Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/26742
Title: Appealing to the minds of gods: religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies
Authors: Bendixen, T
Apicella, C
Atkinson, Q
Cohen, E
Henrich, J
McNamara, RA
Norenzayan, A
Willard, AK
Xygalatas, D
Purzycki, BG
Keywords: cognitive anthropology;cultural evolution;free-list method;gods’ minds;human behavioral ecology;religious systems
Issue Date: 4-May-2023
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group)
Citation: Bendixen, T. et al. (2024) 'Appealing to the minds of gods: religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies', Religion, Brain and Behavior, 14 (2), pp. 183 - 205. doi: 10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487.
Abstract: How do beliefs about gods vary across populations, and what accounts for this variation? We argue that appeals to gods generally reflect prominent features of local social ecologies. We first draw from a synthesis of theoretical, experimental, and ethnographic evidence to delineate a set of predictive criteria for the kinds of contexts with which religious beliefs and behaviors will be associated. To evaluate these criteria, we examine the content of freely-listed data about gods’ concerns collected from individuals across eight diverse field sites and contextualize these beliefs in their respective cultural milieus. In our analysis, we find that local deities’ concerns point to costly threats to local coordination and cooperation. We conclude with a discussion of how alternative approaches to religious beliefs and appeals fare in light of our results and close by considering some key implications for the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion.
Description: Data availability statement: All data and code to reproduce the present study are available at: https://github.com/tbendixen/cross-cultural-free-list-project. The main project repository including raw data, full protocols, and related materials is available at: https://github.com/bgpurzycki/Evolution-of-Religion-and-Morality .
The file available on this institutional repository is a preprint available on PsyArXiv at https://psyarxiv.com/tjn3e/. It has not been certified by peer review. We recommend you consult the version of record published by Routledge at https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487.
URI: https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/26742
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487
ISSN: 2153-599X
Other Identifiers: ORCID: Theiss Bendixen https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5729-1281
ORCiD: Coren Apicella https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9661-6998
ORCiD: Quentin Atkinson https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8499-7535
ORCiD: Emma Cohen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5465-3440
ORCiD: Joseph Henrich https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5012-0065
ORCiD: Rita A. McNamara https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8530-768X
ORCiD: Aiyana K. Willard https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9224-7534
ORCiD: Dimitris Xygalatas https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1561-9327
ORCiD: Benjamin Grant Purzycki https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9595-7360
Appears in Collections:Dept of Life Sciences Research Papers

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FullText.pdfCopyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is a non-peer reviewed preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Religion, Brain and Behavior, on 04 May 2023. It has not been certified by peer review. We recommend you consult the version of record, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487, made available on this repository under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).640.6 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


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