C
Cognitive Science of Religion
Dimitris Xygalatas
Department of Anthropology, University of
Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University,
Aarhus, Denmark
The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is an
academic subdiscipline that studies the mental
capacities and processes that underlie recurrent
patterns of religious thought and behavior. The
main focus of CSR is on unconscious processes
such as thoughts, biases, emotions, and motivations. Unlike the related field of the Psychology of
Religion, whose primary level of analysis is the
individual, CSR is primarily interested in accounting for cultural forms and explaining why these
particular forms are more widespread than others.
Like Cognitive Science in general, CSR is interdisciplinary, employing theoretical perspectives
and methodological tools from such diverse fields
as religious studies; cultural, cognitive, and evolutionary anthropology; cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology; philosophy;
neuroscience; biology; behavioral ecology; history; and archaeology.
Given the interdisciplinary and pluralistic character of the field, there are ongoing debates over
methodological priorities and theoretical positions. However, CSR scholars by and large agree
on a set of basic overarching assumptions. First of
all, religion is not a sui generis domain of the
human existence and therefore can and should
be subject to explanatory scrutiny just like any
other cultural expression. Second, a scientific
study of religion must necessarily adopt a position
of methodological naturalism; religious explanations of religious phenomena cannot be taken to
have any explanatory value in themselves. In line
with evolutionary psychology, it is accepted that
cultural forms are subject to the biological constraints of the human brain and the universal mental capacities of the human species, as they have
evolved through natural selection. In line with
Cognitive Science, it is also accepted that the
mind is not a blank slate nor a general-purpose
computational machine but comes pre-equipped
with a host of specialized mechanisms, each with
a specific function. Based on these premises, cognitive scientists of religion are interested in
exploring the causal mechanisms that might
account for the recurrent patterns of religious
beliefs and practices found around the world.
The Development of CSR
Although the mental underpinnings of religion
had often been the focus of earlier research in
the psychology, sociology, and anthropology of
religion, a more concerted cognitive study of cultural forms was inspired by the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and especially by the work of
Noam Chomsky (1957) on language. Chomsky
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
D.A. Leeming (ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9261-4
2
argued for a psychological approach to language,
aiming to specify the biologically hardwired principles of the mind that constrain the form of all
natural languages. Soon thereafter, growing attention began to be directed to studies that focused on
underlying commonalities rather than on surface
variability of human traits and sought to uncover a
“universal grammar” underlying the particular
semantics of cultural phenomena. In the 1970s,
Dan Sperber (1975) argued for a cognitive
approach to cultural transmission, calling for
attention to the psychological dispositions that
underlie the formation and distribution of cultural
representations, while Thomas E. Lawson (1976)
and Frits Staal (1979) proposed a cognitive
approach to ritual forms. The first comprehensive
cognitive theory of religion was outlined by
anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1980), who
argued that the origins of religiosity lie in the
evolved human predisposition to attribute agency
and intentionality to ambiguous inanimate objects
and events in the environment.
Some of the field’s most important theoretical
foundations were laid in the 1990s, with the work
of Pascal Boyer (1992) on counterintuitive concepts, that of Harvey Whitehouse (1992), Thomas
E. Lawson and Robert McCauley (1990) on ritual
transmission, and others (e.g., Deacon 1997;
Donald 1991; Mithen 1996). CSR expanded
exponentially shortly after the dawn of the new
millennium, which brought both theoretical
sophistication (Boyer 2002; McCauley and
Lawson 2002; Whitehouse 2004) and institutional
grounding (Xygalatas and McKay 2013). The
consolidation of the field came with the founding
of the International Association for the Cognitive
Science of Religion in 2006.
Methods
CSR uses a wide variety of methods, ranging from
ethnographic
observation
(Cohen
2007;
Xygalatas
2012)
and
textual
analysis
(Slingerland and Chudek 2011) to brain studies
(Cristofori et al. 2015; Schjoedt et al. 2011) and
computer simulations (Nielbo and Sørensen
2012). Following an initial period of purely
Cognitive Science of Religion
theoretical applications of cognitive perspectives
to religion, CSR turned towards experimental
hypothesis testing. However, since religion is
inextricably linked with local contexts such as
culturally specific meanings, sacred places, etc.,
many aspects of religiosity cannot easily be studied in the laboratory. To deal with this problem,
CSR scholars also turn towards naturalistic experiments to provide empirical data while addressing
both sides of the cognition and culture continuum.
These studies have used a variety of methods such
as
physiological
measurements
(Fischer
et al. 2014; Xygalatas et al. 2013b), facial expression analyses (Bulbulia et al. 2013), contextual
primes (Xygalatas et al. 2015), economic games
(Sosis and Ruffle 2004), or various combinations
thereof.
For example, in one such study (Konvalinka
et al. 2011; Xygalatas et al. 2011), researchers
used heart rate monitors to measure physiological
arousal at a Spanish fire-walking ritual, where
participants crossed a bed of glowing-red coals.
The results revealed synchronous arousal between
performers and observers of the event, despite the
fact that the ritual did not involve any motor
synchrony. In addition, the degree of the alignment in heart rate patterns could be predicted by
the level of social proximity, suggesting that physiological and emotional synchrony were not
merely the effect of mirroring but were also mediated by social familiarity (Fig. 1).
Key Topics
Some of the main topics in CSR research address
the following questions:
How did religion come about? Some CSR
scholars see religion as an evolutionary
by-product. For example, according to Stewart
Guthrie (1980), religion is a by-product of our
innate tendency to overdetect intentionality in
nature. This tendency is an adaptive trait that
evolved to allow us to detect predators and prey,
but it also makes us susceptible to seeing faces in
the clouds and gods on toasted bread. Similarly,
Boyer and Liénard (2006) see ritualized behavior
as a by-product of an adaptive cognitive system
Cognitive Science of Religion
3
Cognitive Science
of Religion, Fig. 1 A
study of a Spanish firewalking ritual revealed that
the ritual created collective
effervescence, which was
measured as heart rate
synchrony
aimed at precautionary behavior. Other CSR
scholars, however, consider that religion evolved
to serve specific adaptive functions such as
eliciting prosocial behavior and promoting cooperation (Sosis 2003), while others argue that both
models can coexist within the framework of Dual
Inheritance Theory (Atran and Henrich 2010).
What does religion do? Irrespective of how it
arose, religion undoubtedly has significant effects
both for individuals and society. For example, the
long-standing assumption that ritual may be an
intuitive response to anxiety was tested by Martin
Lang and his colleagues (2015), who found that
inducing anxiety led people to engage in ritualized
behavior. Similarly, CSR scholars are investigating the effects of religion on morality (Shariff
et al. 2015; Xygalatas et al. 2013a). Overall, this
research suggests that although religious disposition plays little role in moral behavior, religious
situation does have prosocial effects (Norenzayan
and Shariff 2008).
Are we natural-born believers? Developmental studies in CSR examine when religious beliefs
are formed and how they develop over the course
of the lifespan. For example, there is evidence that
children from very early ages tend to see purpose
and design in the natural world (Kelemen 2004).
Furthermore, research suggests that dualism (the
idea that body and mind are two independent
entities and that the latter can survive the death
of the former) also comes naturally to children
(Bering and Bjorklund 2004).
What makes religion successful? Dan Sperber
(1996) proposed a selectionist model in which
religious ideas proliferate because they successfully trigger innate human psychological biases
that constitute attractors in the cultural evolutionary landscape. Pascal Boyer (1992) has argued
that the most successful religious concepts are
those that tend to be “minimally counterintuitive,”
violating just enough of our intuitive expectations
to be exciting and more easily remembered.
Finally, other scholars discussed the role of ritual
by identifying a bimodal distribution of ritual
practices, one relying on frequency and the other
on arousal for the successful transmission of belief
and praxis (Whitehouse 1992; Lawson and
McCauley 1990).
See Also
▶ Evolution and Religion
▶ Neurology and Psychology of Religion
▶ Psychology and the Origins of Religion
▶ Psychology of Religion
▶ Reductionism
▶ Religious Experience
▶ Ritual
4
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