Dimitris Xygalatas
University of Connecticut, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Anthropology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Ritual, Experimental Anthropology, Cognitive Science of Religion, and 20 moreEvolution, Cognition, Cognitive Anthropology, Psychology of Religion, Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology of Religion, Evolutionary Anthropology, Cognitive Psychology, Ritual Theory, Religious Studies, Social Anthropology, Social Psychology, Ethnographic Methods, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Social Cognition, Experimental Psychology, Human Evolution, Study of Religions, Ritual (Anthropology), and Social and Cultural Anthropologyedit
- I am an anthropologist and cognitive scientist studying some of the things that make us human. I received my PhD from... moreI am an anthropologist and cognitive scientist studying some of the things that make us human. I received my PhD from Queen’s University Belfast and subsequently held positions at the universities of Princeton, Aarhus, and Masaryk, where I served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion. I have conducted over 4 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius, focusing on the performance of high-intensity rituals and developing a methodology to study them experimentally in their natural contexts. I currently hold a joint position between the Departments of Anthropology and Psychological Science at the University of Connecticut, where I direct the Experimental Anthropology Lab.edit
Collective gatherings are often associated with the alignment of psychophysiological states between members of a crowd. While the process of emotional contagion has been studied extensively in dyads as well as at the population level, our... more
Collective gatherings are often associated with the alignment of psychophysiological states between members of a crowd. While the process of emotional contagion has been studied extensively in dyads as well as at the population level, our understanding of its operation and dynamics as they unfold in real time in real-world group contexts remains limited. Employing a naturalistic design, we investigated emotional contagion in a public religious ritual by
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People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195... more
People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub `the Einstein effect': across all 24 countries scientists hold greater authority than spiritual source, even among highly committed religious people, who are relatively also more credulous of nonsense from scientists than they are of nonsense from spiritual gurus. Additionally, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist vs. the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgments for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust...
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All over the world, people reason dualistically. We consider it more probable that mental states, such as love, continue after biological death than we think bodily states, such as hunger, will continue. However the extent to which... more
All over the world, people reason dualistically. We consider it more probable that mental states, such as love, continue after biological death than we think bodily states, such as hunger, will continue. However the extent to which culture affects mind-body dualism remains unclear. Here, we draw on a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (24 countries, N = 10195) to systematically quantify cultural variation in tendencies for mind-body dualism. Our findings replicate previous work suggesting that mind-body dualism is culturally universal. Furthermore, our experiment reveals that religion amplifies dualistic tendencies. At the same time, however, the modal response across most countries was the cessation of all states. In addition, explicit afterlife beliefs were more prevalent than implicit afterlife beliefs (i.e., continuity judgments). Overall, these data suggest that intuitive materialism is the cross-cultural norm, with dualism arising from culturally acquired beliefs.
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The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess... more
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported beta = 0.120). For the second research question, this wa...
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People face stressors that are beyond their control and that maladaptively perpetuate anxiety. In these contexts, rituals emerge as a natural coping strategy helping decrease excessive anxiety. However, mechanisms facilitating these... more
People face stressors that are beyond their control and that maladaptively perpetuate anxiety. In these contexts, rituals emerge as a natural coping strategy helping decrease excessive anxiety. However, mechanisms facilitating these purported effects have rarely been studied. We hypothesized that repetitive and rigid ritual sequences help the human cognitive-behavioral system to return to low-entropy states and assuage anxiety. This study reports a pre-registered test of this hypothesis using a Czech student sample (n = 268). Participants were exposed to an anxiety induction and then randomly assigned to perform one of three actions: ritualized, control, and neutral (no-activity). We assessed the effects of this manipulation on cognitive and physiological anxiety, finding that ritualized action positively affected anxiety decrease, but this decrease was only slightly larger than in the other two conditions. Nevertheless, the between-condition differences in the reduction of physiolo...
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To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of... more
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited degree of polygyny in the human societies that practice it, and to the importance of unequally held rival resources to women’s fitness. The muted reproductive inequality observed in humans appears to be linked to several unusual characteristics of our species—including high levels of cooperation among males...
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Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in... more
Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses to assess whether perceiving a locally relevant deity as moralistic predicts cooperative play in two permutations of two economic games using data from up to 15 diverse field sites. Across games, results suggest that gods' moral concerns do not play a direct, cross-culturally reliable role in motivating cooperative behaviour. The study contributes substantially to the current literature by testing a central hypothesis in the evolutionary and cognitive science of religion with a large and culturally diverse dataset using behavioural and ethnographically rich methods.
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A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, beliefs and behaviors. The bulk of this research, however, draws from coded qualitative ethnographies rather than from standardized methods... more
A considerable body of research cross-culturally examines the evolution of religious traditions, beliefs and behaviors. The bulk of this research, however, draws from coded qualitative ethnographies rather than from standardized methods specifically designed to measure religious beliefs and behaviors. Psychological data sets that examine religious thought and behavior in controlled conditions tend to be disproportionately sampled from student populations. Some cross-national databases employ standardized methods at the individual level, but are primarily focused on fully market integrated, state-level societies. The Evolution of Religion and Morality Project sought to generate a data set that systematically probed individual level measures sampling across a wider range of human populations. The set includes data from behavioral economic experiments and detailed surveys of demographics, religious beliefs and practices, material security, and intergroup perceptions. This paper describ...
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, and 15 moreHumanities, Behavioral Sciences, Cognition, Behavioral Finance, Behavioral Decision Making, Cultural Evolution, Behavioral Economics, Cultural Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, Medicine, Humans, Morality, Experimental Anthropology, Morals, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Biological Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and 15 moreBayesian, Cognition, Biology, Affective Neuroscience, Affect Studies, Bayesian Models, Bayesian Networks, Cognition and Emotion, Bayesian Analysis, Affect, Arousal and Valence, Bayesian Inference, Bayesian statistics, Arousal, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Behavioural Science, Biological Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, and 15 moreBiological Anthropology, Behavioral Sciences, Anthropology of the Body, Anthropology of Performance, Cognition, Bodies and Culture, Biology, Cognitive Ethology, Cognitive Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, Autobiographical Memory, Biological Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Arousal, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Behavioural Science, Biological Psychology, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Behavioral Sciences, and 15 moreAnthropology of the Body, Cognition, Biology, Behavioral Decision Making, Behavioral Economics, Cognitive Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, Biological Sciences, Biologia, Biological science, Biología, Arousal, Charities, Anthropology of Religion, and Biobehavioral Approaches to Pain
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Chemistry, Anthropology, and 15 moreCognition, Biology, Attention, Cultural Memory, Cognitive Science of Religion, Cognitive Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Agents, Cognitive Sciences, Biological Sciences, Animals, Cultural transmission, Biological evolution, Adult, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Biological Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Chemistry, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and 15 moreBehavioral Sciences, Anthropology of the Body, Cognition, Africa, Biology, Biocultural Anthropology, Cognitive Anthropology, Anthropology of Emotion, Behavioral Ecology, Cognition and Emotion, Biological Sciences, Affect, Arousal, Analysis of Variance, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Behavioural Science, Biological Psychology, Cardiology, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and 15 moreBehavioral Sciences, Anthropology of the Body, Cognition, Cardiovascular, Biology, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Cognitive Ethology, Cognitive Anthropology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Behavioral Ecology, Anthropology and Religion, Cardiovascular Physiology, Biological Sciences, Arousal, and Anthropology of Religion
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We often think of pain as intrinsically bad, and the avoidance of pain is a fundamental evolutionary drive of all species. How can we then explain widespread cultural practices like certain rituals that involve the voluntary infliction of... more
We often think of pain as intrinsically bad, and the avoidance of pain is a fundamental evolutionary drive of all species. How can we then explain widespread cultural practices like certain rituals that involve the voluntary infliction of physical pain? In this paper, we argue that inflicting and experiencing pain in a ritual setting may serve important psychological and social functions. By providing psychological relief and leading to stronger identification with the group, such practices may result in a positive feedback loop, which serves both to increase the social cohesion of the community and the continuation of the ritual practices themselves. We argue that although the selective advantage of participation lies at the individual level, the benefits of those practices de facto extend to the group level, thereby allowing extreme rituals to function as effective social technologies.
Research Interests: Religion, Comparative Religion, Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and 15 moreCognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology, Human Evolution, Philosophy of Mind, Humanities, Pain, Biology, Evolution, Evolutionary Ecology, Cultural Anthropology, Culture and Cognition, Religious Studies, Experimental Anthropology, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Anthropology, Ontology, and 15 moreEpistemology, Humanities, Associative Learning and Memory, Cognition, Culture, Intuition, Memory Studies, Cognitive Science of Religion, Culture and Cognition, Learning, Memory, Experimental Anthropology, Cultural transmission, Mnemonic, and Memory Cognitive Psychology
Environmental uncertainty and uncontrollability cause psycho-physiological distress to organisms [1-3], often impeding normal functioning [4, 5]. A common response involves ritualization, that is, the limitation of behavioral expressions... more
Environmental uncertainty and uncontrollability cause psycho-physiological distress to organisms [1-3], often impeding normal functioning [4, 5]. A common response involves ritualization, that is, the limitation of behavioral expressions to predictable stereotypic and repetitive motor patterns [6-8]. In humans, such behaviors are also symptomatic of psychopathologies like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) [8, 9] and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) [10, 11]. Although these reactions might be mediated by different neural pathways, they serve to regain a sense of control over an uncertain situation [12-15] by engaging in behavioral patterns characterized by redundancy (superfluous actions that exceed the functional requirements of a goal), repetitiveness (recurrent behaviors or utterances), and rigidity (emphasis on fidelity and invariance) [8, 9, 16, 17]. We examined whether ritualized behavior will manifest spontaneously as a dominant behavioral strategy in anxiogenic situations. ...
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Clinical Psychology, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Behavioral Sciences, and 15 moreAnxiety Disorders, Anthropology of the Body, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Biology, Cultural Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, Anxiety, Biological Sciences, Biological science, Adult, Accelerometer, Anthropology of Religion, ANXIETY, Compulsive behavior, and Behaviometrics
Music is a natural human expression present in all cultures, but the functions it serves are still debated. Previous research indicates that rhythm, an essential feature of music, can enhance coordination of movement and increase social... more
Music is a natural human expression present in all cultures, but the functions it serves are still debated. Previous research indicates that rhythm, an essential feature of music, can enhance coordination of movement and increase social bonding. However, the prolonged effects of rhythm have not yet been investigated. In this study, pairs of participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (rhythmic, arrhythmic, or white-noise) and subsequently engaged in five trials of a joint-action task demanding interpersonal coordination. We show that when compared with the other two stimuli, exposure to the rhythmic beat reduced the practice effect in task performance. Analysis of the behavioral data suggests that this reduction results from more temporally coupled motor movements over successive trials and that shared exposure to rhythm facilitates interpersonal motor coupling, which in this context serves to impede the attainment of necessary dynamic coordination. We propos...
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Computer Science, Anthropology, and 15 moreBehavioral Sciences, Auditory Perception, Biology, Behavioral Economics, Experimental Research, Cooperation, Humans, Coordination, Female, Interpersonal Relations, Adult, Interpersonal Coordination, Cooperative Behavior, Biomechanical Phenomena, and Acoustic Stimulation
Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has dramatically expanded. This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of prosociality because well-studied mechanisms of cooperation... more
Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has dramatically expanded. This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of prosociality because well-studied mechanisms of cooperation based on genetic relatedness, reciprocity and partner choice falter as people increasingly engage in fleeting transactions with genetically unrelated strangers in large anonymous groups. To explain this rapid expansion of prosociality, researchers have proposed several mechanisms. Here we focus on one key hypothesis: cognitive representations of gods as increasingly knowledgeable and punitive, and who sanction violators of interpersonal social norms, foster and sustain the expansion of cooperation, trust and fairness towards co-religionist strangers. We tested this hypothesis using extensive ethnographic interviews and two behavioural games designed to measure impartial rule-following among people (n = 591, observations = 35,400) from eight diverse com...
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, Cultural Studies, Cognitive Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Economics, and 15 moreAnthropology, Human Evolution, Behavioral Sciences, Culture, Evolution, Cultural Evolution, Behavioral Economics, Cognitive Science of Religion, Altruism, Evolutionary Ecology, Cooperation, Female, Ethnic Groups, Anthropology of Religion, and Cooperative Behavior
Laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that exposure to cues of intentional agents in the form of eyes can increase prosocial behavior. However, previous research mostly used 2-dimensional depictions as experimental stimuli. Thus... more
Laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that exposure to cues of intentional agents in the form of eyes can increase prosocial behavior. However, previous research mostly used 2-dimensional depictions as experimental stimuli. Thus far no study has examined the influence of the spatial properties of agency cues on this prosocial effect. To investigate the role of dimensionality of agency cues on fairness, 345 participants engaged in a decision-making task in a naturalistic setting. The experimental treatment included a 3-dimensional pseudo-realistic model of a human head and a 2-dimensional picture of the same object. The control stimuli consisted of a real plant and its 2-D image. Our results partly support the findings of previous studies that cues of intentional agents increase prosocial behavior. However, this effect was only found for the 3-D cues, suggesting that dimensionality is a critical variable in triggering these effects in a real-world settings. Our research shed...
Research Interests: Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Economics, Behavioral Sciences, and 15 moreDevelopmental Biology, Decision Making, Mental Health, Cognition, Biology, Consumer Behavior, Behavioral Economics, Medicine, Multidisciplinary, Humans, Cues, Female, Male, Experimental Anthropology, and Curse of Dimensionality
Research Interests: Religion, Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, and 15 moreAnthropology, Biological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Biology, Cultural Anthropology, Behavioral Ecology, Medicine, Anxiety, Religious Studies, Experimental Anthropology, Ritualization, Anthropology of Religion, and ANXIETY
Research Interests: Religion, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Music, and 15 moreEconomics, Anthropology, Humanities, Behavioral Sciences, Decision Making, Cognition, Psychology of Religion, Behavioral Economics, Priming, Medicine, Prosocial Behavior, Religiosity, Religious Studies, Normative, and Anthropology of Religion
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Social Psychology, and 15 moreExperimental Archaeology, Economics, Game Theory, Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Behavioral Sciences, Ethnography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Cognition, Behavioral Economics, Cognitive Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Morality, Experimental Anthropology, and Anthropology of Religion
Behavioural synchronization has been shown to facilitate social bonding and cooperation but the mechanisms through which such effects are attained are poorly understood. In the current study, participants interacted with a pre-recorded... more
Behavioural synchronization has been shown to facilitate social bonding and cooperation but the mechanisms through which such effects are attained are poorly understood. In the current study, participants interacted with a pre-recorded confederate who exhibited different rates of synchrony, and we investigated three mechanisms for the effects of synchrony on likeability and trusting behaviour: self-other overlap, perceived cooperation, and opioid system activation measured via pain threshold. We show that engaging in highly synchronous behaviour activates all three mechanisms, and that these mechanisms mediate the effects of synchrony on liking and investment in a Trust Game. Specifically, self-other overlap and perceived cooperation mediated the effects of synchrony on interpersonal liking, while behavioural trust was mediated only by change in pain threshold. These results suggest that there are multiple compatible pathways through which synchrony influences social attitudes, but ...
Research Interests: Psychology, Biological Psychology, Cognitive Science, Interpersonal Communication, Social Interaction, and 15 moreMedicine, Cooperation, Humans, Coordination, Female, Male, Attitude, Interpersonal Relations, Opioids, Adult, Cooperative Behavior, Neurosciences, Endorphins, Pain Threshold, and Movement synchrony
Researchers have recently proposed that "moralistic" religions-those with moral doctrines, moralistic supernatural punishment, and lower emphasis on ritual-emerged as an effect of greater wealth and material security. One... more
Researchers have recently proposed that "moralistic" religions-those with moral doctrines, moralistic supernatural punishment, and lower emphasis on ritual-emerged as an effect of greater wealth and material security. One interpretation appeals to life history theory, predicting that individuals with "slow life history" strategies will be more attracted to moralistic traditions as a means to judge those with "fast life history" strategies. As we had reservations about the validity of this application of life history theory, we tested these predictions with a data set consisting of 592 individuals from eight diverse societies. Our sample includes individuals from a wide range of traditions, including world religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, but also local traditions rooted in beliefs in animism, ancestor worship, and worship of spirits associated with nature. We first test for the presence of associations between material security, ye...
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Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the... more
Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the m...
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Several prominent evolutionary theories contend that religion was critical to the emergence of large-scale societies and encourages cooperation in contemporary complex groups. These theories argue that religious systems provide a reliable... more
Several prominent evolutionary theories contend that religion was critical to the emergence of large-scale societies and encourages cooperation in contemporary complex groups. These theories argue that religious systems provide a reliable mechanism for finding trustworthy anonymous individuals under conditions of risk. In support, studies find that people displaying cues of religious identity are more likely to be trusted by anonymous coreligionists. However, recent research has found that displays of religious commitment can increase trust across religious divides. These findings are puzzling from the perspective that religion emerges to regulate coalitions. To date, these issues have not been investigated outside of American undergraduate samples nor have studies considered how religious identities interact with other essential group-membership signals, such as ancestry, to affect intergroup trust. Here, we address these issues and compare religious identity, ancestry, and trust a...
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Social Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Economics, and 15 moreGame Theory, Anthropology, Human Evolution, Trust, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Culture, Behavioral Economics, Medicine, Biological Sciences, Religious Studies, DICTATOR GAME, Religious Identity, Ethnic Group, Anthropology of Religion, and Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of... more
The emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. One hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behaviour toward geographically distant co-religionists. Furthermore, another hypothesis points to such mechanisms being constrained to the religious ingroup, possibly at the expense of religious outgroups. To test these hypotheses, we administered two behavioural experiments and a set of interviews to a sample of 2228 participants from 15 diverse populations. These populations included foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and wage labourers, practicing Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, but also forms of animism and ancestor worship. Using the Random Allocation Game (RAG) and the Dictator Game (DG) in which individuals allocated money between themselves, local and geographically distant co-religionists, and religious outgroups...
Research Interests: Religion, Psychology, Social Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, and 15 moreHuman Evolution, Evolution of Morality, Evolution of Religion, Culture, Evolution, Cultural Evolution, Medicine, Prosocial Behavior, Biological Sciences, Morality, Experimental Anthropology, Outgroup, Parochialism, Economic Games, and Medical and Health Sciences
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While the occurrence of rituals in anxiogenic contexts has been long noted and supported by ethnographic, quantitative and experimental studies, the purported effects of ritual behaviour on anxiety reduction have rarely been examined. In... more
While the occurrence of rituals in anxiogenic contexts has been long noted and supported by ethnographic, quantitative and experimental studies, the purported effects of ritual behaviour on anxiety reduction have rarely been examined. In the present study, we investigate the anxiolytic effects of religious practices among the Marathi Hindu community in Mauritius and test whether these effects are facilitated by the degree of ritualization present in these practices. Seventy-five participants first experienced anxiety induction through the public speaking paradigm and were subsequently asked to either perform their habitual ritual in a local temple (ritual condition) or sit and relax (control condition). The results revealed that participants in the ritual condition reported lower perceived anxiety after the ritual treatment and displayed lower physiological anxiety, which was assessed as heart-rate variability. The degree of ritualization in the ritual condition showed suggestive al...
Research Interests: Religion, Hinduism, Psychology, Health Psychology, Anthropology, and 13 morePsychology of Religion, Ritual Theory, Medicine, Anxiety, Anthropology of Health and Illness, Biological Sciences, Rituals, Ritualization, Marathi, Anthropology of Religion, ANXIETY, Anxiolytic, and Medical and Health Sciences
Reliance on convenience samples for psychological experiments has led to the oversampling of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations (Henrich et al. 2010a). Our analysis of academic articles from six... more
Reliance on convenience samples for psychological experiments has led to the oversampling of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations (Henrich et al. 2010a). Our analysis of academic articles from six leading psychology journals revealed a significantly lower but still very high percentage of studies from European and English-speaking nations (92%), compared to a decade ago (95%), largely due to more studies from Asia (6%). Further analysis of four cognitive science of religion (CSR) journals showed how a more representative field is possible (67% from the Western and Other region), with proportionately more studies in Latin America (4%) and Africa (7%) than psychology (<1% each). Thanks to its interdisciplinary nature, CSR is in a good position to address “WEIRD” problems and may be able to offer psychology methodological and epistemological tools that involve diversifying sample populations, increasing ecological validity, capturing the causes...
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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,... more
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.
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Commentary on H. Whitehouse & J. A. Lanman, “The Ties that Bind Us: Ritual, Fusion, and Identification”,
Research Interests: Religion, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Social Psychology, Archaeology, and 15 moreLaw, Anthropology, Epistemology, Social Anthropology, Social Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ritual, Cognition, Social Cognition, Cultural Anthropology, Ritual Theory, Religious Studies, Ritual Practices, Anthropology of Religion, and Current anthropology
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The publication of the first issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography essentially aimed to mark the birth of a new interdisciplinary field, which is willing to take upon the challenge of exploring how people in past societies... more
The publication of the first issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography essentially aimed to mark the birth of a new interdisciplinary field, which is willing to take upon the challenge of exploring how people in past societies thought and behaved. Cognitive Historiography thus becomes the latest addition to a number of inter-disciplinary areas which combine a subject matter from the humanities with methods and theories from the cognitive sciences, such as Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Anthropology, Cognitive Archaeology, Cognitive Semiotics, and others. In what follows I offer a critical assessment of Cognitive Historiography as an emergent field, and particularly as it is represented in the inaugural issue of JCH.
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TEDxAthens 2016
From fire-walking to meditation, and from graduation ceremonies to wine toasting, rituals are everywhere. But what purpose do they serve?
From fire-walking to meditation, and from graduation ceremonies to wine toasting, rituals are everywhere. But what purpose do they serve?
Research Interests: Religion, Sociology, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, and 21 moreSocial Psychology, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Humanities, Social Anthropology, Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ritual, Cognition, Social Cognition, Behavioral Economics, Ritual (Anthropology), Cultural Anthropology, Ritual Theory, Religious Studies, Ritual Studies, Rituals, Ritual Practices, and Anthropology of Religion
The program is based on experiential learning. Students have the opportunity to conduct their own projects and participate in faculty-led research. Following a problem-focused approach, instruction moves beyond traditional disciplinary... more
The program is based on experiential learning. Students have the opportunity to conduct their own projects and participate in faculty-led research. Following a problem-focused approach, instruction moves beyond traditional disciplinary lines, drawing from a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. The program is also immersive. In contrast to most other study abroad programs, it does not consist in taking classes at another university. Instead, lessons are held in a variety of locations related to the course material, from local temples and restaurants to public beaches and UNESCO World Heritage monuments. Students will have the opportunity to interact with the local community, participate in their rituals, meals, and other activities, and get a first-hand experience of the Mauritian way of life. This program takes place in a truly unique setting. Mauritius is one of the most diverse societies in the world, where members of numerous ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups live and interact in close proximity. Due to its fascinating history and human geography, it makes an ideal natural laboratory for the social sciences.