Přenos laboratoře do terénu: Využití smíšených metod během terénního studia náboženství

Článek se kritickým a provokativním způsobem zamýšlí nad neuspokojivou situací v oblasti akademického studia náboženství, jejíž příčiny spatřuje především v izolovanosti a roztříštěnosti dosavadních badatelských snah. Kritickému pohledu je vystavena rovněž kognitivní věda o náboženství, která se od doby svého vzniku profiluje jako interdisciplinární projekt usilující o propojení tradičních metod studia náboženství s metodami přírodních věd. Autor článku kritizuje jednostrannou zaostřenost kognitivní vědy o náboženství na laboratorní experimenty a předkládá argumenty k jejich propojení s terénními experimenty, které umožňují získávání dat s vysokou externí validitou

Promoción del cumplimiento ambiental. Compendio de artículos académicos sobre regulación y cumplimiento normativo

El presente documento reúne seis artículos que fueron escritos originalmente en inglés por reconocidos/as autores/as e investigadores/as de Estados Unidos de América y Europa principalmente, los mismos que han sido validados en sus versiones traducidas al español por un equipo de profesionales del Organismo de Evaluación y Fiscalización Ambiental (OEFA). Los artículos son: 1. Estrategia de cumplimiento óptimo para prevenir derrames de petróleo: una aplicación de un modelo principal-agente con riesgo moral - Mark A. Cohen -- 2. Aplicación óptima de la ley e información imperfecta cuando la riqueza varía entre individuos - Nuno Garoupa -- 3. Magnitud óptima y probabilidad de las multas - Nuno Garoupa -- 4. Aplicación óptima de la ley con autoinformación del comportamiento - Louis Kaplow y Steven Shavell -- 5. Depende de quién te esté mirando: señales de agentes 3D aumentan la equidad - Jan Krátky y Dimitris Xygalatas, Jhon McGraw y Panagiotis Mitkidis -- 6. Análisis empírico de sanciones por delitos ambientales - Sandra Roussea

Analytic atheism : A cross-culturally weak and fickle phenomenon?

Religious belief is a topic of longstanding interest to psychological science, but the psychology of religious disbelief is a relative newcomer. One prominently discussed model is analytic atheism, wherein cognitive reflection, as measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test, overrides religious intuitions and instruction. Consistent with this model, performance-based measures of cognitive reflection predict religious disbelief in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic) samples. However, the generality of analytic atheism remains unknown. Drawing on a large global sample (N = 3461) from 13 religiously, demographically, and culturally diverse societies, we find that analytic atheism as usually assessed is in fact quite fickle cross-culturally, appearing robustly only in aggregate analyses and in three individual countries. The results provide additional evidence for culture's effects on core beliefs.Peer reviewe

Moralizing gods, impartiality and religious parochialism across 15 societies

The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behaviour toward geographically distant co-religionists. Furthermore, another hypothesis points to such mechanisms being constrained to the religious ingroup, possibly at the expense of religious outgroups. To test these hypotheses, we administered two behavioural experiments and a set of interviews to a sample of 2228 participants from 15 diverse populations. These populations included foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and wage labourers, practicing Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, but also forms of animism and ancestor worship. Using the Random Allocation Game (RAG) and the Dictator Game (DG) in which individuals allocated money between themselves, local and geographically distant co-religionists, and religious outgroups, we found that higher ratings of gods as monitoring and punishing predicted decreased local favouritism (RAGs) and increased resource-sharing with distant co-religionists (DGs). The effects of punishing and monitoring gods on outgroup allocations revealed between-site variability, suggesting that in the absence of intergroup hostility, moralizing gods may be implicated in cooperative behaviour toward outgroups. These results provide support for the hypothesis that beliefs in monitoring and punitive gods help expand the circle of sustainable social interaction, and open questions about the treatment of religious outgroups

Memory for expectation-violating concepts:The effects of agents and cultural familiarity

Previous research has shown that ideas which violate our expectations, such as schema-inconsistent concepts, enjoy privileged status in terms of memorability. In our study, memory for concepts that violate cultural (cultural schema-level) expectations (e.g., "illiterate teacher", "wooden bottle", or "thorny grass") versus domain-level (ontological) expectations (e.g., "speaking cat", "jumping maple", or "melting teacher") was examined. Concepts that violate cultural expectations, or counter-schematic, were remembered to a greater extent compared with concepts that violate ontological expectations and with intuitive concepts (e.g., "galloping pony", "drying orchid", or "convertible car"), in both immediate recall, and delayed recognition tests. Importantly, concepts related to agents showed a memory advantage over concepts not pertaining to agents, but this was true only for expectation-violating concepts. Our results imply that intuitive, everyday concepts are equally attractive and memorable regardless of the presence or absence of agents. However, concepts that violate our expectations (cultural-schema or domain-level) are more memorable when pertaining to agents (humans and animals) than to non-agents (plants or objects/artifacts). We conclude that due to their evolutionary salience, cultural ideas which combine expectancy violations and the involvement of an agent are especially memorable and thus have an enhanced probability of being successfully propagated. © 2014 Porubanova et al

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Firewalking in Northern Greece : a cognitive approach to high-arousal rituals

In the village of Agia Eleni in Greece, firewalking rituals are performed by a community called the Anastenaria. Its members are Orthodox Christians. In addition to the Church ritualS, however, they observe a separate annual ritual cycle, focused on the worship of saints Constantine and Helen. The most important event in this cycle,is the festival of the two saints, which lasts for three days and includes various processions around the village, an animal sacrifice, music, and ecstatic dancing. The most dramatic moment of the festival is the firewalking ritual itself, where the participants, carrying the icons of the saints, dance over the burning-red coals. This dissertation is a cognitive ethnography of the Anastenaria. Its goal is twofold. As an ethnographic project. it intends to record and present this tradition within its specific social. political, and economic context. At the same time. as a cognitive endeavour, it aims to identify the psychological factors that contribute to the persistence and the transmission of the Anastenaria and other emotionally arousing rituals. These two directions of my research, the cognitive and the ethnographic, will be interrelated and interacting: on the one hand, cognitive theories and methods will serve as a tool for the interpretation of my ethnography. On the other, the ethnographic data will help me test the claims and the validity of some of these theories.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo