Marc Andersen

Aarhus University | AU · Department of Culture Cognition and Computation

We review previous attempts to study mystical experience and point to problems inherent to certain methodologies. Focusing on studies that use controlled environments we advocate taking an experimental approach to mysticism. To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we report findings from a new study that probes the potential for eliciting my...

Studies of cultural transmission—whether approached by archaeological or ethnographic means—have made great strides in identifying formal teaching and learning arrangements, which in turn can be closely aligned with models of social learning. While novices and apprentices are often in focus in such studies, younger children and their engagement wit...

Why do people seek out frightening leisure activities such as horror films and haunted attractions, and does the experience benefit them in any way? In this article, we address these questions through two separate studies. In Study 1, we asked American horror fans ( n = 256) why they like horror and identified three overall types of horror fans, wh...

Why do we seek out and enjoy uncertain success in playing games? Game designers and researchers suggest that games whose challenges match player skills afford engaging experiences of achievement, competence, or effectance—of doing well. Yet, current models struggle to explain why such balanced challenges best afford these experiences and do not str...

In this article, we argue that a predictive processing framework (PP) may provide elements for a proximate model of play in children and adults. We propose that play is a behavior in which the agent, in contexts of freedom from the demands of certain competing cognitive systems, deliberately seeks out or creates surprising situations that gravitate...

In creativity research it is often claimed that creativity pertains to persons and products as well as processes. However, most studies have focused on the creative potential of persons and their creative products in detriment of looking at the creative process itself or investigating all three facets of creativity in the same study. In this articl...

Learning to use, make, and modify tools is key to our species’ success. Researchers have hypothesized that play with objects may have a foundational role in the ontogeny of tool use and, over evolutionary timescales, in cumulative technological innovation. Yet, there are few systematic studies investigating children’s interactions with objects outs...

Principles of alignment, predictability and certainty have become cornerstones in modern day conceptions of high-quality education. Yet, in recent years, educational progressives who argue for the importance of uncertainty in formal learning environments are increasingly getting support from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In t...

Why do people seek out frightening leisure activities such as horror films and haunted attractions, and does the experience benefit them in any way? In this article, we address these questions through two separate studies. In Study 1, we asked American horror fans (n = 256) why they like horror and identified three overall types of horror fans whic...

Haunted attractions are illustrative examples of recreational fear in which people voluntarily seek out frightening experiences in pursuit of enjoyment. We present findings from a field study at a haunted-house attraction where visitors between the ages of 12 and 57 years ( N = 110) were equipped with heart rate monitors, video-recorded at peak sca...

The automated evaluation of creative products promises both good-and-scalable creativity assessments and new forms of visual analysis of whole corpora. Where creative works are not ‘born digital’, such automated evaluation requires fast and frugal ways of transforming them into data representations that can be meaningfully assessed with common crea...

Ouija board sessions are illustrious examples of how subjective feelings of control – the Sense of Agency (SoA) - can be manipulated in real life settings. We present findings from a field experiment at a paranormal conference, where Ouija enthusiasts were equipped with eye trackers while using the Ouija board. Our results show that participants ha...

We investigate approaches to horror entertainment from two common consumer stances: ‘the thrill-seeking stance’ in which adrenaline junkies seek maximal fear arousal and ‘the fear-avoidance stance’ in which so-called white-knucklers seek minimal fear arousal. Visitors of a haunted house attraction (n = 280) were invited to focus on either maximizin...

Previous research on credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to religious role models “practicing what they preach” aids the acceptance of religious representations by cultural learners. Likewise, a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence implicates its opposite, perceived “religious hypocrisy” (forthwith credibili...

Agency detection is a central concept in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). Experimental studies, however, have so far failed to lend support to some of the most common predictions that follow from current theories on agency detection. In this article, I argue that predictive coding, a highly promising new framework for understanding percepti...

Since its inception, explaining the cognitive foundations governing sensory experiences of supernatural agents has been a central topic in the cognitive science of religion. Following recent developments in perceptual psychology, this pre-registered study examines the effects of expectations and sensory reliability on agency detection. Participants...

Predictive coding is becoming the standard model of perception and cognition in cognitive neuroscience. Scholars of religion now face the challenge of understanding religious experiences in light of this new paradigm. Why do people report vivid supernatural encounters like apparitions, trance, possession, and mystical union if subjective experience...

Cooperation is necessary in many types of human joint activity and relations. Evidence suggests that cooperation has direct and indirect benefits for the cooperators. Given how beneficial cooperation is overall, it seems relevant to investigate the various ways of enhancing individuals' willingness to invest in cooperative endeavors. We studied whe...