This project explores the nature of the representation of non-agentic qualities that are associated with the Christian God (e.g., peace, love, joy, existence, unity, etc.). Specifically, we propose that these existential words maintain an embodied representation that involves visuo-spatial vastness. In four experiments, participants saw an image followed by words and non-words. The words were either existential words (e.g., peace, hope, unity, joy, etc.) or positively-valenced abstract concepts (e.g., luck, wealth, success, fun, etc.). Participants indicated whether the string of letters was a word or not by pressing a “yes” or “no” key as quickly as possible. Response times were recorded. In Experiments 1 and 2, images of nature depicting visuo-spatial vastness or close-up images of nature, respectively, facilitated responses to existential words compared to control words. However, in Experiment 3, when the images were presented for a much briefer duration (i.e., 250 msecs), only vast images facilitated responses to existential words. Finally, Experiments 4A and 4B demonstrated that the priming effect between vast images and existential words varied as a function of posture. Specifically, the facilitation to existential words following vast images remained when participants maintained a vast posture (i.e., arms open) but was eliminated with a constricted posture (e.g., arms crossed). The overall pattern of results across the four experiments supports the notion that existential words are associated with visuo-spatial, and perhaps, proprioceptive vastness. The results hint at the possibility that vastness is an important component of the embodied representation of existential concepts and may also relate to the representation of the Christian God.
{"title":"Vastness as an Embodied Representation of Existential Concepts","authors":"Mary Harmon-Vukic, Kate Spitalnic","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.26061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.26061","url":null,"abstract":"This project explores the nature of the representation of non-agentic qualities that are associated with the Christian God (e.g., peace, love, joy, existence, unity, etc.). Specifically, we propose that these existential words maintain an embodied representation that involves visuo-spatial vastness. In four experiments, participants saw an image followed by words and non-words. The words were either existential words (e.g., peace, hope, unity, joy, etc.) or positively-valenced abstract concepts (e.g., luck, wealth, success, fun, etc.). Participants indicated whether the string of letters was a word or not by pressing a “yes” or “no” key as quickly as possible. Response times were recorded. In Experiments 1 and 2, images of nature depicting visuo-spatial vastness or close-up images of nature, respectively, facilitated responses to existential words compared to control words. However, in Experiment 3, when the images were presented for a much briefer duration (i.e., 250 msecs), only vast images facilitated responses to existential words. Finally, Experiments 4A and 4B demonstrated that the priming effect between vast images and existential words varied as a function of posture. Specifically, the facilitation to existential words following vast images remained when participants maintained a vast posture (i.e., arms open) but was eliminated with a constricted posture (e.g., arms crossed). The overall pattern of results across the four experiments supports the notion that existential words are associated with visuo-spatial, and perhaps, proprioceptive vastness. The results hint at the possibility that vastness is an important component of the embodied representation of existential concepts and may also relate to the representation of the Christian God.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"22 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139445548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embodiment, Deity Yoga, Cognitive and Evolutionary Approaches to Religion","authors":"A. Geertz","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.26507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.26507","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"157 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139245635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, by Gabriel Levy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022. xiii + 249 pages, $45.00. ISBN: 9780262543248
{"title":"Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, by Gabriel Levy","authors":"Anastasiia Shabalina","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.26235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.26235","url":null,"abstract":"Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, by Gabriel Levy. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2022. xiii + 249 pages, $45.00. ISBN: 9780262543248","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"471 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135444401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism involving visualizations that have the normative goal of “becoming one” with a supernatural being. During the practice, practitioners report experiencing that their own body transforms into the body of the deity. This paper offers a potential cognitive explanation of how such an experience is possible. Applying findings from cognitive science on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, we argue that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause an experience analogous to the famous “rubber hand illusion” in which one misattributes their ownership to a fake hand. In this paper, we 1) introduce deity yoga practice and its key aspects; 2) discuss illusory ownership and its explanation embedded in a predictive processing framework; 3) argue that visualization in deity yoga may induce the experience of illusory ownership; and 4) conclude with a short discussion of the hypothesis’ limitations and of ways to test our hypothesis. Overall, the paper suggests how the practice of visualization in deity yoga may lead to an experience of a transfer of identity onto an imagined supernatural agent.
{"title":"Raising the Buddha’s Hand","authors":"Piotr Szymanek, Matylda Ciołkosz","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.22811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22811","url":null,"abstract":"Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism involving visualizations that have the normative goal of “becoming one” with a supernatural being. During the practice, practitioners report experiencing that their own body transforms into the body of the deity. This paper offers a potential cognitive explanation of how such an experience is possible. Applying findings from cognitive science on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, we argue that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause an experience analogous to the famous “rubber hand illusion” in which one misattributes their ownership to a fake hand. In this paper, we 1) introduce deity yoga practice and its key aspects; 2) discuss illusory ownership and its explanation embedded in a predictive processing framework; 3) argue that visualization in deity yoga may induce the experience of illusory ownership; and 4) conclude with a short discussion of the hypothesis’ limitations and of ways to test our hypothesis. Overall, the paper suggests how the practice of visualization in deity yoga may lead to an experience of a transfer of identity onto an imagined supernatural agent.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135444402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article highlights several of the valuable contributions in Religion Evolving by Benjamin Purzycki and Richard Sosis (2022) and offers some material and methodological reflections that are intended to complement their efforts. Their book offers a clear and useful operationalization of religion, emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomena in question, and makes great strides in overcoming the polarizing debate between proponents of the “by-product” and “adaptationist” camps in the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion. The bulk of the current article argues for the importance of building on their efforts by also attending to the conditions under which – and the mechanisms by which – religion can become “maladaptive” in contemporary contexts.
{"title":"Religion Devolving?","authors":"F. LeRon Shults","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.23578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.23578","url":null,"abstract":"This article highlights several of the valuable contributions in Religion Evolving by Benjamin Purzycki and Richard Sosis (2022) and offers some material and methodological reflections that are intended to complement their efforts. Their book offers a clear and useful operationalization of religion, emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomena in question, and makes great strides in overcoming the polarizing debate between proponents of the “by-product” and “adaptationist” camps in the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion. The bulk of the current article argues for the importance of building on their efforts by also attending to the conditions under which – and the mechanisms by which – religion can become “maladaptive” in contemporary contexts.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135746244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience, edited by Esther Eidinow, Armin W. Geertz, and John North. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xiv + 299 pages, $99.99. ISBN 978-1-316-51533-4.
{"title":"Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience, edited by Esther Eidinow, Armin W. Geertz, and John North","authors":"Lars Albinus","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.24372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.24372","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Religious Experience, edited by Esther Eidinow, Armin W. Geertz, and John North. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xiv + 299 pages, $99.99. ISBN 978-1-316-51533-4.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135778184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Harvey Whitehouse documents the great variety of ritual in human life, while offering a unified framework. Ritual’s essential social role is to support social cohesion and cooperation, but it does so via distinct mechanisms: through social fusion and through social identification. For, despite variation, ritual clusters at two poles: rare, intense, often aversive rituals; and frequent, low arousal rituals. Those frequent rituals operate through social identification primed by mutual recognition of common doctrine. In principle, this mechanism is scale independent. Rare, intense rituals generate cohesion through social fusion, itself triggered by shared, congruent autobiographical memory. This is intrinsically a small-scale mechanism. In this paper, I (i) argue that cost-based analyses of the function of ritual have a larger scope than Whitehouse supposes, (ii) offer a modified view of social fusion and the role of autobiographical memory, and (iii) argue that the primary upshot of doctrinal ritual is the legitimation of hierarchy rather than social cohesion over large social scales.
{"title":"How Ritual an Animal? Harvey Whitehouse on Ritual, Trust, and Cooperation","authors":"K. Sterelny","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.22515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22515","url":null,"abstract":"Harvey Whitehouse documents the great variety of ritual in human life, while offering a unified framework. Ritual’s essential social role is to support social cohesion and cooperation, but it does so via distinct mechanisms: through social fusion and through social identification. For, despite variation, ritual clusters at two poles: rare, intense, often aversive rituals; and frequent, low arousal rituals. Those frequent rituals operate through social identification primed by mutual recognition of common doctrine. In principle, this mechanism is scale independent. Rare, intense rituals generate cohesion through social fusion, itself triggered by shared, congruent autobiographical memory. This is intrinsically a small-scale mechanism. In this paper, I (i) argue that cost-based analyses of the function of ritual have a larger scope than Whitehouse supposes, (ii) offer a modified view of social fusion and the role of autobiographical memory, and (iii) argue that the primary upshot of doctrinal ritual is the legitimation of hierarchy rather than social cohesion over large social scales.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43164698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Harvey Whitehouse offers a complex and stimulating theory of rituals that bind people together and propagate via affiliative imitation. The Ritual Animal argues that fundamental problems of group cooperation can be solved by causally opaque and goal-demoted behaviors which produce arbitrary cultural conventions, honest signals of membership, and collective fused identities. This amply evidenced and compelling account explains a broad variety of prominent examples, yet other key causal mechanisms emerge from the ethnographic literature and analytical reflection on affiliation and groups. Taking a glance at some widespread and unusual rituals, this paper highlights the importance of cultural transmission via pedagogy with or without copying, costly signaling and coordination without coalitional groups, and meta-representations of impenetrable ritual efficacy. Future research can explain how bonding rituals become central features of social interaction without relying upon a quite debatable adaptive function of ritual behavior for cooperation – or anything else.
{"title":"Ritual Animals also Require Pedagogy, Communication, and Social Reasoning","authors":"R. Umbreș","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.23448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.23448","url":null,"abstract":"Harvey Whitehouse offers a complex and stimulating theory of rituals that bind people together and propagate via affiliative imitation. The Ritual Animal argues that fundamental problems of group cooperation can be solved by causally opaque and goal-demoted behaviors which produce arbitrary cultural conventions, honest signals of membership, and collective fused identities. This amply evidenced and compelling account explains a broad variety of prominent examples, yet other key causal mechanisms emerge from the ethnographic literature and analytical reflection on affiliation and groups. Taking a glance at some widespread and unusual rituals, this paper highlights the importance of cultural transmission via pedagogy with or without copying, costly signaling and coordination without coalitional groups, and meta-representations of impenetrable ritual efficacy. Future research can explain how bonding rituals become central features of social interaction without relying upon a quite debatable adaptive function of ritual behavior for cooperation – or anything else.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67554281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the book The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2021), Harvey Whitehouse presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ritual that is remarkable in range and versatility. Embedded in evolutionary principles, his theories hold vast explanatory potential, asking pertinent questions about the evolutionary functions and psychological substrates of ritual behaviour and its pivotal role in the origins of cultural and social complexity. Moreover, he compellingly discusses how the research outlined, resulting from many collaborations over several decades, can serve as a basis for meaningful policy making as well as the bridging of various fields within academia, hence demonstrating its potential for making contributions toward some of the most pressing issues currently faced by humanity.
{"title":"An Overview of Harvey Whitehouse’s The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2021)","authors":"R. Jagiello","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.22039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22039","url":null,"abstract":"In the book The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2021), Harvey Whitehouse presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ritual that is remarkable in range and versatility. Embedded in evolutionary principles, his theories hold vast explanatory potential, asking pertinent questions about the evolutionary functions and psychological substrates of ritual behaviour and its pivotal role in the origins of cultural and social complexity. Moreover, he compellingly discusses how the research outlined, resulting from many collaborations over several decades, can serve as a basis for meaningful policy making as well as the bridging of various fields within academia, hence demonstrating its potential for making contributions toward some of the most pressing issues currently faced by humanity.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44453914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael B. Kitchens, Isabella M Lang, Sydney E Petrasic, Brian C Remper, Brittany Wilson
Do the words used to prime the concept of God in psychology of religion research studies accurately reflect a mental representation of God? To examine this, two samples completed a free-association task, where they listed 10 words that came to mind when they thought about God (Studies 1a–1b). We found that more than half of the lexical primes used in previous studies were rarely or never produced (< 5 times) in the 2,610 free-association responses. Using a false memory paradigm, Study 2 revealed that the most frequent free-association words produced in Studies 1a and 1b more effectively primed the concept of God than a set of prime words used in previous religious priming studies that were not frequent free-association words in Studies 1a and 1b. This research advances the methodological practices in religious priming research and contributes to an understanding of people’s thoughts about God.
{"title":"Cognitively Accessible Words Associated with God as Effective Lexical Primes","authors":"Michael B. Kitchens, Isabella M Lang, Sydney E Petrasic, Brian C Remper, Brittany Wilson","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.22679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22679","url":null,"abstract":"Do the words used to prime the concept of God in psychology of religion research studies accurately reflect a mental representation of God? To examine this, two samples completed a free-association task, where they listed 10 words that came to mind when they thought about God (Studies 1a–1b). We found that more than half of the lexical primes used in previous studies were rarely or never produced (< 5 times) in the 2,610 free-association responses. Using a false memory paradigm, Study 2 revealed that the most frequent free-association words produced in Studies 1a and 1b more effectively primed the concept of God than a set of prime words used in previous religious priming studies that were not frequent free-association words in Studies 1a and 1b. This research advances the methodological practices in religious priming research and contributes to an understanding of people’s thoughts about God.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47466059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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