Religion, morality, evolution

Annual Review of Psychology

Volumn 63, Issue , 2012, Pages 179-199

  Bloom, Paul ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Altruism; Atheism; Faith; Kindness; Prejudice; Religiosity; Supernatural belief

Indexed keywords

ALTRUISM; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; EVOLUTION; HUMAN; MORALITY; RELIGION; REVIEW;

ALTRUISM; BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; CULTURE; HUMANS; MORALS; RELIGION;

EID: 82955229592     PISSN: 00664308     EISSN: 15452085     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100334     Document Type: Review

References (110)

1. Alcorta C, Sosis R. 2005. Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols: the evolution of religion as an adaptive complex. Hum. Nat. 16:323-59 (Pubitemid 43471318)
2. Allport GW. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
3. Allport GW, Kramer BM. 1946. Some roots of prejudice. J. Psychol. 22:9-39
4. Allport GW, Ross JM. 1967. Personal religious orientation and prejudice. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 5:432-43
5. Altemeyer B, Hunsberger B. 1992. Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. Int. J. Psychol. Religion 2:113-33
6. Appiah K 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: Norton
7. Atran S. 2004. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
8. Atran S, Norenzayan A. 2004. Religion's evolutionary landscape: counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behav. Brain Sci. 27:713-30 (Pubitemid 40872386)
9. Baron-Cohen S. 2003. The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain. New York: Basic Books
10. Barrett JL. 2004. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira
11. Bateson M, Nettle D, Roberts G. 2006. Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biol. Lett. 3:412-14 (Pubitemid 44387375)
12. Batson CD. 1976. Religion as prosocial: agent or double agent? J. Sci. Study Religion 15:29-45
13. Batson CD, Oleson KC, Weeks JL, Healy SP, Reeves PJ, et al. 1989. Religious prosocial motivation: Is it altruistic or egoistic? J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 57:873-84
14. Batson CD, Stocks EL. 2005. Religion and prejudice. In On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years After Allport, ed. JF Dovidio, PS Glick, L Rudman, pp. 413-27. Oxford, UK: Blackwell
15. Batson CD, Schoenrade P, Ventis WL. 1993. Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
16. Bering JM. 2002. The existential theory of mind. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 6:3-24
17. Bering JM. 2006. The folk psychology of souls. Behav. Brain Sci. 29:453-98
18. Bering JM. 2011. The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Norton
19. Bering JM, McLeod K, Shackelford TK. 2005. Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Hum. Nat. 16:360-81 (Pubitemid 43471319)
20. Bloom P. 2007. Religion is natural. Dev. Sci. 10:147-51
21. Bloom P. 2004. Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human. New York: Basic Books
22. Bloom P. 2009. Religion belief as an evolutionary accident. In The Believing Primate, ed. MJ Murray, J Schloss, pp. 118-27. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
23. Bloom P. 2010. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like. New York: Norton
24. Bloom P, Weisberg DS. 2007. Childhood origins of adult resistance to science. Science 316:996-97 (Pubitemid 46799480)
25. Boyd R, Richerson PJ. 2002. Group beneficial norms spread rapidly in a structured population. J. Theor. Biol. 215:287-96 (Pubitemid 34948564)
26. Boyer P. 2001. Religion Explained. New York: Basic Books
27. Brooks AC. 2006. Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. New York: Basic Books
28. Bulbulia J. 2004. The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion. Biol. Philos. 19:655-86 (Pubitemid 40350761)
29. Chartrand TL, Bargh JA. 1999. The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 76:893-910
30. Cohen AB, Rozin P. 2001. Religion and the morality of mentality. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 81:697-710 (Pubitemid 33597811)
31. Cohen GL. 2003. Party over policy: the dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 85:808-22 (Pubitemid 37417543)
32. Cosmides L. 1989. The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition 31:187-276
33. Darley J, Batson CD. 1973. From Jerusalem to Jericho: a study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behaviour. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 27:100-8
34. Dawkins R. 2006. The God Delusion. New York: Bantam de
35. Waal F. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
36. De Waal F. 2010. Morals without God? N.Y. Times, Oct. 17
37. Durkheim E. 1912/1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press
38. Dyson F. 2006. Religion from the outside. N.Y. Rev. Books, June 22
39. Edgell P, Gerteis J, Hartmann D. 2006. Atheists as "other:" moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society. Am. Sociol. Rev. 71:211-34 (Pubitemid 43821654)
40. Ernest-Jones M, Nettle D, Bateson M. 2011. Effects of eye images on everyday cooperative behavior: a field experiment. Evol. Hum. Behav. 32:172-78
41. Evans EM. 2000. Beyond Scopes: why creationism is here to stay. In Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific and Religious Thinking in Children, ed. K Rosengren, C Johnson, P Harris, pp. 305-31. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
42. Evans EM. 2001. Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: creation versus evolution. Cogn. Psychol. 42:217-66 (Pubitemid 33651068)
43. Festinger L. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson
44. Finkel D, Swartwout P, Sosis R. 2010. The socio-religious brain: a developmental model. In Proceedings of the British Academy, ed. R Dunbar, C Gamble, J Gowlett, 158:287-312
45. Ginges J, Hansen I, Norenzayan A. 2009. Religion and support for suicide attacks. Psychol. Sci. 20:224-30
46. Gould SJ, Lewontin RC. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 205(1161):581-98
47. Graham J, Haidt J. 2010. Beyond beliefs: religion binds individuals into moral communities. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 14:140-50
48. Greenwald A. 1975. Does the Good Samaritan parable increase helping? A comment on Darley and Batson's no-effect conclusion. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 32:578-83
49. Guthrie S. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
50. Haidt J. 2001. The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol. Rev. 108:814-34 (Pubitemid 33604149)
51. Haidt J. 2007. Moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion. http://www.edge.org/3rd-culture/haidt07/haidt07-index.html
52. Haidt J. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon
53. Haidt J, Kesebir S. 2010. Morality. In Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. S Fiske, D Gilbert, pp. 797-832. New York: McGraw Hill. 5th ed.
54. Haley KJ, Fessler DMT. 2005. Nobody's watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evol. Hum. Behav. 26:245-56 (Pubitemid 40587391)
55. Hall DL, Matz DC, Wood W. 2010. Why don't we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 14:126-39
56. Hamlin JK, Wynn K, Bloom P. 2007. Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature 450:557-59 (Pubitemid 350190246)
57. Harris S. 2004. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: Norton
58. Hitchens C. 2007. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve Books
59. Hoffman M. 2000. Empathy and Moral Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
60. Hume D. 1956 [1757]. The Natural History of Religion. London: Black
61. Irons W. 2004. An evolutionary critique of the created co-creator concept. Zygon: J. Religion Sci. 39:773-90
62. James W. 1960 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience. London: Fontana
63. Jensen GF. 2006. Religious cosmologies and homicide rates among nations: a closer look. J. Religion Soc. 8:1-14
64. Johnson DDP. 2005. God's punishment and public goods: a test of the supernatural punishment hypothesis in 186 world cultures. Hum. Nat. 16:410-46 (Pubitemid 43471321)
65. Johnson DDP, Bering JM. 2006. Hand of God, mind of man: punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evol. Psychol. 4:219-33
66. Johnson MK, Rowatt WC, LaBouff JP. 2010. Priming Christian religious concepts increases racial prejudice. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 1:119-26
67. Jost JT, Nosek BA, Gosling SD. 2008. Ideology: its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 3:126-36
68. Kelemen D. 2004. Are children "intuitive theists"? Psychol. Sci. 15:295-301
69. Keltner D. 2009. Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. New York: Norton
70. Lane JD, Wellman HM, Evans ME. 2010. Children's understanding of ordinary and extraordinary minds. Child Dev. 81:1475-89
71. Larson EJ, Witham L. 1997. Scientists are still keeping the faith. Nature 389:435-36 (Pubitemid 27164052)
72. Larson EJ, Witham L. 1998. Leading scientists still reject God. Nature 394:313 (Pubitemid 28373804)
73. Liddle JR, Machluf K, Shackelford TK. 2010. Understanding suicide terrorism: premature dismissal of the religious-belief hypothesis. Evol. Psychol. 10:343-45
74. Lindholm JA, Astin HS, Astin AW. 2006. Spirituality and the Professoriate. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Higher Educ. Res. Inst.
75. Locke J. 1983/1689. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
76. Mazar N, Amir O, Ariely D. 2008. The dishonesty of honest people: a theory of self-concept maintenance. J. Mark. Res. 45:633-44
77. McCauley RN, Whitehouse H. 2005. Introduction: new frontiers in the cognitive science of religion. J. Cogn. Cult. 5:1-13
78. Myers DG. 2008. A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God Is Good and Faith Isn't Evil. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Wiley
79. Myers PZ. 2007. Commentary on "Moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion," by Jonathan Haidt. http://www.edge.org/ discourse/moral-religion.html#myers
80. Napier JL, Jost JT. 2008. The "antidemocratic personality" revisited: a cross-national investigation of working-class authoritarianism. J. Soc. Issues 64:595-617
81. Norenzayan A, Gervais W. 2012. The cultural evolution of religion. In Creating Consilience: Integrating Science and the Humanities, ed. E Slingerland, M Collard. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press. In Press
82. Norenzayan A, Shariff AF. 2008. The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science 322(5898):58-62
83. Paul GS. 2005. Cross-national correlations of quantifiable societal health with popular religiosity and secularism in the prosperous democracies. J. Religion Soc. 7:1-17
84. Paul GS. 2010. Religiosity tied to socioeconomic status. Science 327(5966):642
85. Persinger MA. 2001. The neuropsychiatry of paranormal experiences.J. Neuropsychiatry Clin. Neurosci.13:515-24
86. Piazza J, Bering JM, Ingram G. 2011. "Princess Alice is watching you": children's belief in an invisible person inhibits cheating. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 109:311-20
87. Pichon I, Boccato G, Saroglou V. 2007. Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: a priming study. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37:1032-45
88. Pinker S. 1997. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton
89. Putnam R. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster
90. Putnam R, Campbell D. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster
91. Pyysiäinen I. 2003. How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion. Leiden: Brill
92. Randolph-Seng B, Nielsen ME. 2007. Honesty: one effect of primed religious representations. Int. J. Psychol. Religion 17:303-15
93. Sedikides C, Gebauer JE. 2010. Religiosity as self-enhancement: a meta-analysis of the relation between socially desirable responding and religiosity. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 14:17-36
94. Shariff AF, Norenzayan A. 2007. God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychol. Sci. 18:803-9
95. Shermer M. 2003. How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. New York: Freeman
96. Shweder RA, Much NC, Mahapatra M, Park L. 1997. The "big three" of morality (autonomy, community, divinity), and the "big three" explanations of suffering. In Morality and Health, ed. P Rozin, A Brandt, pp. 119-69. New York: Routledge
97. Sober E, Wilson DS. 2011. Adaptation and natural selection revisited. J. Evol. Biol. 24:462-68
98. Sosis R, Bressler ER. 2003. Cooperation and commune longevity: a test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cult. Res. 37:211-39
99. Tylor EB. 1871. Primitive Culture, Volume 2. London: John Murray
100. Waldman S. 2004. Pilgrim's progress. June 29. http://www.slate.com/id/ 2103017/
101. Waldron J. 2010. Secularism and the limits of community. NYU School Law, Public Law Res. Pap. No. 10-88. http://ssrn.com/abstract= 1722780
102. Warneken F, Tomasello M. 2006. Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science 311:1301-3 (Pubitemid 43334722)
103. Weinberg S. 1999. A designer universe? (Did the universe have a cosmic designer?). N.Y. Rev. Books 46:46-48
104. Wieseltier L. 2006. The God genome. N.Y. Times, Feb. 19, Sec. 7, p. 11
105. Williams GC. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
106. Wilson DS. 2002. Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
107. Wilson DS. 2007. Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. New York: Delacorte
108. Wiltermuth SS, Heath C. 2009. Synchrony and cooperation. Psychol. Sci. 20:1-5
109. Wright R. 2009. Evolution of God. New York: Little Brown
110. Zuckerman P. 2008. Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. New York: NYU Press