Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

By Pascal Boyer. 2001

1,526 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Philosophy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1485879b89e958e00d076d30abe67be02725e43c

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Citations in the corpus

The Repair of Trust: A Dynamic Bilateral Perspective and Multilevel Conceptualization (2009, background): “(Boyer, 2001: 144-145). Kim and colleagues (2006) have also noted that trustors may discount mis trusted parties' efforts to blame situational in fluences.”
How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science (2017, background): “Small human groups typically do not have a category of beliefs and practices that corresponds to what most people identify as religion now (Boyer, 2001).”
The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion (2004, background): “[For general overviews see (Barrett 2000; Andresen 2001; Boyer 2001; Pyysiainen 2001; Boyer 2003)].”
The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor (2006, background): “Interestingly, Pascal Boyer’s (2001) theory on the cognitive mechanics of spirituality bears a striking resemblance to Veatch’s hypothesized cognitive structure of humor.”
Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory (2005, background): “…corpus of research, with detailed predictions being borne out by careful and creative experimental work, numerous authors have noted problems with the theory itself (Boyer, 2001; Buss, 1997; Kirkpatrick, 1999; Navarrete, Kurzban, Fessler, and Kirkpatrick, 2004; Paulhus and Trapnell, 1997).”
Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality (2012, background): “More typically, tragedy is ascribed to supernatural agents, such as God, gods, or malevolent spirits (Boyer, 2001; Bulman & Wortman, 1977; Gall, 2004; Gray & Wegner, 2010a; Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010; Lewis, 1995; Pargament et al., 1990; Spilka, Zwartjes, & Zwartjes, 1991).”
“Lean not on your own understanding”: Belief that morality is founded on divine authority and non-utilitarian moral judgments (2013, background): “Furthermore, for many religious people, divine authority is not to be questioned, either out of respect for God’s supreme wisdom or for fear of inciting His wrath (e.g., Genesis 22:5-8; Isaiah 55:8-9; Job 34:12; Qur’an 6:151; Romans 1:18; see also Aquinas, ca. 1273/1947; Boyer, 2001; Johnson & Berin”
Modularity of Mind (2017, background): “2016; Norenzayan and Gervais 2013) or if religion is just a byproduct of our other cognitive skills (Atran 2002; Boyer 2001; McCauley 2013).”
Religion and Spirituality in Adolescent Development (2009, background): “” Contrary to the popular belief that children cannot fully grasp the concept of death, recent research (Bering & Bjorklund, 2004 ; Boyer, 2001 ) points to afterlife beliefs held even by youngsters.”
Reports of My Death Anxiety Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: A Critique of Terror Management Theory from an Evolutionary Perspective (2006, background): “For example, the Fang people of Gabon believe that an internal bodily organ can launch attacks against other people, drink their blood, and bring illness, harm or even death to the victims (Boyer, 2001), while life among the Azande of the Sudan has been described as rife with paranoia, fear, and sus”
Testing theories of secularization and religious belief in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (2017, background): “This observation has led to several theories about the evolutionary origin of religion in the human species (e.g. Atran, 2002; Barrett, 2004; Boyer, 2001, 2008; Johnson, 2015).”