Evolutionary psychology of religion
Encyclopedia
The evolutionary psychology of religion is the study of religious belief
using evolutionary psychology
principles. It is one approach to the psychology of religion
. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain
and cognition
's functional structure have been argued to have a genetic basis, and are therefore subject to the effects of natural selection
and evolution
. Like other organs and tissues, this functional structure should be universally shared amongst humans and should solve important problems of survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes, religion in this case, by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.
and is an adaptation
, in which case religion conferred some sort of evolutionary advantage. Alternatively, religious beliefs and behaviors may have emerged as by-products of other adaptive traits without initially being selected for because of their own benefits.
of religion. Many are "social solidarity theories", which view religion as having evolved to enhance cooperation and cohesion within groups. Group membership in turn provides benefits which can enhance an individual's chances for survival and reproduction.
These social solidarity theories may help to explain the painful or dangerous nature of many religious rituals. Costly-signaling theory
suggests that such rituals might serve as public and hard to fake signals that an individual's commitment to the group is sincere. Since there would be a considerable benefit in trying to cheat the system - taking advantage of group living benefits without taking on any possible costs - the ritual would not be something simple that can be taken lightly. Warfare is a good example of a cost of group living, and Richard Sosis, Howard C. Kress, and James S. Boster carried out a cross-cultural survey which demonstrated that men in societies which engage in war do submit to the costliest rituals.
Studies that show more direct positive associations between religious practice and health and longevity are more controversial. Harold G. Koenig and Harvey J. Cohen summarized and assessed the results of 100 evidence-based studies that systematically examined the relationship between religion and human well-being, finding that 79% showed a positive influence. These studies are popular in the media, as seen in a recent NPR
program including University of Miami Professor Gail Ironson's findings that belief in God and a strong sense of spirituality were good predictors of viral load and immune cell levels in HIV patients. However, Dr. Richard P. Sloan of Columbia University was quoted in the New York Times as saying that "...there is no really good compelling evidence that there is a relationship between religious involvement and health.". There is still debate over the validity of these findings, and they do not necessarily prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship between religion and health. Mark Stbich claims there is a clear correlation but the reason for it is unclear.
was a proponent of this hypothesis. He and Elisabeth Vrba proposed the term exaptation
in 1982 to mean "features that now enhance fitness, but were not built by natural selection for their current role." Gould and R. C. Lewontin compared such features to spandrel
s, "an architectural term for spaces left over between structural elements of a building". A more complete explanation of this metaphor can be found in Gould and Lewontin's 1979 paper, "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme". Gould cites religion as an example of an exaptation or spandrel, but he does not himself select a definite trait which he thinks was actually acted on by natural selection. He does, however, bring up Freud's suggestion that our large brains, which evolved for other reasons, led to consciousness. The beginning of consciousness forced humans to deal with the concept of personal mortality. Religion may have been one solution to this problem.
Other researchers have proposed specific psychological processes which may have been co-opted for religion. Pascal Boyer
suggests, in his book Religion Explained
, that there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness
. He builds on the ideas of cognitive anthropologists Dan Sperber
and Scott Atran
, who argued that religious cognition represents a by-product of various evolutionary adaptations, including folk psychology
, and purposeful violations of innate expectations about how the world is constructed (for example, bodiless beings with thoughts and emotions) that make religious cognitions striking and memorable.
Pierre Lienard and Pascal Boyer suggest that humans have evolved a "hazard-precaution system" which allows us to detect potential threats in the environment and attempt to respond appropriately. Several features of ritual behaviors, often a major feature of religion, are held to trigger this system. These include the occasion for the ritual, often the prevention or elimination of danger or evil, the harm believed to result from nonperformance of the ritual, and the detailed proscriptions for proper performance of the ritual. Lienard and Boyer discuss the possibility that a sensitive hazard-precaution system itself may have provided fitness benefits, and that religion then "associates individual, unmanageable anxieties with coordinated action with others and thereby makes them more tolerable or meaningful".
Justin L. Barrett
in Why Would Anyone Believe in God? suggests that belief in God is natural because it depends on mental tools possessed by all human beings. He suggests that the way our minds are structured and develop make belief in the existence of a supreme god with properties such as being superknowing, superpowerful and immortal highly attractive. He also compares belief in God to belief in other minds, and devotes a chapter to looking at the evolutionary psychology of atheism. He suggests that one of the fundamental mental modules in the brain is the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD), another potential system for identifying danger. This HADD may confer a survival benefit even if it is over-sensitive: it is better to avoid an imaginary predator than be killed by a real one. This would tend to encourage belief in ghosts and spirits.
suggests in The Selfish Gene
that cultural memes function like genes in that they are subject to natural selection. In The God Delusion Dawkins further argues that because religious truths cannot be questioned, their very nature encourages religions to spread like "mind viruses".
This model holds that religion is the byproduct of the cognitive modules in the human brain that arose in our evolutionary past to deal with problems of survival and reproduction. Initial concepts of supernatural agents may arise in the tendency of humans to "overdetect" the presence of other humans or predators (momentarily mistaking a vine for a snake). For instance, a man might report that he felt something sneaking up on him, but it vanished when he looked around.
Stories of these experiences are especially likely to be retold, passed on and embellished due to their descriptions of standard ontological categories (human, artifact, animal, plant, natural object) with counterintuitive properties (humans that are invisible, houses that remember what happened in them, etc.). These stories become even more salient when they are accompanied by activation of non-violated expectations for the ontological category (houses that "remember" activates our intuitive psychology of mind; i.e. we automatically attribute thought processes to them).
One of the attributes of our intuitive psychology of mind is that humans are interested in the affairs of other humans. This may result in the tendency for concepts of supernatural agents to inevitably cross connect with human intuitive moral feelings (evolutionary behavioral guidelines). In addition, the presence of dead bodies creates an uncomfortable cognitive state in which dreams and other mental modules (person identification and behavior prediction) continue to run decoupled from reality producing incompatible intuitions that the dead are somehow still around. When this is coupled with the human predisposition to see misfortune as a social event (as someone's responsibility rather than the outcome of mechanical processes) it may activate the intuitive "willingness to make exchanges" module of the human theory of minds resulting in the tendency of humans to try to interact and bargain with their supernatural agents (ritual
).
In a large enough group, some individuals will seem better skilled at these rituals than others and will become specialists. As the societies grow and encounter others, competition will ensue and a "survival of the fittest" effect may cause the practitioners to modify their concepts to provide a more abstract, more widely acceptable version. Eventually the specialist practitioners form a cohesive group or guild with its attendant political goals (religion).
hypothesis proposes that a specific gene
(VMAT2
) predisposes humans towards spiritual
or mystic
experiences. Proponent Dean Hamer
see this predisposition as increasing optimism which has positive effects on other factors such as health and reproductive success.
Religious belief
Religious belief is a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny. Such a state may relate to the existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, divine intervention in the universe and human life, or values and practices centered on the teachings of a...
using evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
principles. It is one approach to the psychology of religion
Psychology of religion
Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The science attempts to accurately describe the details, origins, and uses of religious beliefs and behaviours...
. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
and cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
's functional structure have been argued to have a genetic basis, and are therefore subject to the effects of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. Like other organs and tissues, this functional structure should be universally shared amongst humans and should solve important problems of survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes, religion in this case, by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.
Mechanisms of evolution
There is general agreement among scientists that a propensity to engage in religious behavior evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. There are two schools of thought. One is that religion itself evolved due to natural selectionNatural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and is an adaptation
Adaptation
An adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
, in which case religion conferred some sort of evolutionary advantage. Alternatively, religious beliefs and behaviors may have emerged as by-products of other adaptive traits without initially being selected for because of their own benefits.
Religion as an adaptation
Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta have reviewed several of the prominent theories for the adaptive valueAdaptive value
The adaptive value represents the combined influence of all characters which affect the fitness of an individual or population....
of religion. Many are "social solidarity theories", which view religion as having evolved to enhance cooperation and cohesion within groups. Group membership in turn provides benefits which can enhance an individual's chances for survival and reproduction.
These social solidarity theories may help to explain the painful or dangerous nature of many religious rituals. Costly-signaling theory
Handicap principle
The handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signaling between animals who have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other...
suggests that such rituals might serve as public and hard to fake signals that an individual's commitment to the group is sincere. Since there would be a considerable benefit in trying to cheat the system - taking advantage of group living benefits without taking on any possible costs - the ritual would not be something simple that can be taken lightly. Warfare is a good example of a cost of group living, and Richard Sosis, Howard C. Kress, and James S. Boster carried out a cross-cultural survey which demonstrated that men in societies which engage in war do submit to the costliest rituals.
Studies that show more direct positive associations between religious practice and health and longevity are more controversial. Harold G. Koenig and Harvey J. Cohen summarized and assessed the results of 100 evidence-based studies that systematically examined the relationship between religion and human well-being, finding that 79% showed a positive influence. These studies are popular in the media, as seen in a recent NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
program including University of Miami Professor Gail Ironson's findings that belief in God and a strong sense of spirituality were good predictors of viral load and immune cell levels in HIV patients. However, Dr. Richard P. Sloan of Columbia University was quoted in the New York Times as saying that "...there is no really good compelling evidence that there is a relationship between religious involvement and health.". There is still debate over the validity of these findings, and they do not necessarily prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship between religion and health. Mark Stbich claims there is a clear correlation but the reason for it is unclear.
Religion as a by-product
Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
was a proponent of this hypothesis. He and Elisabeth Vrba proposed the term exaptation
Exaptation
Exaptation, cooption, and preadaptation are related terms referring to shifts in the function of a trait during evolution. For example, a trait can evolve because it served one particular function, but subsequently it may come to serve another. Exaptations are common in both anatomy and behaviour...
in 1982 to mean "features that now enhance fitness, but were not built by natural selection for their current role." Gould and R. C. Lewontin compared such features to spandrel
Spandrel
A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure....
s, "an architectural term for spaces left over between structural elements of a building". A more complete explanation of this metaphor can be found in Gould and Lewontin's 1979 paper, "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme". Gould cites religion as an example of an exaptation or spandrel, but he does not himself select a definite trait which he thinks was actually acted on by natural selection. He does, however, bring up Freud's suggestion that our large brains, which evolved for other reasons, led to consciousness. The beginning of consciousness forced humans to deal with the concept of personal mortality. Religion may have been one solution to this problem.
Other researchers have proposed specific psychological processes which may have been co-opted for religion. Pascal Boyer
Pascal Boyer
Pascal Boyer is a French anthropologist, and Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis.He is a Guggenheim Fellow.-Work:...
suggests, in his book Religion Explained
Religion Explained
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought is a book by cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer that discusses the evolutionary psychology and evolutionary origin of religions.-Synopsis:...
, that there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. He builds on the ideas of cognitive anthropologists Dan Sperber
Dan Sperber
Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics: developing, with British psychologist Deirdre Wilson, relevance theory in the latter; and an approach to cultural evolution known as the...
and Scott Atran
Scott Atran
Scott Atran is an American and French anthropologist.-Education and early career:Atran was born in New York City in 1952 and he received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. While a student at Columbia, he became assistant to anthropologist Margaret Mead at the American Museum of...
, who argued that religious cognition represents a by-product of various evolutionary adaptations, including folk psychology
Folk psychology
Folk psychology is the set of assumptions, constructs, and convictions that makes up the everyday language in which people discuss human psychology...
, and purposeful violations of innate expectations about how the world is constructed (for example, bodiless beings with thoughts and emotions) that make religious cognitions striking and memorable.
Pierre Lienard and Pascal Boyer suggest that humans have evolved a "hazard-precaution system" which allows us to detect potential threats in the environment and attempt to respond appropriately. Several features of ritual behaviors, often a major feature of religion, are held to trigger this system. These include the occasion for the ritual, often the prevention or elimination of danger or evil, the harm believed to result from nonperformance of the ritual, and the detailed proscriptions for proper performance of the ritual. Lienard and Boyer discuss the possibility that a sensitive hazard-precaution system itself may have provided fitness benefits, and that religion then "associates individual, unmanageable anxieties with coordinated action with others and thereby makes them more tolerable or meaningful".
Justin L. Barrett
Justin L. Barrett
Justin L. Barrett is senior researcher of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind and The Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University.-Career:...
in Why Would Anyone Believe in God? suggests that belief in God is natural because it depends on mental tools possessed by all human beings. He suggests that the way our minds are structured and develop make belief in the existence of a supreme god with properties such as being superknowing, superpowerful and immortal highly attractive. He also compares belief in God to belief in other minds, and devotes a chapter to looking at the evolutionary psychology of atheism. He suggests that one of the fundamental mental modules in the brain is the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD), another potential system for identifying danger. This HADD may confer a survival benefit even if it is over-sensitive: it is better to avoid an imaginary predator than be killed by a real one. This would tend to encourage belief in ghosts and spirits.
Memes
Richard DawkinsRichard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
suggests in The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...
that cultural memes function like genes in that they are subject to natural selection. In The God Delusion Dawkins further argues that because religious truths cannot be questioned, their very nature encourages religions to spread like "mind viruses".
This model holds that religion is the byproduct of the cognitive modules in the human brain that arose in our evolutionary past to deal with problems of survival and reproduction. Initial concepts of supernatural agents may arise in the tendency of humans to "overdetect" the presence of other humans or predators (momentarily mistaking a vine for a snake). For instance, a man might report that he felt something sneaking up on him, but it vanished when he looked around.
Stories of these experiences are especially likely to be retold, passed on and embellished due to their descriptions of standard ontological categories (human, artifact, animal, plant, natural object) with counterintuitive properties (humans that are invisible, houses that remember what happened in them, etc.). These stories become even more salient when they are accompanied by activation of non-violated expectations for the ontological category (houses that "remember" activates our intuitive psychology of mind; i.e. we automatically attribute thought processes to them).
One of the attributes of our intuitive psychology of mind is that humans are interested in the affairs of other humans. This may result in the tendency for concepts of supernatural agents to inevitably cross connect with human intuitive moral feelings (evolutionary behavioral guidelines). In addition, the presence of dead bodies creates an uncomfortable cognitive state in which dreams and other mental modules (person identification and behavior prediction) continue to run decoupled from reality producing incompatible intuitions that the dead are somehow still around. When this is coupled with the human predisposition to see misfortune as a social event (as someone's responsibility rather than the outcome of mechanical processes) it may activate the intuitive "willingness to make exchanges" module of the human theory of minds resulting in the tendency of humans to try to interact and bargain with their supernatural agents (ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
).
In a large enough group, some individuals will seem better skilled at these rituals than others and will become specialists. As the societies grow and encounter others, competition will ensue and a "survival of the fittest" effect may cause the practitioners to modify their concepts to provide a more abstract, more widely acceptable version. Eventually the specialist practitioners form a cohesive group or guild with its attendant political goals (religion).
Biological mechanisms causing religiosity
The God geneGod gene
The God gene hypothesis proposes that a specific gene predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences. The idea has been postulated by geneticist Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S...
hypothesis proposes that a specific gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
(VMAT2
VMAT2
The vesicular monoamine transporter 2 also known as solute carrier family 18 member 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SLC18A2 gene...
) predisposes humans towards spiritual
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
or mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
experiences. Proponent Dean Hamer
Dean Hamer
Dr. Dean Hamer is an American geneticist, author, and filmmaker. He is known for his contributions to biotechnology and AIDS prevention, his research on the genetics of human behavior including sexual orientation and spirituality, and his popular books and documentaries on a wide range of...
see this predisposition as increasing optimism which has positive effects on other factors such as health and reproductive success.
See also
- Cognitive fluidityCognitive fluidityCognitive fluidity is a term first popularly applied by Steven Mithen in his book The Prehistory of the Mind, a search for the origins of Art, Religion and Science....
- Cognitive science of religionCognitive science of religionCognitive science of religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. The field employs methods and theories from a very broad range of disciplines, including: cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive...
- Evolutionary origin of religionsEvolutionary origin of religionsThe evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution.- Nonhuman religious behavior :...
- Genetic fallacyGenetic fallacyThe genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from...
- Origin of morality
- Psychology of religionPsychology of religionPsychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The science attempts to accurately describe the details, origins, and uses of religious beliefs and behaviours...
Further reading
- Robert Wright´s "The Evolution of God"
- Stewart Guthrie Faces in the clouds A New Theory of Religion ISBN 0195098919.
- Evolutionary psychology of religion Steven PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
. - Adaptations, Exaptations, and Spandrels
- Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion ISBN 1593850883
- Atran, ScottScott AtranScott Atran is an American and French anthropologist.-Education and early career:Atran was born in New York City in 1952 and he received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. While a student at Columbia, he became assistant to anthropologist Margaret Mead at the American Museum of...
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion ISBN 0195178033 - Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function Pascal BoyerPascal BoyerPascal Boyer is a French anthropologist, and Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis.He is a Guggenheim Fellow.-Work:...
- Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion By Todd Tremlin, 2006 ISBN 0195305345