“Spiritual but not religious”: Cognition, schizotypy, and conversion in alternative beliefs

© 2017 The spiritual but not religious (SBNR) are a growing population in secularizing societies. Yet, we know little about the underlying psychology of this group or their belief profile. Based on an individual difference approach, we address this knowledge gap by comparing SBNR with religious and non-religious participants. In a sample of Americans (n = 1013), we find that the SBNR differ from non-religious and religious participants in a number of ways. SBNR participants are more likely to hold paranormal beliefs and to have an experiential relationship to the supernatural (e.g. have mystical experiences and feelings of universal connectedness), but are similar to religious participants in their profile of cognitive biases. SBNR participants score higher on measures of schizotypy than the religious or non-religious. Reported conversions from one group (religious, SBNR, or non-religious) to another since childhood corresponds with predictable differences in cognitive biases, with dualism predicting conversion to religion and schizotypy predicting conversion to SBNR

The Minds of God(s) and Humans: Differences in Mind Perception in Fiji and North America

Previous research suggests that how people conceive of minds depends on the culture in which they live, both in determining how they interact with other human minds and how they infer the unseen minds of gods. We use exploratory factor analysis to compare how people from different societies with distinct models of human minds and different religious traditions perceive the minds of humans and gods. In two North American samples (American adults, N=186; Canadian students, N=202), we replicated a previously found two-factor agency/experience structure for both human and divine minds, but in Fijian samples (Indigenous iTaukei Fijians, N=77; Fijians of Indian descent, N=214; total N=679) we found a three-factor structure, with the additional containing items related to social relationships. Further, Fijians’ responses revealed a different three-factor structure for human minds and gods’ minds. We used these factors as dimensions in the conception of minds to predict a) expectations about human and divine tendencies towards punishment and reward; and b) conception of gods as more embodied (an extension of experience) or more able to know people’s thoughts (an extension of agency). We found variation in how these factors predict conceptions of agents across groups, indicating further theory is needed to explain how culturally generated concepts of mind lead to other sorts of social inferences. We conclude that mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations and recommend further work in different cultural contexts to examine the interplay between culture and social cognition.Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortiu

The evolution of the shaman's cultural toolkit

The Templeton World Charity Foundatio

God's mind on morality

Supplementary material: To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.1Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Most research on cognition behind religious belief assumes that understanding of other minds is culturally uniform and follows the Western model of mind, which posits that (a) others’ thoughts can be known and (b) action is best explained by mental state inference. This is potentially problematic if, as a growing body of evidence suggests, other populations view minds differently. We recruit Indigenous iTaukei Fijians who hold (a) a model of mind that discourages mental state inference and (b) co-existing Christian (Western) and traditional supernatural agent beliefs. Study 1 (N = 108), uses free-listing to examine how Western and local models of mind relate to beliefs. The Christian God cares about internal states and traits (aligning with the Western model of mind). Study 2 tests whether evoking God triggers intent focus in moral reasoning. Instead, God appears to enforce cultural models of mind in iTaukei (N = 151) and North Americans (N = 561). Expected divine judgement mirrors human judgement; iTaukei (N = 90) expect God to emphasise outcome, while Indo-Fijians (N = 219) and North Americans (N = 412) expect God to emphasise intent. When reminded to think about thoughts, iTaukei (N = 72) expect God to judge outcomes less harshly. Results suggest cultural/cognitive co-evolution: introduced cultural forms can spread new cognitive approaches, while Indigenous beliefs can persist as a reflection of local institutions

Watch me, watch you: ritual participation increases in-group displays and out-group monitoring in children

© 2021 The Author(s). Collective rituals serve social functions for the groups that perform them, including identifying group members and signaling group commitment. A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool program (N = 60 4-11-year-olds) to test the influence of participating in a ritual task on in-group displays and out-group monitoring over repeated exposures to the group. The results demonstrate that ritual participation increases in-group displays (i.e., time spent displaying materials to in-group members) and out-group monitoring (i.e., time spent looking at out-group members) compared to a control task across three time points. This study provides evidence for the processes by which rituals may influence children’s behaviors toward in- and outgroup members and discusses implications for understanding the development of ritual cognition and behavior.American Psychological Foundation Elizabeth M. Koppitz Graduate Student Fellowship and the University of Texas at Austin Continuing Graduate Fellowship to N.J.W.; Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ‘Ritual, Community, and Conflict’ (REF RES-060-25-0085) to C.H.L

Cognitive Pathways to Belief in Karma and Belief in God

Supporting Information: Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of the article: Appendix S1: Supplementary results at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2Fcogs.12935&file=cogs12935-sup-0001-Supinfo.pdf (PDF document, 678.9 KB). Supplemental Materials are also available at: osf.io/sk6qt/) . Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.This archived file is the accepted manuscript, White Willard Baimel Norenzayan - Cognitive predictors of karma - manuscript for sharing.pdf Version: 4, Created: January 02, 2020 | Last edited: December 17, 2020 available at PsyArXiv Preprints DOI: https://10.31234/osf.io/39egn.Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross-culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God—an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma—another culturally widespread but ostensibly non-agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high-powered samples, including mostly Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N = 2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N = 1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma—including morally laden, non-agentic, and agentic conceptualizations—above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Grant Number: 410-2010-0297; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Grant Number: F18-0440

The Cultural Transmission Of Faith: Why innate intuitions are necessary, but insufficient, to explain religious belief

The cognitive science of religion integrates insights from diverse scientific disciplines to explain how people acquire, represent and transmit religious concepts. This perspective has led to a fruitful research program on the naturalistic origins of religion. However, it has thus far not directly addressed a key component of religion: faith or committed belief. The present review proposes a framework that integrates standard approaches from the cognitive science of religion with established models of cultural evolution and cultural learning. According to this synthetic approach, innate cognitive content biases explain how people mentally represent gods, and cultural evolutionary models explain why people come to believe and commit to the particular supernatural beliefs that they do. This synthesis offers a more complete picture of the origins and cultural persistence of religious belief. © 2011 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

The association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition is reduced or eliminated when controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits

Data availability: The dataset generated and analysed during the current study and a fully programmed version of the experiment is available on Open Science Framework: (https://osf.io/vhwxj/?view_only=f6776204f42d4368b4a7a262d0fc8139).Emotion recognition shows large inter-individual variability, and is substantially affected by childhood trauma as well as modality, emotion portrayed, and intensity. While research suggests childhood trauma influences emotion recognition, it is unclear whether this effect is consistent when controlling for interrelated individual differences. Further, the universality of the effects has not been explored, most studies have not examined differing modalities or intensities. This study examined childhood trauma’s association with accuracy, when controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits, and if this varied across modality, emotion portrayed, and intensity. An adult sample (N = 122) completed childhood trauma, alexithymia, and psychopathy questionnaires and three emotion tasks: faces, voices, audio-visual. When investigating childhood trauma alone, there was a significant association with poorer accuracy when exploring modality, emotion portrayed, and intensity. When controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy, childhood trauma remained significant when exploring emotion portrayed, however, it was no longer significant when exploring modality and intensity. In fact, alexithymia was significant when exploring intensity. The effect sizes overall were small. Our findings suggest the importance of controlling for interrelated individual differences. Future research should explore more sensitive measures of emotion recognition, such as intensity ratings and sensitivity to intensity, to see if these follow accuracy findings.Partially funded by internal funding awarded to RB by Brunel University London (BRIEF award 1086)

SPECT/CT imaging of the lumbar spine in chronic low back pain: a case report

Mechanical low back pain is a common indication for Nuclear Medicine imaging. Whole-body bone scan is a very sensitive but poorly specific study for the detection of metabolic bone abnormalities. The accurate localisation of metabolically active bone disease is often difficult in 2D imaging but single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (SPECT/CT) allows accurate diagnosis and anatomic localisation of osteoblastic and osteolytic lesions in 3D imaging. We present a clinical case of a patient referred for evaluation of chronic lower back pain with no history of trauma, spinal surgery, or cancer. Planar whole-body scan showed heterogeneous tracer uptake in the lumbar spine with intense localisation to the right lateral aspect of L3. Integrated SPECT/CT of the lumbar spine detected active bone metabolism in the right L3/L4 facet joint in the presence of minimal signs of degenerative osteoarthrosis on CT images, while a segment demonstrating more gross degenerative changes was more quiescent with only mild tracer uptake. The usefulness of integrated SPECT/CT for anatomical and functional assessment of back pain opens promising opportunities both for multi-disciplinary clinical assessment and treatment for manual therapists and for research into the effectiveness of manual therapies