The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is an academic discipline which studies the mental capacities and processes that underlie recurrent patterns of religious thought and behavior. The main focus of CSR is on unconscious thought. Unlike the related field of the Psychology of Religion, whose primary level of analysis is the individual, CSR is primarily interested in accounting for cultural forms and why these particular forms are more widespread than others. As all subdisciplines pertaining to the Cognitive Sciences, CSR is interdisciplinary, employing theoretical perspectives and methodological tools from such fields as religious studies; cultural and cognitive anthropology; cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology; philosophy; neuroscience; biology; behavioral ecology; and others.

History of CSR

Although the mental underpinnings of religion had often been the focus of earlier research in the psychology, sociology, and anthropology of religion, a more concerted cognitive study of cultural forms was inspired by the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and especially by the work of Noam Chomsky (1957) on language. Chomsky argued for a psychological approach to language, aiming to specify the biologically hardwired principles of the mind that constrain the form of all natural languages. Soon thereafter, growing attention began to be directed to studies that focused on underlying commonalities rather than on surface variability of human traits and searched for a “universal grammar” underlying the particular semantics of cultural phenomena. Cognitive anthropology and sociobiology further contributed to setting the scene for the emergence of CSR. In the 1970s Dan Sperber (1975) argued for a cognitive approach to cultural transmission, calling for attention to the psychological dispositions that underlie the formation and distribution of cultural representations, while Thomas E. Lawson (1976) and Frits Staal (1979) proposed a cognitive approach to ritual forms. However, the first comprehensive cognitive theory of religion was outlined by anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1980), who argued that the origins of religiosity lie in the evolved human predisposition to attribute agency and intentionality to ambiguous inanimate objects and events in the environment.

Some of the field’s most important theoretical foundations were laid in the 1990s, with the work of Pascal Boyer (1992) on counterintuitive concepts, that of Harvey Whitehouse (1992), Thomas E. Lawson and Robert McCauley (1990) on ritual transmission, and others (e.g., Deacon 1997; Donald 1991; Mithen 1996). CSR expanded exponentially shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, which brought both theoretical sophistication (Boyer 2002; McCauley and Lawson 2002; Whitehouse 2004) and institutional grounding, mainly in Europe, but also increasingly in North America. Various CSR centers were established: the Institute of Cognition and Culture (ICC) at Queen’s University Belfast; the Religion, Cognition and Culture Research Unit (RCC) at Aarhus University; the Centre for Anthropology and Mind (CAM) at Oxford University; the Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture (HECC) at the University of British Columbia; the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion in Massachusetts, USA; the International Cognition and Culture Institute, run by the London School of Economics and the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris; and the LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion at Masaryk University in Brno. In addition, the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion was founded in 2006; the Religion, Brain & Behavior journal was launched in 2011, and the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion in 2012.

Methods

CSR uses a wide variety of methods, ranging from ethnographic observation (Cohen 2007; Xygalatas 2012) and textual analysis (Slingerland and Chudek 2011) to brain imaging studies (Schjoedt et al. 2011) and computer simulations (Nielbo and Sørensen in press). Following an initial period of purely theoretical approaches to religion, CSR turned towards experimental hypothesis testing. However, many aspects of religion cannot easily be studied in the laboratory. To deal with this problem, some CSR scholars also turned towards naturalistic experiments, in an attempt to provide empirical data while addressing both sides of the cognition and culture continuum.

For example, Richard Sosis and his colleagues (Sosis and Ruffle 2004) conducted a study of various Israeli kibbutzim to examine the theorized relationship between ritual involvement and prosociality. They found that members of religious kibbutzim were more cooperative in a common-pool resource game compared to members of secular kibbutzim and that men who engaged more frequently in communal prayer were more cooperative.

Working on related hypothesis, Dimitris Xygalatas and his colleagues (2013) examined the relation between ritual intensity and prosociality. This study was conducted in the context of the Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Mauritius. During this festival, participants perform the Kavadi ritual, piercing their bodies with multiple needles and skewers, carrying heavy structures on their shoulders, and dragging carts attached by hooks to their skin for hours before climbing a mountain to reach the temple of Murugan. The investigators used a donation task to show that participation in this extreme ordeal increased charity and decreased parochial identities both for performers and for observers of the event and that reported pain predicted levels of generosity (see Fig. 1).

Cognitive Science of Religion, Fig. 1
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A Hindu devotee performing the Kavadi in Mauritius

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Another field experimental study (Konvalinka et al. 2011; Xygalatas et al. 2011) used heart rate monitors to measure physiological arousal at a Spanish fire-walking ritual, where participants crossed a bed of glowing-red coals, each carrying a beloved one on their backs. The results showed synchronous arousal between performers and observers of the event, despite the fact that the ritual did not involve any motor synchrony. In addition, the degree of synchronicity in hear rate rhythms could be predicted by the level of social proximity. These results suggest that physiological and emotional synchrony is not merely the effect of mirroring but is also mediated by social familiarity (click here to watch a Discovery Channel video about this study).

Theoretical Perspectives

Given the interdisciplinary and pluralistic character of the field, there are ongoing and constructive tensions and debates over methodological and theoretical priorities. For example, some CSR scholars see religion as a byproduct of human evolution (Boyer and Liénard 2006); others consider that it has evolved to serve specific adaptive functions such as eliciting prosocial behavior (Sosis 2003); and yet others argue that both models can be correct within the framework of Dual Inheritance Theory (Atran and Henrich 2010).

However, CSR scholars by and large agree on a set of basic overarching assumptions. First of all, religion is not a sui generis domain of the human existence and therefore can and should be subject to explanatory scrutiny just like any other cultural expression. Second, a scientific study of religion must necessarily adopt a position of methodological naturalism; religious explanations of religious phenomena cannot be taken to have any explanatory value in themselves. In line with evolutionary psychology, it is accepted that cultural forms are subject to the biological constraints of the human brain and the universal mental capacities of the human species, as they have evolved through natural selection. In line with Cognitive Science, it is also accepted that the mind is not a blank slate nor a general-purpose computational machine but comes pre-equipped with a host of specialized mechanisms, each with a specific function. Based on these premises, cognitive scientists of religion are interested in exploring the causal mechanisms that might account for the recurrent patterns of religious beliefs and practices found around the world.

See Also

Evolution and Religion

Neurology and Psychology of Religion

Psychology and the Origins of Religion

Psychology of Religion

Reductionism

Religious Experience

Ritual