The origins of religion : evolved adaptation or by-product?

Pyysiäinen, Ilkka; Hauser, Marc D.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.007

Cited by 92 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Others (e.g. [33,[39][40][41][42]) have argued that religions are cultural systems that exploit such byproducts to adaptive effect. If, as our results indicate, the activation of supernatural agent concepts promotes the enforcement of cultural norms of fairness, and if such norms sustain cooperative behaviours within the group, then religions that harness such concepts will enhance the survival prospects of their vectors, thereby contributing to their own survival.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

et al. 2010

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Recent evidence indicates that priming participants with religious concepts promotes prosocial sharing behaviour. In the present study, we investigated whether religious priming also promotes the costly punishment of unfair behaviour. A total of 304 participants played a punishment game. Before the punishment stage began, participants were subliminally primed with religion primes, secular punishment primes or control primes. We found that religious primes strongly increased the costly punishment of unfair behaviours for a subset of our participants-those who had previously donated to a religious organization. We discuss two proximate mechanisms potentially underpinning this effect. The first is a 'supernatural watcher' mechanism, whereby religious participants punish unfair behaviours when primed because they sense that not doing so will enrage or disappoint an observing supernatural agent. The second is a 'behavioural priming' mechanism, whereby religious primes activate cultural norms pertaining to fairness and its enforcement and occasion behaviour consistent with those norms. We conclude that our results are consistent with dual inheritance proposals about religion and cooperation, whereby religions harness the byproducts of genetically inherited cognitive mechanisms in ways that enhance the survival prospects of their adherents.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

et al. 2010

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“…Some authors, for example, explain it as a specific adaptation for cooperation within groups for between-group competition (Wilson, 2005). According to this view, different cognitive systems implicated in social relationships might have been subject to natural selection, creating an adaptive system--that is, religion, designed to improve cooperation (Pyysiäinen & Hauser, 2010). However, several authors have pointed out that the same advantages for social bonding can be obtained without any specific support from religious beliefs (Dennett, 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Fondevila

Martı́n-Loeches

Jiménez-Ortega

et al. 2012

Social Neuroscience

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Religious beliefs are both catchy and durable: they exhibit a high degree of adherence to our cognitive system, given their success of transmission and spreading throughout history. A prominent explanation for religion's cultural success comes from the "MCI hypothesis," according to which religious beliefs are both easy to recall and desirable to transmit because they are minimally counterintuitive (MCI). This hypothesis has been empirically tested at concept and narrative levels by recall measures. However, the neural correlates of MCI concepts remain poorly understood. We used the N400 component of the event-related brain potential as a measure of counterintuitiveness of violations comparing religious and non-religious sentences, both counterintuitive, when presented in isolation. Around 80% in either condition were core-knowledge violations. We found smaller N400 amplitudes for religious as compared to non-religious counterintuitive ideas, suggesting that religious ideas are less semantically anomalous. Moreover, behavioral measures revealed that religious ideas are not readily detected as unacceptable. Finally, systematic analyses of our materials, according to conceptual features proposed in cognitive models of religion, did not reveal any outstanding variable significantly contributing to these differences. Refinements of cognitive models of religion should elucidate which combination of factors renders an anomaly less counterintuitive and thus more suitable for recall and transmission.

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“…De Waal (2013 argues that moral behavior is advantageous in a species as social as humans and uses examples from nature to argue that capacities for empathy and altruism are innate in humans and some other animal species. Others have made similar theoretical arguments that prosocial and moral behaviors evolved to engender more harmonious interactions and functional societies among humans (Pyysiäinen and Hauser 2010).…”

Section: Religious and Spiritual Strugglesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Spiritual Struggles among Atheists: Links to Psychological Distress and Well-Being

et al. 2018

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Religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles)-tension or conflicts regarding religious or spiritual matters-have been robustly linked to greater psychological distress and lower well-being. Most research in this area has relied on samples consisting predominantly of participants who believe in god(s). Limited research has examined R/S struggles among atheists, generally conflating them with agnostics and other nontheists. This study investigated the prevalence of R/S struggles among atheists and compared atheists to theists in two samples (3978 undergraduates, 1048 Internet workers).Results of a multilevel model showed that atheists experience less demonic, doubt, divine, moral, and overall R/S struggles than theists, but similar levels of interpersonal and ultimate meaning struggles. Correlation and regression analyses among atheists demonstrated links between moral, ultimate meaning, and overall R/S struggles and greater distress (depression and anxiety symptoms) as well as lower well-being (life satisfaction and meaning in life). Even after controlling neuroticism, ultimate meaning struggles continued to predict lower well-being and higher distress across samples; moral struggles also predicted distress independently. This study demonstrates the relevance of R/S struggles to atheists and reinforces the applicability of previous results to atheist samples, but also highlights substantial differences between atheists and theists in certain R/S struggles.

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The origins of religion : evolved adaptation or by-product?

Cited by 92 publications

References 28 publications

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

Wrath of God: religious primes and punishment

The sacred and the absurd––an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Spiritual Struggles among Atheists: Links to Psychological Distress and Well-Being

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