Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?

Religion Compass

Volumn 1, Issue 6, 2007, Pages 768-786

  Barrett, Justin L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85171858523     PISSN: None     EISSN: 17498171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00042.x     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Alcorta, C, & Sosis, R, 2005, ‘Ritual, Emotion, and Sacred Symbols: The Evolution of Religion as an Adaptive Complex’, Human Nature, vol. 16, pp. 323–59.
2. Andresen, J, (ed.), 2001, Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual and Experience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
3. Astuti, R, & Harris, PL, Forthcoming, ‘Understanding Mortality and the Life of the Ancestors in Rural Madagascar’, Cognitive Science.
4. Atran, S, 2002, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
5. Bainbridge, WS, 2006, God from the Machine: Artificial Intelligence Models of Religious Cognition, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
6. Barrett, JL, 1998, ‘Cognitive Constraints on Hindu Concepts of the Divine’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 37, pp. 608–19.
7. Barrett, JL, 1999, ‘Theological Correctness: Cognitive Constraint and the Study of Religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 11, pp. 325–39.
8. Barrett, JL, 2000, ‘Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 4, pp. 29–34.
9. Barrett, JL, 2001a, ‘Do Children Experience God Like Adults? Retracing the Development of God Concepts’, in J Andresen (ed.), Keeping Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Experience, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
10. Barrett, JL, 2001b, ‘How Ordinary Cognition Informs Petitionary Prayer’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 259–69.
11. Barrett, JL, 2002a, ‘Dumb Gods, Petitionary Prayer, and the Cognitive Science of Religion’, in I Pyysiainen and V Anttonen (eds.), Current Approaches in the Cognitive Study of Religion, pp. 93–109, Continuum, London.
12. Barrett, JL, 2002b, ‘Smart Gods, Dumb Gods, and the Role of Social Cognition in Structuring Ritual Intuitions’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 183–94.
13. Barrett, JL, 2004a, ‘Bringing Data to Mind: Empirical Claims of Lawson and McCauley's Theory of Religious Ritual’, in BC Wilson and T Light (eds.), Religion As a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson, pp. 265–88, Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
14. Barrett, JL, 2004b, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
15. Barrett, JL, 2005, ‘In the Empirical Mode: Evidence Needed for the Modes of Religiosity Theory’, in H Whitehouse and RN McCauley (eds.), Mind and Religion, pp. 109–26, Alta Mira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
16. Barrett, JL, 2007, ‘Is the Spell Really Broken? Bio-psychological Explanations of Religion and Theistic Belief’, Theology and Science, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 57–72.
17. Barrett, JL, forthcoming, ‘Why Santa Claus Is Not a God’, Journal of Cognition and Culture.
18. Barrett, JL, & Keil, FC, 1996, ‘Anthropomorphism and God concepts: Conceptualizing a Non-Natural Entity’, Cognitive Psychology, vol. 31, pp. 219–47.
19. Barrett, JL, & Lawson, ET, 2001, ‘Ritual Intuitions: Cognitive Contributions to Judgments of Ritual Efficacy’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 183–201.
20. Barrett, JL, & Malley, B, 2007, ‘A Cognitive Typology of Religious Actions’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 7, no. 3–4, pp. 201–11.
21. Barrett, JL, Newman, RM, & Richert, RA, 2003, ‘When Seeing Does Not Lead to Believing: Children's Understanding of the Importance of Background Knowledge for Interpreting Visual Displays’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 91–108.
22. Barrett, JL, & Nyhof, M, 2001, ‘Spreading Non-Natural Concepts: The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission of Cultural Materials’, Journal of Cognition & Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 69–100.
23. Barrett, JL, & Richert, RA, 2003, ‘Anthropomorphism or Preparedness? Exploring Children's God Concepts’, Review of Religious Research, vol. 44, pp. 300–12.
24. Barrett, JL, Richert, RA, & Driesenga, A, 2001, ‘God's Beliefs Versus Mom's: The Development of Natural and Non-Natural Agent Concepts’, Child Development, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 50–65.
25. Barrett, JL, & VanOrman, B, 1996, ‘The Effects of Image Use in Worship on God Concepts’, Journal of Psychology and Christianity, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 38–45.
26. Bering, JM, 2002, ‘Intuitive Conceptions of Dead Agents Minds: The Natural Foundations of Afterlife Beliefs as Phenomenological Boundary’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 2, pp. 263–308.
27. Bering, JM, 2006, ‘The Folk Psychology of Souls’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 29, pp. 453–62.
28. Bering, JM, & Bjorklund, DF, 2004, ‘The Natural Emergence of Reasoning About the Afterlife as a Developmental Regularity’, Developmental Psychology, vol. 40, pp. 217–33.
29. Bering, JM, Hernández-Blasi, C, & Bjorkland, DF, 2005, ‘The Development of ‘Afterlife’ Beliefs in Secularly and Religiously Schooled Children’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 23, pp. 587–607.
30. Bering, JM, & Johnson, DDP, 2005, ‘ “O Lord.. You Perceive my Thoughts from Afar”: Recursiveness and the Evolution of Supernatural Agency’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 5, pp. 118–42.
31. Bering, JM, McLeod, K, & Shackelford, TK, 2005, ‘Reasoning About Dead Agents Reveals Possible Adaptive Trends’, Human Nature, vol. 16, pp. 360–81.
32. Bering, JM, & Parker, BD, 2006, ‘Children's Attributions of Intentions to an Invisible Agent’, Developmental Psychology, vol. 42, pp. 253–62.
33. Bloom, P, 2004, Descartes’ Baby: How Child Development Explains What Makes us Human, William Heinemann, London.
34. Bloom, P, 2005, ‘Is God an Accident?’ Atlantic Monthly vol. December, pp. 1–8.
35. Bloom, P, 2007, ‘Religion is Natural’, Developmental Science, vol. 10, pp. 147–51.
36. Boyer, P, 1993, ‘Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism’, in P Boyer (ed.), Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism, pp. 4–47, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
37. Boyer, P, 1994, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas. A Cognitive Theory of Religion, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
38. Boyer, P, 1995, ‘Causal Understandings in Cultural Representations: Cognitive Constraints on Inferences From Cultural Input’, in D Sperber, D Premack and AJ Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A multidisciplinary debate, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.
39. Boyer, P, 1996, ‘What Makes Anthropomorphism Natural: Intuitive Ontology and Cultural Representations’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), vol. 2, pp. 83–97.
40. Boyer, P, 1998, ‘Cognitive Tracks of Cultural Inheritance: How Evolved Intuitive Ontology Governs Cultural Transmission’, American Anthropologist, vol. 100, pp. 876–89.
41. Boyer, P, 2000, ‘Evolution of a Modern Mind and the Origins of Culture: Religious Concepts as a Limiting Case’, in P Carruthers and A Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-cognition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
42. Boyer, P, 2001, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Basic Books, New York, NY.
43. Boyer, P, 2003, ‘Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Function’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 7, pp. 119–24.
44. Boyer, P, & Lienard, P, 2006, ‘Why Ritualized Behavior? Precaution Systems and Action-Parsing in Developmental, Pathological, and Cultural Rituals’, Brain and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 595–613.
45. Boyer, P, & Ramble, C, 2001, ‘Cognitive Templates for Religious Concepts: Cross-Cultural Evidence for Recall of Counter-Intuitive Representations’, Cognitive Science, vol. 25, pp. 535–64.
46. Bransford, JD, & McCarrell, NS, 1974, ‘A Sketch of a Cognitive Approach to Comprehension: Some Thoughts About Understanding What It Means to Comprehend’, in WB Weimer and DS Palermo (eds.), Cognition and the Symbolic Processes, pp. 189–229, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
47. Bulbulia, J, 2004a, ‘Religious Costs as Adaptations that Signal Altruistic Intention’, Evolution and Cognition, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 19–38.
48. Bulbulia, J, 2004b, ‘The Cognitive and Evolutionary Psychology of Religion’, Biology and Philosoph, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 19–42.
49. Bulbulia, J, 2007, ‘Evolution and Religion’, in RI Dunbar and L Barrett (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
50. Bulbulia, J, Sosis, R, Genet, R, Harris, E, Wyman, K, & Genet, C, (eds.), forthcoming, The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, Collins Foundation Press, Santa Margarita, CA.
51. Cohen, E, 2007, The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in An Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
52. Cohen, E, & Barrett, JL, forthcoming, ‘When Minds Migrate: Conceptualising Spirit Possession’, Journal of Cognition and Culture.
53. Dawkins, R, 2006, The God Delusion, Bantam Press, London.
54. Dennett, D, 2006, Breaking the Spell: Religion as A Natural Phenomenon, Viking, New York, NY.
55. DiYanni, C, & Kelemen, D, 2005, ‘Time to Get A New Mountain? The Role of Function in Children's Conceptions of Natural Kinds’, Cognition, vol. 97, pp. 327–35.
56. Elkind, D, 1970, ‘The Origins of Religion in the Child’, Review of Religious Research, vol. 12, pp. 35–42.
57. Evans, EM, 2000, ‘The Emergence of Belief About the Origins of Species in School-Aged Children’, Merrill Palmer Quarterly, vol. 46, pp. 221–54.
58. Evans, EM, 2001, ‘Cognitive and Contextual Factors in the Emergence of Diverse Belief Systems: Creation Versus Evolution’, Cognitive Psychology, vol. 42, pp. 217–66.
59. Gelman, SA, & Kremer, KE, 1991, ‘Understanding Natural Cause: Children's Explanations of How Objects and Their Properties Originate’, Child Development, vol. 62, pp. 396–414.
60. Gibson, NJS, 2006, The Experimental Investigation of Religious Cognition, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, UK.
61. Gibson, NJS, & Barrett, JL, forthcoming, ‘On Psychology and Evolution of Religion: Five Types of Contribution Needed From Psychologists’, in J Bulbulia, R Sosis, R Genet, E Harris, K Wyman, C Genet, (eds.), The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, Collins Foundation Press, Santa Margarita, CA.
62. Goldman, RG, 1965, Readiness for Religion, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
63. Gonce, LO, Upal, MA, Slone, DJ, & Tweney, RD, 2006, ‘Role of Context in the Recall of Counterintuitive Concepts’, Journal of Cognition & Culture, vol. 6, pp. 521–47.
64. Guthrie, SE, 1980, ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion’, Current Anthropology, vol. 21, pp. 181–94.
65. Guthrie, SE, 1993, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
66. Henig, R, 2007, ‘Darwin's God’, New York Times Sunday Magazine, March 4, 2007.
67. Hirschfeld, LA, & Gelman, SA, (eds.), 1994, Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
68. Johnson, DDP, 2005, ‘God's Punishment and Public Goods: A Test of the Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis in 186 World Cultures’, Human Nature, vol. 16, pp. 410–46.
69. Kelemen, D, 1999a, ‘The Scope of Teleological Thinking in Preschool Children’, Cognition, vol. 70, pp. 241–72.
70. Kelemen, D, 1999b, ‘Why Are Rocks Pointy? Children's Preference for Teleological Explanations of the Natural World’, Developmental Psychology, vol. 35, pp. 1440–53.
71. Kelemen, D, 1999c, ‘Beliefs About Purpose: On the Origins of Teleological Thought’, in M Corballis, and S Lea (eds.), The Descent of Mind: Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution, pp. 278–94, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
72. Kelemen, D, 1999d, ‘Functions, Goals, and Intentions: Children's Teleological Reasoning about Objects’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 461–8.
73. Kelemen, D, 2003, ‘British and American Children's Preferences for Teleo-Functional Explanations of the Natural World’, Cognition, vol. 88, pp. 201–21.
74. Kelemen, D, 2004, ‘Are Children “Intuitive Theists”? Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature’, Psychological Science, vol. 15, pp. 295–301.
75. Kelemen, D, & DiYanni, C, 2005, ‘Intuitions About Origins: Purpose and Intelligent Design in Children's Reasoning About Nature’, Journal of Cognition and Development, vol. 6, pp. 3–31.
76. Kirkpatrick, LA, 2005, Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion, Guilford, New York, NY.
77. Knight, N, Sousa, P, Barrett, JL, & Atran, S, 2004, ‘Children's Attributions of Beliefs to Humans and God: Cross-Cultural Evidence’, Cognitive Science, vol. 28, pp. 117–26.
78. Lawson, ET, & McCauley, RN, 1990, Rethinking Religion: Connection Cognition and Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
79. Lienard, P, & Boyer, P, 2006, ‘Whence Collective Ritual? A Cultural Selection Model of Ritualized Behavior’, American Anthropologist, vol. 108, pp. 814–27.
80. Lisdorf, A, 2001, ‘The Spread of Non-Natural Concepts’, Journal of Cognition & Culture, vol. 4, pp. 151–74.
81. Luomanen, P, Pyysiäinen, I, & Uro, R, (eds.), 2007, Explaining Christian origins and early Judaism: Contributions from cognitive and social science. (Biblical Interpretation Series, 89), Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
82. Malley, B, 2004, How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
83. Malley, B, & Barrett, JL, 2003, ‘Does Myth Inform Ritual? A Test of the Lawson-McCauley Hypothesis’, Journal of Ritual Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 1–14.
84. McCauley, RN, & Lawson, ET, 2002, Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
85. Newman, GE, Keil, FC, Kuhlmeier, V, & Wynn, K, forthcoming, Preverbal infants appreciate that only agent can create order.
86. Norenzayan, A, Atran, S, Faulkner, J, & Schaller, M, 2006, ‘Memory and Mystery: The Cultural Selection of Minimally Counterintuitive Narratives’, Cognitive Science, vol. 30, pp. 531–53.
87. Petrovich, O, 1997, ‘Understanding of Non-Natural Causality in Children and Adults: A Case Against Artificialism’, Psyche and Geloof, vol. 8, pp. 151–65.
88. Petrovich, O, 1999, ‘Preschool Children's Understanding of the Dichotomy Between the Natural and the Artificial’, Psychological Reports, vol. 84, pp. 3–27.
89. Piaget, J, 1929, The Child's Conception of the World, Harcourt Brace, New York, NY.
90. Pinker, S, 1997, How the Mind Works, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY.
91. Pyysiäinen, I, 2001, How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion, Cognition and Culture Book Series, 1, Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
92. Pyysiäinen, I, 2004a, ‘Intuitive and Explicit in Religious Thought’, Journal of Cognition & Culture, vol. 4, pp. 123–50.
93. Pyysiäinen, I, 2004b, Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientists Perspective, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
94. Pyysiäinen, I, forthcoming, ‘The enduring fascination of miracles,’ in JH Ellens (ed.), Miracles: God, Psychology, and Science in ‘Inexplicable’ Events, Greenwood-Praeger, Westport, CT.
95. Pyysiäinen, I, & Anttonen, V, (eds.), 2002, Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion, Continuum, London.
96. Richert, RA, & Barrett, JL, 2005, ‘Do You See What I See? Young Children's Assumptions About God's Perceptual Abilities’, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, vol. 15, pp. 283–95.
97. Richert, RA, & Barrett, JL, 2006, ‘The Child's God and Cognitive Development’, The Encyclopaedia of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, Sage Publishing, Thousand Oaks, CA.
98. Richert, RA, & Harris, PL, 2006, ‘The Ghost in My Body: Children's Developing Concept of the Soul’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 6, pp. 409–27.
99. Rochat, P, Morgan, R, & Carpenter, M, 1997, ‘Young Infants’ Sensitivity to Movement Information Specifying Social Causality’, Cognitive Development, vol. 12, pp. 537–61.
100. Ruffle, B, & Sosis, R, 2006, ‘Cooperation and the In-Group-Out-Group Bias: A Field Test on Israeli Kibbutz Members and City Residents’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol. 60, pp. 147–63.
101. Ruffle, B, & Sosis, R, 2007, ‘Does It Pay to Pray? Costly Ritual and Cooperation’, The B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, vol. 7, pp. 1–35.
102. Saler, B, & Ziegler, CA, 2006, ‘Atheism and Apotheosis of Agency’, Temenos, vol. 42, pp. 7–41.
103. Shariff, AF, & Norenzayan, A, forthcoming, ‘God is Watching You: Supernatural Agent Concepts Increase Prosocial Behavior in an Anonymous Economic Game’, Psychological Science.
104. Slone, DJ, 2004, Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
105. Sørensen, J, 2007, A Cognitive Theory of Magic, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
106. Sosis, R, 2003, ‘Why Aren't We All Hutterites? Costly Signaling Theory and Religious Behavior’, Human Nature, vol. 14, pp. 91–127.
107. Sosis, R, 2005, ‘Does Religion Promote Trust? The Role of Signaling, Reputation, and Punishment’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, vol. 1, pp. 1–30.
108. Sosis, R, & Alcorta, C, 2003, ‘Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred: The Evolution of Religious Behavior’, Evolutionary Anthropology, vol. 12, pp. 264–74.
109. Spelke, ES, & Kinzler, KD, 2007, ‘Core Knowledge’, Developmental Science, vol. 11, pp. 89–96.
110. Sperber, D, 1996, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
111. Taylor, M, 1999, Imaginary companions and the children who create them, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
112. Thagard, P, 1996, Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
113. Tremlin, T, 2006, Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
114. Tweney, RD, Upal, MA, Gonce, LO, Slone, DJ, & Edwards, K, 2006, ‘The Creative Structuring of Counterintuitive Worlds’, Journal of Cognition & Culture, vol. 6, pp. 483–98.
115. Upal, MA, Owsianiecki, L, Slone, DJ, & Tweney, R, 2007, ‘Contextualizing Counterintuitiveness: How Context Affects Comprehension and Memorability of Counterintuitive Concepts’, Cognitive Science, vol. 31, pp. 1–25.
116. Whitehouse, H, 1995, Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.
117. Whitehouse, H, 1996a, ‘Apparitions, Orations, and Rings: Experience of Spirits in Dadul’, in J Mageo and A Howard (eds.), Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind, Routledge, New York, NY.
118. Whitehouse, H, 1996b, ‘Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor, and Memory in Melanesian Initiation Cults’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 2, pp. 703–15.
119. Whitehouse, H, 2000, Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
120. Whitehouse, H, 2004, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
121. Whitehouse, H, & Laidlaw, JA, (eds.), 2004, Ritual and Memory: Towards A Comparative Anthropology of Religion, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
122. Whitehouse, H, & Martin, LH, (eds.), 2004, Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History, and Cognition, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
123. Whitehouse, H, & McCauley, RN, (eds.), 2005, Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.