004. ‘Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior’, Psychological Science 15: 71-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01501012.x.
van der Gaad, Christiaan, Ruud B. Minderaa, and Christian Keysers. 2007. ‘Facial Expressions: What the Mirror Neuron System Can and Cannot Tell us’, Social Neuroscience 2.3-4: 179-222.
Wicker, Bruno, Christian Keysers, Jane Plailly, Jean P. Royet, Vittorio Gallese, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2003. ‘Both of us Disgusted in my Insula: The Common Neural Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust’, Neuron 40: 655-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00679-2.
Wilson, Burgess. 2009. ‘Mirror Neurons, Culture and Spirit: Causes of Religious Behavior’, in J. Feierman (ed.), The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger): 157-71.
Wilson, David S. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).
Atkinson, A.P., W.H. Dittrich, A.J. Gemmell, and A.W. Young. 2004. ‘Emotion Perception from Dynamic and Static Body Expressions in Point-light and Fulllight Displays’, Perception 33: 717-46.
Atran, Scott. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Barrett, Justin. 2004. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press).
Bateson, C. Daniel. 1991. The Altruism Question: Toward a Social Psychological Answer (Hove: Erlbaum).
Berkes, Fikret, Daniel Feeny, Bonnie J. McCay, and James M. Acheson. 1989. ‘The Benefits of the Commons’, Nature 340: 91-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/340091a0.
Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. ‘“Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology (supplement) 40: S67-S92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/200061.
Boyer, Pascal. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books).
Carr, Laurie, Marco Iacoboni, Marie C. Dubeau, John C. Mazziotta, and Gian L. Lenzi. 2003. ‘Neural Mechanisms of Empathy in Humans: A Relay from Neural Systems for Imitation to Limbic Areas’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A 100: 5497-502. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0935845100.
Chartrand, Tanya L., and John A. Bargh. 1999. ‘The Chameleon Effect: The Perception Behavior Link and Social Interaction’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76: 893-910. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893.
Chartrand, Tanya L., William Maddux, and Jessica Lakin. 2005. ‘Beyond the Perception-Behavior Link: The Ubiquitous Utility and Motivational Moderators of Nonconscious Mimicry’, in R. Hassin, J. Uleman, and J.A. Bargh (eds.), Unintended Thought II: The New Unconscious (New York: Oxford University Press): 334-61.
Cheng, Yawei, Chia Y. Yang, Ching P. Lin, Po L. Lee, and Jean Decety. 2008. ‘The Perception of Pain in Others Suppresses Somatosensory Oscillations: A Magnetoencephalography Study’, NeuroImage 40: 1833-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.01.064.
Csibra, Gergely, Gy?rgy Gergely, Szilvia Biro, Orsolya Koos, and Margaret Brockbank. 1999. ‘Goal Attribution without Agency Cues: The Perception of “Pure Reason” in Infancy’, Cognition 72: 237-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00039-6.
Davis, Mark H. 1994. Empathy: A Social Psychological Approach (Boulder: Westview Press).
Di Dio, Cinzia, Emiliano Macaluso, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2007. ‘The Golden Beauty: Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures’, PLoS ONE 2.11: e1201.
Dimberg, Ulf, and Monika Thunberg. 1998. ‘Rapid Facial Reactions to Different Emotionally Relevant Stimuli’, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 39: 39-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9450.00054.
Eisenberg, Nancy, Tracy L. Spinrad, and Adrienne Sadovsky. 2006. ‘Empathy-related Responding in Children’, in M. Killen and J. Smetana (eds.), Handbook of Moral Development (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum): 517-49.
Fogassi, Leonardo, Pier F. Ferrari, Benno Gesierich, Stefano Rozzi, Fabian Chersi, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2005. ‘Parietal Lobe: From Action Organization to Intention Understanding’, Science 308: 662-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1106138.
Freedberg, David, and Vitorio Gallese. 2007. ‘Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11: 197-203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.003.
Gallese, Vitorio. 2001. ‘The “Shared Manifold” Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 8.5-7: 33-50.
———. 2005. ‘Embodied Simulation: From Neurons to Phenomenal Experience’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 23-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-005-4737-z.
Gallese, Vitorio, Morris N. Eagle, and Paolo Migone. 2007. ‘Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relations’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 55: 131-76.
Gazzola, Valeria, Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, and Christian Keysers. 2006. ‘Empathy and the Somatotopic Auditory Mirror System in Humans’, Current Biology 16: 1824-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.072.
Gazzola, Valeria, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Bruno Wicker, and Christian Keysers. 2007. ‘The Anthropomorphic Brain: The Mirror Neuron System Responds to Human and Robotic Actions’, Neuroimage 35: 1674-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.003.
Goldman, Alvin. 2006. Simulating Minds (New York: Oxford University Press). http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0195138929.001.0001.
Goldman, Alvin I., and Chandra S. Sirpada. 2005. ‘Simulationist Models of Face-based Emotion Recognition’, Cognition 94: 193-213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2004.01.005.
Guthrie, Stewart. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162: 1243-48.
Heider, Fritz, and Marianne Simmel. 1944. ‘An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior’, American Journal of Psychology 57: 243-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1416950.
Iacoboni, Marco. 2009. ‘Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons’, Annual Review of Psychology 60: 653-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163604.
Iacoboni, Marco, Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Vittorio Gallese, Giovanni Buccino, John C. Mazziotta, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2005. ‘Grasping the Intentions of Others with One’s Own Mirror Neuron System’, Plos Biology 3: 529-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079.
Ingold, Tim. 1996. ‘The Optimal Forager and Economic Man’, in P. Descola and G. Palsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Routledge): 25-44.
Johnson-Frey, Scott H., Farah R. Maloof, Roger Newman-Norlund, Chloe Farrer, Souheil Inati, and Scott T. Grafton. 2003. ‘Actions or Hand–Object Interactions? Human Inferior Frontal Cortex and Action Observation’, Neuron 39: 1053-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00524-5.
Keysers, Christian, and Valeria Gazzola. 2007. ‘Integrating Simulation and Theory of Mind: From Self to Social Cognition’, Trends in Cognitive Science 11.5: 194-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.002.
Keysers, Christian, Bruno Wicker, Valeria Gazzola, Jean L. Anton, and Vittorio Gallese. 2004. ‘A Touching Sight: SII/PV Activation during the Observation and Experience of Touch’, Neuron 42.2: 335-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(04)00156-4.
Lansing, J. Stephen. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Lansing, J. Stephen, and James N. Kremer. 1995. ‘A Socio-Ecological Analysis of Balinese Water Temples’, in D.M. Warren, L.J. Silikkerveer, and D. Brokensha (eds.), Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Cultural Dimension of Development (London: Intermediate Technology Publications): 258-68.
Marigonda, Enzo. 1968. ‘Contributo Sperimentale allo Studio della Percezione dei Rapporti Interpersonali’, in G. Kanizsa and G.B. Vicario (eds.), Ricerche Sperimentali sulla Percezione (Trieste: University of Trieste): 145-60.
Martin, Alex. 2009. ‘Circuits in Mind: The Neural Foundations for Object Concepts’, in A. Gazzaniga (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences (Cambridge: MIT Press): 1031-45.
Medin, Douglas L., and Scott Atran. 2004. ‘The Native Mind: Biological Categorization, Reasoning and Decision Making in Development across Cultures’, Psychological Review 111.4: 960-83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.4.960.
Medin, Douglas L., Norbert O. Ross, and Douglas G. Cox. 2006. Culture and Resource Conflict: Why Meanings Matter (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
Morrison, India, Donna Lloyd, Guiseppe di Pellegrino, and Neil Roberts. 2004. ‘Vicarious Responses to Pain in Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Is Empathy a Multisensory Issue?’, Cognitive and Affective Behavioral Neuroscience 4: 270-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/CABN.4.2.270.
Pavlova, Marina, Arseny A. Sokolov, and Alexander Sokolov. 2005. ‘Perceived Dynamics of Static Images Enables Emotional Attribution’, Perception 34: 1107-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/p5400.
Premack, David. 1995. ‘The Infant’s Theory of Self-propelled Objects’, Cognition 36: 1-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90051-K.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1967. ‘Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People’, Ethnology 6: 17-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3772735.
———. 1979. Ecology, Meaning and Religion (Richmond: North Atlantic).
———. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Laila Craighero. 2005. ‘Mirror Neuron: A Neurological Approach to Empathy’, in J.P. Changeux, A.R. Damasio, W. Singer, and Y. Christen (eds.), Neurobiology of Human Values (Berlin: Springer): 107-23.
Schachter, Stanley, and Jerome Singer. 1962. ‘Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State’, Psychological Review 69: 379-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0046234.
Singer, Tania, and Chris Frith. 2005. ‘The Painful Side of Empathy’, Nature Neuroscience 8: 845-46.
Tremlin, Todd. 2006. Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Trivers, Robert. 1971. ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/406755.
Uddin, Lucina Q., Marco Iacoboni, Claudia Lange, and Julian P. Keenan. 2007. ‘The Self and Social Cognition: The Role of Cortical Midline Structures and Mirror Neurons’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11: 153-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.01.001.
Ulloa, Erlinda R., and Jaime A. Pineda. 2007. ‘Recognition of Point-light Biological Motion: Mu Rhythms and Mirror Neuron Activity’, Behavioral Brain Research 183: 188-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2007.06.007.
Umilta, M. Alessandra, Evelyne Kohler, Vittorio Gallese, Leonardo Fogassi, Luciano Fadiga, Christian Keysers, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2001. ‘“I Know what you Are Doing”: A Neurophysiological Study’, Neuron 32: 91-101.
Urgesi, Cosimo, Valentina Moro, Matteo Candidi, and Salvatore M. Aglioti. 2006. ‘Mapping Implied Body Actions in the Human Motor System’, Journal of Neuroscience 26: 7942-49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1289-06.2006.
van Baaren, Rick B., Rob W. Holland, Kerry Kamakami, and Ad van Knippenberg. 2004. ‘Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior’, Psychological Science 15: 71-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01501012.x.
van der Gaad, Christiaan, Ruud B. Minderaa, and Christian Keysers. 2007. ‘Facial Expressions: What the Mirror Neuron System Can and Cannot Tell us’, Social Neuroscience 2.3-4: 179-222.
Wicker, Bruno, Christian Keysers, Jane Plailly, Jean P. Royet, Vittorio Gallese, and Giacomo Rizzolatti. 2003. ‘Both of us Disgusted in my Insula: The Common Neural Basis of Seeing and Feeling Disgust’, Neuron 40: 655-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00679-2.
Wilson, Burgess. 2009. ‘Mirror Neurons, Culture and Spirit: Causes of Religious Behavior’, in J. Feierman (ed.), The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger): 157-71.
Wilson, David S. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press).
Published
2011-10-18
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Wilson, B. C. (2011). Mirroring Processes, Religious Perception and Ecological Adaptation: Toward an Empathic Theory of Religion. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 5(3), 307-326. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i3.307
