Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations (original) (raw)
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Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts: A Unified Theory In the Cognitive Science of Religion
Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to religion, 2022
Traditional cognitive scientists of religion (CSR) have argued that memorability for minimally counterintuitive concepts is a distinct phenomenon unconnected with distinctiveness effect and the von restorff effect. I argue that this assumption flies in the face of cognitive science bias towards unified theories of cognition which dictates that we should assume that two similar seeming behaviors arise from the same cognitive processes unless we have strong evidence to believe otherwise. Furthermore, the traditional CSR approach is unable to explain the success of some of the most widespread religious beliefs such as the belief in God or spread of religious concepts (such as NRM beliefs) in the modern world. The context-based model not only redeems the historical and sociocultural study of religion as an essential complement for a cognitive science of religion, but it also provides a systematic way of integrating the two in developing a truly scientific approach to the study of religion.
The Experimental Investigation of Religious Cognition
2006
Religious cognition may be defined as the cognitive processes and representational states involved in religion-related knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, behaviours, and experience. Religious content and information processing occurs both at an intellectual, propositional level and also at an affect-laden, implicational level. Many questions are unanswered in our understanding of religious cognition, but fundamental to them all is the question of how religious cognition can be measured. Psychology of religion has primarily used questionnaires to measure religious belief, but many limitations suggest the need for new methods that can tap into implicational religious cognition, such as God schemas, as well as propositional religious cognition, such as God concepts. The purpose of this investigation was to explore which experimental paradigms most successfully tap into implicational religious cognition, and thereby add a new set of measurement tools to those available to the psychologist of religion. A consideration of research into the schematic representation of self and other persons suggested multiple hypotheses that could be tested using experimental paradigms adapted from the social cognition and cognition and emotion literatures. I present findings from a series of five experiments that measured cognitive biases in attention, memory, and judgement speed that were hypothesized to result from implicational religious cognition. Two experiments adapted the emotional Stroop paradigm to explore the possibility of a religious Stroop effect. While evangelical Christians, non-evangelical Christians, and atheists did not differ in interference when colour-naming emotionally valent religious material, in a subsequent unexpected recall test evangelicals showed enhanced recall for religious but not control material. Three experiments adapted the self-reference effect paradigm to investigate the accessibility and centrality of God schemas relative to self-schemas. Though evangelical and non-evangelical Christians had relatively similar propositional beliefs about the character of God, the pattern of evangelicals’ speed in making God-referent judgements and subsequent recall of God-referent material suggested that their God schemas were better-elaborated, more efficient, and more affect-laden than those of non-evangelicals. Atheists were able to draw consistently on two different concepts of God, but did so slowly and with poor subsequent recall, indicating that their God schemas were poorly elaborated, inefficient, and affect-free. Though much research exploring these biases is still to be done, the findings of the current investigation suggest that incidental memory and judgement speed paradigms are successful in tapping into implicational religious cognition and can reveal differences not otherwise observable through more direct measurement.
Introduction: New Frontiers in the Cognitive Science of Religion
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2005
, in order to formulate new theories about a wide range of religious materials, including religious ritual, religious representations, and modes of religiosity. Works exploring the consequences of those theories and advancing additional cognitive theories about these and other religious phenomena soon followed. Examples of the former include experimental work in psychology (Barrett, Richert and Driesenga 2001; Bering and Bjorklund [in press]) and anthropology (Malley and Barrett 2003) as well as attempts to test these theories cross-culturally (
Cognitive Science of Religion and the Study of Theological Concepts
Topoi
The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts.
Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience
Cambridge University Press, 2001
Religion in Mind summarizes and extends the last decade's advances in the cognitive study of religion using empirical research from psychology and anthropology to illuminate various components of religious belief, ritual, and experience. The book examines cognitive dimensions of religion within a naturalistic view of culture, while respecting the phenomenology of religion and drawing together teachers of religion, psychologists of religion, and cognitive scientists. Expert contributors focus on phenomena such as belief-fixation and transmission; attributions of agency; anthropomorphizing; counterintuitive religious representations; the well-formedness of religious rituals; links between religious representations and emotions; and the development of god concepts. The work encourages greater interdisciplinary linkages between scholars from different fields and will be of interest to researchers in anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and cognitive science. It also will interest more general readers in religion and science.
2024
The cognitive science of religion (CSR) research program aims to deliver theories and mechanisms using scientific-style causal explanations for 'complex cultural concepts' (CCCs) deemed 'religious' by social actors. Their explanandum is the phenomena of CCCs deemed 'religion,' and their explanans cognitive theories and mechanisms. In this research report, an exploration of these cognitive theories and mechanisms will take form. The main focus of this exploration is the construction of theories and mechanisms in CSR using evolutionary psychology and anthropology. Regarding the evolutionary byproduct hypothesis, this includes Anthropomorphism Theory (1.1), Folk Theory (1.2), Theory of Mind (1.3), Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (1.4), Minimally Counterintuitives (1.5), and Ritual Form Hypothesis (1.6); regarding the dual-inheritance hypothesis, this includes Divergent Modes of Religiosity (2.1), Adaptative Prosociality (2.2), and Hazard-Precaution System (2.3); regarding the adaptationist hypothesis, this includes Group Cohesion and Kin Selection (3.1), Costly Religious Signalling (3.2), Sexual Selection Theory (3.3), and Supernatural Punishment Theory (3.4). This exploration tries to provide an up-to-date overview of the most explored theories and mechanisms of CSR-from the scholars who created them to contemporary CSR research that develops them.
Cognitive Science and the Naturalness of Religion
Philosophy Compass, 2010
Cognitive approaches to religious phenomena have attracted considerable interdisciplinary attention since their emergence a couple of decades ago. Proponents offer explanatory accounts of the content and transmission of religious thought and behavior in terms of underlying cognition. A central claim is that the cross-cultural recurrence and historical persistence of religion is attributable to the cognitive naturalness of religious ideas, i.e., attributable to the readiness, the ease, and the speed with which human minds acquire and process popular religious representations. In this article, we primarily provide an introductory summary of foundational questions, assumptions, and hypotheses in this field, including some discussion of features distinguishing cognitive science approaches to religion from established psychological approaches. Relevant ethnographic and experimental evidence illustrate and substantiate core claims. Finally, we briefly consider the broader implications of these cognitive approaches for the appropriateness of 'religion' as an explanatorily useful category in the social sciences.
Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?
Religion Compass, 2007
Cognitive science of religion (CSR) brings theories from the cognitive sciences to bear on why religious thought and action is so common in humans and why religious phenomena take on the features that they do. The field is characterized by a piecemeal approach, explanatory non-exclusivism, and methodological pluralism. Topics receiving consideration include how ordinary cognitive structures inform and constrain the transmission of religious ideas, why people believe in gods, why religious rituals and prayers tend to have the forms that they do, why afterlife beliefs are so common, and how human memory systems influence socio-political features in religious systems. CSR is often associated with evolutionary science and anti-religious rhetoric but neither is intrinsic nor necessary to the field.