Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Agent detection
Explanation by agents
Cognitive Aspects
Explanation of unexplainable events
Causal thinking
Consequences of having a soul that survives the body
Immortality of soul
Folk-dualism: Having a soul independent from body
COGNITIVE ASPECTS
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
(Folk-concept of soul seems similar to concept of soul in
many religions and of many philosophers)
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Folk-concept of soul ≈ conscousness
The mental instance where we perceive, feel, wish, think,
imagine, argue with ourself, make decisions, etc.
what people mean when they say “I”
FOLK – DUALISM:
Belief of having a soul independent of the body
Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Sometimes soul appears to be influenced other powers:
I have new/surprising thoughts, sudden insights,
strange desires, sometimes it seems that somebody is
talking with me
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
• personal daily experience – internal perspective
Body is visible (also own one in mirror) – soul is not
One can think about moving the hand, walking, etc
without doing anything like that,
In one’s mind one can go to other places,
other times, imagine to talk with people who are
not here, …
Sometimes the body does not obey
(e.g., when exhausted, states of paralysis)
Why do people assume the existence of a soul?
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Soul can travel great distances in seconds
it can meet other souls – these are the persons
about one has dreamed
when soul does not return to body, person dies
forever
dreams are real actions carried ot by the soul of the
person when it leaves him in sleep at night.
Pokoman Maya of Highland Guatemala (Reina, 1966):
e.g.
• Dreams: we can do things in dream, move around,
go to far away places –
while body does not any of these
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observation of dead persons:
body often does not look different –
it seems that something is missing
Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
• sometimes out of body experience
(approx. 15% of all people)
explanation: damage of defined brain areas
can be generated experimentally:
Blanke (2002 etc.), Ehrenson (2007)
•
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
From developmental psychology:
ToM, empathy, from about 2 years on
we realize that not only we but also other people have
souls (which we cannot see, of course)
Theory of Mind (ToM)
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
by 3 years of age children recognize defining criteria
that distinguish the internal-mental world from the
external-physical world :
mental entities (thoughts, dreams, memories, mental
images) are not real in the way as physical entities
- have no permanent existence apart from the mind in
which they occur
- are inherently private, not public
- cannot be seen, touched,used, shared with others like
physical objects (we all can see the same apple)
Estes (1994), Estes et al. (1989),
Wellman & Estes ( 1986)
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Even below 3-year old children spontaneously refer to
the distinction between mind and external reality
(in conversation in natural settings,
Bartsch & Wellman, 1995)
This knowledge becomes adult-like by age of 5-6
These properties of mental entities not only inferred from
children’s behavior,
children have knowledge about that
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
¾ Simulation constraint hypothesis (Bering, 2006)
Simulation constraint
= the inability to know what it is like to be dead
dead is seen by people in analogy to past mental
states like dreamless sleep or unconsciousness
¾ Dead people can appear in our dreams,
sometimes one can feel their presence
SOUL APPEARS TO SURVIVE BODY
( not necessarily for an eternity )
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Subjects were presented animated puppet show
where anthropomorphic mouse was killed and eaten
by alligator
Subjects: Children & adult control group
Study by Bering & Borklund (2004)
¾ Psychological immortality as a cognitive default
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
However, mouse was seen as being able to feel
hungry, to think and had knowledge
– i.e., children saw the mouse’s mind still active.
Kindergarten children:
biological function (capacity to be sick, need to eat and
drink, to relieve oneself) not here anymore.
Majority of children: brain of mouse is not working
(children know that brain is “for thinking”).
Then:
subjects were asked about biological and
psychological functions of the now dead mouse
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Beringer et al (2005): same pattern after controlling for
different religious educations.
This pattern is opposite to the view that beliefs about
soul etc. are caused exclusively by culture.
Kindergarten children: more likely to make
psychological attributions to dead mouse than
older children and adults (no diff)
All subjects (also adults): more likely to attribute
psychological states to the dead mouse (emotions,
desires, epistemic states) than psychobiological or
perceptual states.
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
animism
ancestors
Cognitive Aspects
CONSEQUENCES of believing to have a
SOUL THAT SURVIVES THE BODY
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
• have improbable properties
(higher knowledge, may know future)
• can appear in our dreams, give signs, presence in
certain places can be felt, can give rise to fear, can
give advice or warnings
• Are invisible, as soul is invisible
surviving souls considered as ancestors
(in spiritual sense), spirits, ghosts etc.
Ancestors
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
(e.g. very distant ancestors created humans, possibly
created to world)
• very distant ancestors (whom nobody has known
personally, maybe even names are not known)
Æ may become something like gods (?)
• just like living people, spirits may have different power
• can do harm or good, for example:
cause or cure illness, can lead animals to hunting
places or scare them off, etc)
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
animism is generalization of awareness that other
humans or even animals have a soul
animism = giving a soul (anima) to things
Animism
attributing intentions, something like a soul, to animals,
other living things or even non-living things
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
If animals have soul Æ
hunters may ask the hunted animal’s forgiveness totemismus
Many animals powerful and dangerous in life (bear,
mammoth),
therefore: their spirits are ascribed the same properties
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
or to prevent effect
what can I do to promote effect
Intervention
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(i.e., the subject searches for a cause c, so that cÆe)
if effect is observed, what cause?
Detection of cause / diagnostic
if cause is here, then effect happens
Prediction
Mental causal model:
cause Æ effect (e.g. lightning causes fire)
CAUSAL THINKING
person (agent)
I myself
Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
prediction enables predictive control
intervention is a clear case of control
whether effect happens depends essentially on me
Control (when I am responsible)
Specific causes:
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Teleological authorship in the design of individual
souls: as objects are seen as being here for some
purpose (cloud for raining), human beings are
considered as being here for some purpose (Bering,
2006)
If c causes e,
it is the purpose of c to cause e
( clouds are here for raining )
Often: tendency for teleological explanation
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Æ Agent Detection
Cognitive Aspects
Explanation of unexplainable events:
explanation by (unseen) agents
ghost,
gods that created world
Motivational:
Need/tendency for causal explanation of events
If event e happened – what caused it?
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Psychology of Religous
Beliefs
Cognitive Aspects
Gergely & Csibra (2003):
If causal cues indicating rational agency are present,
even 12-month-old infants see inanimate movement as
purposive behavior.
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We have tendency to search for agents that can be
considered as causes for puzzling and frightening events,
ghosts, fairies, nymphs, goblins, …, gods.
Most of these explanations are then given up, but some
remain (Dennett, 2006)
AGENT DETECTION
ability to infer presence of organisms that may do harm
(Gould, 1999)