Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion

By Scott Atran, Ara Norenzayan. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2004

684 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Health, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/729d8359a90d5bb66fa9efcd0daf9e7434bfbe97

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health

1. V. Saroglou
2. W. Gervais
3. Joseph Henrich
4. Joanna Blogowska
5. Ara Norenzayan
6. Eleanor A. Power
7. Steven J. Heine
8. Richard Sosis

In Social Psychology

1. V. Saroglou
2. Joseph Henrich
3. W. Gervais
4. Ara Norenzayan
5. Eleanor A. Power
6. Mark Schaller
7. Steven J. Heine
8. Alex Mesoudi

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Joseph Henrich
2. V. Saroglou
3. W. Gervais
4. Gordon Pennycook
5. Richard Sosis
6. Ara Norenzayan
7. Alex Mesoudi
8. Benjamin G. Purzycki

Citations in the corpus

• Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management (2008, background): “A recent theoretical review makes the argument that belief in supernatural agents with omniscient and omnipotent powers can assuage existential anxiety ( Atran & Norenzayan, 2004 ), though the authors state that supernatural beliefs serve no adaptive evolutionary function.”
• Hand of God, Mind of Man: Punishment and Cognition in the Evolution of Cooperation* (2006, background): “…there is something deep in biology and human nature that predisposes us to religious beliefs, offering a wealth of opportunities for future research (Atran and Norenzayan 2004; Barrett 2004; Bering 2002; Bering and Bjorklund 2004; Bering and Johnson 2005; Boyer 2001; Keleman 2004; Wilson 2002).”
• In Godlessness We Distrust: Using Social Psychology to Solve the Puzzle of Anti-atheist Prejudice (2013, background): “People represent their gods as intentional agents with whom they can interact (e.g., Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Gervais, in press ).”
• The effects of religion on consumer behavior: A conceptual framework and research agenda (2016, background): “While religious scholars have attempted to develop a definition of religion that applies to all religions, many believe this task may not be possible (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Cohen, 2009; Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009).”
• The Representation of Agents in Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (2016, background): “More recently, Atran and Norenzayan (2004) have claimed that ‘natural selection has trip-wired cognitive schema for agency detection in the face of uncertainty’ (p. 720).”
• Believing, Bonding, Behaving, and Belonging (2011, background): “Even in “godless” religions such as Buddhism, intermediate divine-like beings are present (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004).”
• The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions (2010, background): “Thus, switching the cell (− folkpsychology, substance) to (+ folkpsychology, substance) yields a thinking talisman; switching (+ folkpsychology, person) to (− folkpsychology, person) yields a zombie (Barrett 2000; Atran and Norenzayan 2004).”
• Discerning devotion: Testing the signaling theory of religion (2017, background): “16 As a part of this new evolutionary focus on religion, some researchers 17 have suggested that religious practices, particularly those that place costly 18 demands on the individual, can be signals of commitment to the prosocial 19 tenets of the community (Atran and Norenzayan, 2004; Bulbulia, 200”
• Testing theories of secularization and religious belief in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (2017, background): “Cognitive bias theories claim that religious beliefs are by-products of our innate cognitive systems (see Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Barrett, 2004; Bloom, 2005).”
• On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit (2015, background): “One possible explanation for this divergence is that supernatural beliefs are a unique subclass because they entail a conflict between some immaterial claim and (presumably universal) intuitive folk concepts (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004).”
• THE CULTURAL TRANSMISSION OF FAITH Why innate intuitions are necessary, but insufficient, to explain religious belief (2011, background): “Although university students rate minimally counterintuitive concepts as more supernatural (Atran and Norenzayan 2004), they also rate them to be less believable than intuitive concepts (Willard et al. 2010).”
• “Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening”: Religious Priming Activates Submissive Thoughts and Behaviors (2009, background): “From an evolutionary psychology perspective, religious beliefs and practices also have functional implications for social life (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer, 2001).”
• Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds (2011, background): “The similarities frequently suggest pan-human cognitive biases, whereas the differences are often considered to be merely cultural byproducts of evolved cognitive mechanisms (Atran 2002; Atran & Norenzayan 2004; Boyer 2001; Kirkpatrick 2006, 2008).”
• The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution (2009, background): “…scarification, animal sacrifice and subincision — and deep levels of commitment to group ideologies, religious beliefs and shared values that promote solidarity and in-group cooperation (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Cronk, 1994; Durkheim, 1995; Irons, 1996; Rappaport, 1999; Sosis & Alcorta, 2003).”