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Praxis and doxa : what a focus on ritual can offer evolutionary explanations of religion
... As there is an immense diversity in the form, frequency, and intensity of religious commitments, scholars of religion have long been interested in answering the related questions of when, in what ways, and with what intensity people demonstrate commitment to their gods (e.g., Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011;Cohen et al., 2003;Finke & Stark, 2005;Power, 2017b;Purzycki & Sosis, 2011;Rappaport, 1999;Solt et al., 2011;Xygalatas et al., 2013). Moreover, researchers have taken on the challenge of developing accounts of how specific cultural variants in religious commitments come to spread and persist at the expense of others, resulting in the modern landscape of religious commitments that is dominated by the "world" religions (e.g., Baumard & Chevallier, 2015;Norenzayan et al., 2016). ...
... As there is an immense diversity in the form, frequency, and intensity of religious commitments, scholars of religion have long been interested in answering the related questions of when, in what ways, and with what intensity people demonstrate commitment to their gods (e.g., Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011;Cohen et al., 2003;Finke & Stark, 2005;Power, 2017b;Purzycki & Sosis, 2011;Rappaport, 1999;Solt et al., 2011;Xygalatas et al., 2013). Moreover, researchers have taken on the challenge of developing accounts of how specific cultural variants in religious commitments come to spread and persist at the expense of others, resulting in the modern landscape of religious commitments that is dominated by the "world" religions (e.g., Baumard & Chevallier, 2015;Norenzayan et al., 2016). ...
The existential security hypothesis predicts that in the absence of more successful secular institutions, people will be attracted to religion when they are materially insecure. Most assessments, however, employ data sampled at a state-level with a focus on world religions. Using individual-level data collected in societies of varied community sizes with diverse religious traditions including animism, shamanism, polytheism, and monotheism, we conducted a systematic cross-cultural test (N = 1820; 14 societies) of the relationship between material insecurity (indexed by food insecurity) and religious commitment (indexed by both beliefs and practices). Moreover, we examined the relationship between material security and individuals’ commitment to two types of deities (moralistic and local), thus providing the first simultaneous test of the existential security hypothesis across co-existing traditions. Our results indicate that while material insecurity is associated with greater commitment to moralistic deities, it predicts less commitment to local deity traditions.
Cultural consonance and religious participation are both associated with salutogenic mental health outcomes. Yet studies of religious and other cultural models must take into account multiple and conflicting cultural norms. In this article, we explore the consequences of trying to adhere to the oppositional cultural models of religious (Latter‐day Saint or Mormon) and secular American gender roles as perceived by college‐aged women at a Utah university. Using cultural consensus and cultural consonance analysis, we demonstrate that while conforming with one model may provide social and mental health benefits, striving for consonance with both results in increased perceived stress levels for Latter‐day Saints and nonmembers alike. Such cultural dissonance may be a contributing factor to the current mental health crisis among Utah youth. This work expands the theory of cultural consonance by examining it in the context of two incongruent lifestyles This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Priming has emerged as a valuable tool within the psychological study of religion, allowing for tests of religion’s causal effect on a number of psychological outcomes, such as prosocial behavior. As the literature has grown, questions about the reliability and boundary conditions of religious priming have arisen. We use a combination of traditional effect size analyses, p-curve analyses, and adjustments for publication bias to evaluate the robustness of four types of religious priming (Analyses 1-3), review the empirical evidence for religion’s effect specifically on prosocial behavior (Analyses 4-5), and test whether religious priming effects generalize to individuals who report little or no religiosity (Analyses 6-7). Results across 93 studies and 11,653 participants show that religious priming has robust effects across a variety of outcome measures—prosocial measures included. Religious priming does not, however, reliably affect non-religious participants—suggesting that priming depends on the cognitive activation of culturally transmitted religious beliefs.
We present a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religion s, and address two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: 1) the rise of large-scale cooperation and 2) the simultaneous spread of prosocial religions in the last ten-to-twelve millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of religious beliefs and practices characterized by potent, moralizing supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity selectively spread because they promoted cooperation in increasingly large groups.
Previous research has shown that the matching of rhythmic behaviour between individuals (synchrony) increases cooperation. Such synchrony is most noticeable in music, dance and collective rituals. As well as the matching of behaviour, such collective performances typically involve shared intentionality: performers actively collaborate to produce joint actions. Over three experiments we examined the importance of shared intentionality in promoting cooperation from group synchrony. Experiment 1 compared a condition in which group synchrony was produced through shared intentionality to conditions in which synchrony or asynchrony were created as a by-product of hearing the same or different rhythmic beats. We found that synchrony combined with shared intentionality produced the greatest level of cooperation. To examinef the importance of synchrony when shared intentionality is present, Experiment 2 compared a condition in which participants deliberately worked together to produce synchrony with a condition in which participants deliberately worked together to produce asynchrony. We found that synchrony combined with shared intentionality produced the greatest level of cooperation. Experiment 3 manipulated both the presence of synchrony and shared intentionality and found significantly greater cooperation with synchrony and shared intentionality combined. Path analysis supported a reinforcement of cooperation model according to which perceiving synchrony when there is a shared goal to produce synchrony provides immediate feedback for successful cooperation so reinforcing the group's cooperative tendencies. The reinforcement of cooperation model helps to explain the evolutionary conservation of traditional music and dance performances, and furthermore suggests that the collectivist values of such cultures may be an essential part of the mechanisms by which synchrony galvanises cooperative behaviours.
Religion is often conceived as a conservative social force that sustains traditional cultural beliefs and behaviors. Religion,
however, also exhibits predictable socioecological variation and facilitates adaptive response patterns in the diverse environments
that humans inhabit. Here we examine how the religious system, which is composed of a number of interacting components, generates
adaptive response patterns. We argue that the religious system accomplishes this by: (1) employing highly flexible cognitive
mechanisms, (2) evoking emotional responses that provide reliable information concerning individual
physical and psychological states, (3) supporting specialists who introduce religious ideas that endorse and sustain the
social order, and (4) encouraging collective acceptance of these ideas with public displays, typically in the form of rituals,
badges, and taboos. These interacting components of the religious system ultimately promote prosocial behavior under diverse
conditions.
Understanding religion requires explaining why supernatural beliefs, devotions, and rituals are both universal and variable across cultures, and why religion is so often associated with both large-scale cooperation and enduring group conflict. Emerging lines of research suggest that these oppositions result from the convergence of three processes. First, the interaction of certain reliably developing cognitive processes, such as our ability to infer the presence of intentional agents, favors—as an evolutionary by-product—the spread of certain kinds of counterintuitive concepts. Second, participation in rituals and devotions involving costly displays exploits various aspects of our evolved psychology to deepen people's commitment to both supernatural agents and religious communities. Third, competition among societies and organizations with different faith-based beliefs and practices has increasingly connected religion with both within-group prosociality and between-group enmity. This connection has strengthened dramatically in recent millennia, as part of the evolution of complex societies, and is important to understanding cooperation and conflict in today's world.
Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.
Humanity is teeming with breathtaking theodiversity-in religious beliefs, behaviors, and traditions, as well as in various intensities and forms of disbelief. Yet the origins and consequences of this diversity have received limited attention in psychology. I first describe how evolved psychological processes that influence and respond to cultural evolutionary trajectories generate and channel religious diversity. Next, I explore how theodiversity in turn shapes human psychology, and discuss three cultural dimensions of religious diversity in relation to psychological processes: (a) the cultural shift from small foraging bands and their local religious practices and beliefs to large and complex groups and their world religions, (b) cultural variability among world religions, and (c) secularization and the ensuing cultural divide between religious and nonreligious societies and subcultures. The contributions of psychology to the scientific study of religion will increase with a deeper understanding of theodiversity. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 67 is January 03, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues in William Irons's theory of religion as a "hard-to-fake" sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals serve as costly signals of an individual's commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose a proximate explanation for how individuals are able to pay the short-term costs of ritual performance to achieve the long-term fitness benefits offered by religious groups. The model addresses three significant problems raised by Irons's theory. First, the model explains why potential free-riders do not join religious groups even when there are significant net benefits that members of religious groups can achieve. Second, the model clarifies how costly a ritual must be to achieve stability and prevent potential free-riders from joining the religious group. Third, the model suggests why religious groups may require adherents to perform private rituals that are not observed by others. Several hypotheses generated from the model are also discussed.
Most social scientists endorse some version of the claim that participating in collective rituals promotes social cohesion. The systematic testing and evaluation of this claim, however, has been prevented by a lack of precision regarding the nature of both “ritual” and “social cohesion” as well as a lack of integration between the theories and findings of the social and evolutionary sciences. By directly addressing these challenges, we argue that a systematic investigation and evaluation of the claim that ritual promotes social cohesion is achievable. We present a general and testable theory of the relationship between ritual, cohesion, and cooperation that more precisely connects particular elements of “ritual,” such as causal opacity and emotional arousal, to two particular forms of “social cohesion”: group identification and identity fusion. Further, we ground this theory in an evolutionary account of why particular modes of ritual practice would be adaptive for societies with particular resource-acquisition strategies. In setting out our conceptual framework, we report numerous ongoing investigations that test our hypotheses against data from controlled psychological experiments as well as from the ethnographic, archaeological, and historical records.
Shared beliefs about supernatural agents and joint engagement in ritual activities are often proposed to engender cohesion and cooperation within religious communities. We report the results of an experiment that investigated the effects of religious-concept priming and synchronous activity among Brazilian drummers. Participants were divided into two between-subjects narrative priming conditions: religious and secular. Within each priming condition, we applied a within-subjects design to investigate effects of solo, group synchronous, and group non-synchronous drumming on endorphin release and cooperation. We found an effect of priming conditions, such that there was a trend toward higher cooperation in the religiously primed group compared to the secularly primed group. We found neither a main effect of the drumming condition nor a drumming-priming interaction effect. Results suggest that behavioral synchrony alone is insufficient to increase cooperation. In light of previous findings, we propose that high levels of physical exertion or social-cognitive mechanisms, such as overlapping task-representation or intentional coordination, are also required for cooperation.
Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he provides a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion and elsewhere. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper lays out an evolutionary theory for the cognitive foundations and cultural emergence of the extravagant displays (e.g., ritual mutilation, animal sacrifice and martyrdom) that have so tantalized social scientists, as well as more mundane actions that influence cultural learning and historical processes. In Part I, I use the logic of natural selection to build a theory for how and why seemingly costly displays influence the cognitive processes associated with cultural learning — why do "actions speak louder than words?" The core idea is that cultural learners can both avoid being manipulated by their models (those they are inclined to learn from) and more accurately assess their belief commitment by attending to displays or actions by the model that would seem costly to the model if he held beliefs different from those he expresses verbally. Part II examines the implications for cultural evolution of this learning bias in a simple evolutionary model. The model reveals the conditions under which this evolved bias can create stable sets of interlocking beliefs and practices, including quite costly practices. Part III explores how cultural evolution, driven by competition among groups or institutions stabilized at alternative sets of these interlocking belief-practice combinations, has led to the association of costly acts, often in the form of rituals, with deeper commitments to group beneficial ideologies, higher levels of cooperation within groups, and greater success in competition with other groups or institutions. I close by discussing the broader implications of these ideas for understanding various aspects of religious phenomena.
In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues
in William Irons’s theory of religion as a “hard-to-fake” sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals
serve as costly signals of an individual’s commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious
group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose
a proximate explanation for how individuals are able to pay the short-term costs of ritual performance to achieve the long-term
fitness benefits offered by religious groups. The model addresses three significant problems raised by Irons’s theory. First,
the model explains why potential free-riders do not join religious groups even when there are significant net benefits that
members of religious groups can achieve. Second, the model clarifies how costly a ritual must be to achieve stability and
prevent potential free-riders from joining the religious group. Third, the model suggests why religious groups may require
adherents to perform private rituals that are not observed by others. Several hypotheses generated from the model are also
discussed.
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.
Social psychologists have often followed other scientists in treating religiosity primarily as a set of beliefs held by individuals. But, beliefs are only one facet of this complex and multidimensional construct. The authors argue that social psychology can best contribute to scholarship on religion by being relentlessly social. They begin with a social-functionalist approach in which beliefs, rituals, and other aspects of religious practice are best understood as means of creating a moral community. They discuss the ways that religion is intertwined with five moral foundations, in particular the group-focused "binding" foundations of Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity. The authors use this theoretical perspective to address three mysteries about religiosity, including why religious people are happier, why they are more charitable, and why most people in the world are religious.
Building bigness: Religious practice and social support in rural South India (Doctoral Dissertation)
- E A Power
Power, E. A. (2015). Building bigness: Religious practice and social support in rural
South India (Doctoral Dissertation). Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
- A Norenzayan
Norenzayan, A. (2016). Theodiversity. Annual Review of Psychology, 67(1), 465-488.