Belief In Supernatural Agents Research Articles

Does Belief in Supernatural Agents Moderate the Association Between Interpersonal Conflict at Work and Worker Well‐Being?

AbstractThis study examines how interpersonal conflict at work is associated with worker well‐being in Singapore. More importantly, it assesses how this association is contingent upon belief in angelic intervention and belief in supernatural evil. Using data from the 2021 Work, Religion, and Health Survey (N  =  508), the analyses show that interpersonal conflict at work is positively associated with anxiety and job burnout. In addition, belief in angelic intervention and belief in supernatural evil moderate the association. Specifically, the positive association between interpersonal conflict at work and anxiety is weaker for those who report the belief in angelic intervention. Similarly, higher levels of belief in supernatural evil reduce the positive association of interpersonal conflict at work with anxiety and job burnout. These findings indicate that belief in supernatural agents acts as a key personal resource in the workplace, buffering against the harmful effects of interpersonal conflict at work on worker well‐being.

The Dead May Kill You

Abstract There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested behavior and increase cooperation amongst group members. To date, research has largely focused on beliefs concerning omniscient moralistic gods in large-scale societies. While there is an abundance of ethnographic accounts documenting fear of supernatural punishment, there is a dearth of systematic cross-cultural comparative quantitative evidence as to whether belief in supernatural agents with limited powers in small-scale societies also exert these effects. Here, we examine information extracted from the Human Relations Area Files on cultural discourse about the recently deceased, local ancestor spirits, and mortuary practices across 57 representative cultures. We find evidence that in traditional small-scale societies ancestor spirits are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, with many attendant practices aimed at mitigating this danger. However, such beliefs do not appear to promote cooperation, as ancestor spirits seem to be concerned with interactions between themselves and the living, and to prioritize their own welfare. Many attendant practices are inconsistent even with bipartite cooperation with ancestors that could be viewed as a model for other relationships. The broader implications of this research for the cultural evolution of religion are discussed.

Why Open Theism Is Natural and Classical Theism Is Not

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) indicates that belief in supernatural agents, or “gods”, is underpinned by maturationally natural cognitive biases and systems (Natural Religion). It is unclear, however, whether theism is natural. Does the god concept that our cognitive biases and systems give rise to approximate theism? In other words, is Natural Religion “theism-tracking”? As Christian theologians have different views of what God is like, we argue that the answer depends partly on one’s model of God. We discuss two models: classical theism and open theism. We argue that classical theism is far from being natural. The classical divine attributes are very hard to comprehend. Moreover, people naturally conceptualize God as a special sort of person, but the classical God strongly deviates from our cognitive expectations about persons. Open theism is much more natural. However, recent findings in CSR challenge the suggestion that Natural Religion tracks open theism. The possibility that we are “born idolaters” rather than “born believers” might undermine the Christian doctrine of general revelation and attempts to make CSR compatible with theology.

The design stance, intentional stance, and teleological beliefs about biological and nonbiological natural entities.

Teleology involves an appeal to function to explain why things are the way they are. Among scientists and philosophers, teleological explanations are widely accepted for human-made artifacts and biological traits, yet controversial for biological and nonbiological natural entities. Prior research shows a positive relationship between religiosity and acceptance of such controversial teleological explanations. Across three large online studies, we show that the relationship between religiosity and teleological acceptance cannot be explained by acceptance of objectively false explanations. Furthermore, we show that anthropomorphism and a belief in supernatural agents each independently predict teleological acceptance. In contrast, the tendency to inhibit intuitively appealing, yet incorrect responses to simple reasoning problems was associated with lower teleological acceptance. These results provide strong support for an intention-based account of teleology, and further contribute to the existing literature which situates teleological reasoning within a dual-process framework. Several avenues of future research are discussed, including the need to dissociate implicit and explicit measures of teleological belief, and the need for a greater focus on cross-cultural variation in teleological beliefs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

EVOLUTION, ORIGINAL SIN, AND RACE

This issue's Symposium is dedicated to the topic of “Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall,” with five articles and an introduction by the Symposium's guest editors, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt. As De Cruz and De Smedt point out, original sin and the Fall have taken a central place in Christian contributions to the religion and science discussion. The first two articles reflect on Aquinas, who is still central to the Roman Catholic tradition; the third article stems from the presbytarian tradition; and the fourth and fifth articles draw on literary science and sociology, respectively—this Symposium definitely includes an interesting mix of disciplines. Paul Macdonald shows how traditional Thomistic claims about the creation and fall of the first human beings—or “Adam”—are compatible with the claims of evolutionary science concerning human origins. He defends Aquinas's claims that God created Adam in a state or condition of original justice, wholly subject to God and so fully virtuous, as well as internally immune to bodily corruption, suffering, and natural death. Julie Loveland Swanstrom finds space in Aquinas's thinking for evolutionary thought. She argues that individual or original sin is an inadequate explanation for variation within kinds of creatures and she shows that the existence of argumentative parallels between Aquinas’s treatment of women and mules challenges presumptions about what medievals meant by “static kinds.” Hans Madueme maintains that although the search for a post-Darwinian doctrine of sin has prompted fascinating areas of research, coming up with an evolutionary theology of sin remains a remarkably difficult project. He critically surveys recent theodicies that aim to explain why evolution results in so much suffering. Austin Freeman argues that because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. He engages with the “epic of evolution” genre of scientific literature, distinguishing between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal-oriented Christian epic of evolution. Finally, Jack Mulder addresses ways in which one important view of racism parallels the Christian doctrine of original sin. Using an epistemology of ignorance, he argues that the dichotomy between two main strands of Christian thinking about original sin, Augustinian versus Irenaean, is short-sighted, and he proposes a model of original sin similar to an epistemology of racist ignorance. In this issue's Comment section, Daniel Lim offers a fresh comment on Mikael Leidenhag's (2019) article in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science and on Leidenhag's (2020) response to an earlier comment. Lim critically assesses the way that Leidenhag uses Jaegwon Kim's work on causal exclusion to critique what he calls “Natural Divine Causation” (NDC). Although he agrees with Leidenhag that questions about divine action can fruitfully be posed in terms of Kim's so-called “Causal Exclusion Argument,” the technical way that this is done requires amendment. The comment provides new possibilities for those who wish to construe a noninterventionist picture of divine action based on emergence theory or nonreductive physicalism. This issue contains six contributions in the Articles section. John Calvin Chatlos proposes a “framework of spirituality” for the future of naturalism; this framework identifies part of the “unseen order” of religion as opening a “spiritual core” within persons as a source of healing and happiness. Libby Osgood delves into interpretations of Teilhard de Chardin, in order to address ecological eschatological questions; she disentangles the “nature of nature” in his work by distinguishing thirteen distinct definitions of “nature” that can be summarized into five categories. Harvey Cawdron develops a model of panentheism in which God's embodiment in the cosmos allows all, including all nonbelievers, to have a relationship with God; his model does not require subjects to recognize that they are in a relationship with God. Robbert Zandbergen writes about antinatalism—the conviction that existence is not intrinsically more valuable than nonexistence—and the “death of God”; he describes how antinatalism is the most modern outgrowth of the death of God and represents the most radical face of secular humanism. Hussein Ali Agrama discusses the reports and results of recent official studies of UFOs and argues they may pose a challenge to contemporary science, religion, and secularity; current knowledge on UFOs renders both science and religion uncanny, placing them in a domain where they become irreducibly strange while unshakably familiar. Lari Launonen calls out “debunking arguments”—that belief-forming processes underlying belief in supernatural agents are unreliable—based solely on cognitive science of religion; he highlights that in conjunction with claims about evolutionary epistemology and religious diversity, cognitive science of religion can provide an explanation of why people might believe in gods even if gods did not exist. The issue ends with Lluis Oviedo's review of Gavin Flood's Religion and the Philosophy of Life.

An Analytic Cognitive Style Negatively Predicts a More Literal but Not a More Symbolic Religiosity Type

ABSTRACT The idea that a more analytic cognitive style is associated with lower religiosity is a theoretical prediction that has been challenged by some empirical findings. We conducted three studies with Argentine participants (N = 719) to clarify this issue. In Study 1, we replicated the negative correlation between analytic cognitive style, measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test, and Belief in Supernatural Agents, Intrinsic, and Intuitive Religiosity. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded to the Post-Critical Beliefs Scale which measures both the presence of a transcendent dimension in beliefs and the extent to which literal-vs.-symbolic beliefs are endorsed, and we also tested for individual differences in Need for Cognitive Closure. Results showed that a more analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both inclusion of transcendence and a literal interpretation of religious ideas. Moreoever, an analytic cognitive style was negatively associated with a literal but not with a symbolic inclusion of transcendence in beliefs. In turn, higher scores of closed-mindedness were positively associated with a more literal interpretation of religion. We conclude that present data support the hypothesis that religiosity may be negatively associated with an analytic cognitive style, but individuals who experience religion more symbolically do not accommodate to that pattern.

God's mind on morality.

Most research on cognition behind religious belief assumes that understanding of other minds is culturally uniform and follows the Western model of mind, which posits that (a) others' thoughts can be known and (b) action is best explained by mental state inference. This is potentially problematic if, as a growing body of evidence suggests, other populations view minds differently. We recruit Indigenous iTaukei Fijians who hold (a) a model of mind that discourages mental state inference and (b) co-existing Christian (Western) and traditional supernatural agent beliefs. Study 1 (N = 108), uses free-listing to examine how Western and local models of mind relate to beliefs. The Christian God cares about internal states and traits (aligning with the Western model of mind). Study 2 tests whether evoking God triggers intent focus in moral reasoning. Instead, God appears to enforce cultural models of mind in iTaukei (N = 151) and North Americans (N = 561). Expected divine judgement mirrors human judgement; iTaukei (N = 90) expect God to emphasise outcome, while Indo-Fijians (N = 219) and North Americans (N = 412) expect God to emphasise intent. When reminded to think about thoughts, iTaukei (N = 72) expect God to judge outcomes less harshly. Results suggest cultural/cognitive co-evolution: introduced cultural forms can spread new cognitive approaches, while Indigenous beliefs can persist as a reflection of local institutions.

The Effect of Supernatural Priming on Cheating Behaviour

Research has shown that the mental activation of concepts related to supernatural agents (e.g., God, ghost) is capable of altering one’s moral behaviours. Based on the supernatural monitoring hypothesis, two experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of priming on cheating behaviour using undergraduate participants from Singapore. The results of the first experiment showed that participants who were primed with the concepts of God and ghost via a word-scramble task cheated less in a mathematical task than participants exposed to neutral primes. The second experiment showed that the activation of God and ghost concepts via a supraliminal priming method reduced the participants’ cheating in a riddle game, even when the participants were informed that they would be rewarded monetarily for correctly answering the riddles. The results suggested that the mental activation of supernatural agents could reduce cheating behaviour regardless of the presence or absence of explicit belief in supernatural agents.

Teleology and the intentions of supernatural agents.

Teleological beliefs about the natural world often exist implicitly, and there is a positive relationship between teleological endorsement and belief in supernatural agents. In the current study, participants judged a series of scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations of biological organisms and natural non-living objects, under speeded or un-speeded instructions. After controlling for belief in the existence of supernatural agents, rates of implicit (speeded) and explicit (un-speeded) teleological endorsement were moderated by the belief that supernatural agents intentionally interact with the world. Amongst non-religious individuals, rates of implicit endorsement were significantly higher than explicit endorsement, whereas for highly religious individuals the difference was non-significant. This interaction was driven predominantly by explanations of natural non-living objects. These results are consistent with an intention-based theory of teleology, and help to reconcile the finding of a positive relationship between teleological endorsement and belief in supernatural agents, with the those of an enduring teleological bias.

Fear the unseen: supernatural belief and agency detection in virtual reality

ABSTRACTBelief in supernatural agents is ubiquitous, as evidenced by its prevalence in religion, folklore, and cultural practices. It is theorized that, given recurrent ancestral risks of predation and frequent contact with other dangerous agents, mechanisms for agency detection may have evolved and play an important role in facilitating belief in supernatural agents. Thus, agency detection and belief in supernatural agents may be correlated in modern populations. College students (N = 107) completed a survey assessing belief in various supernatural phenomena, and participated in a virtual reality (VR) task where they indicated the perceived presence of agents (agency detection). Results indicated that the VR task successfully induced false agency detection such that the majority of participants perceived the presence of an agent at least once where no agent was present. Women reported greater overall supernatural belief than men. False agency detection was not related to belief in supernatural agents, and was instead related to belief in Feng Shui. These findings were unanticipated, and inconsistent with the study’s main hypothesis. Discussion emphasizes theoretical and methodological considerations for future research on agency detection and supernatural belief.

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

ABSTRACTWe develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as God exists) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as God appeared to me last night). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people use agency-intuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM.

Mentalizing Domains and Belief in God

Mentalizing, otherwise termed theory of mind or mindreading, is a cognitive ability that enables reasoning about the mental states of others and is theorized to be important for belief in supernatural agents. Further research is needed to investigate the nature of mentalizing itself and its relationship to belief in supernatural agents. The present study includes multiple measures of mentalizing enabling better examination of the relationships among these measures and their relationship to belief in supernatural agents. Two research questions are asked. First, is mentalizing a single construct, or do multiple domains of mentalizing exist? Second, are various measures of mentalizing related to belief in supernatural agents? Results reveal that some measures of mentalizing are interrelated, though not all are, and some measures are related to belief in supernatural agents. These findings suggest that arguments for the existence of a single mentalizing construct that is related to belief in supernatural beings may be insufficient.

Mentalizing skills do not differentiate believers from non-believers, but credibility enhancing displays do.

The ability to mentalize has been marked as an important cognitive mechanism enabling belief in supernatural agents. In five studies we cross-culturally investigated the relationship between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents with large sample sizes (over 67,000 participants in total) and different operationalizations of mentalizing. The relative importance of mentalizing for endorsing supernatural beliefs was directly compared with credibility enhancing displays–the extent to which people observed credible religious acts during their upbringing. We also compared autistic with neurotypical adolescents. The empathy quotient and the autism-spectrum quotient were not predictive of belief in supernatural agents in all countries (i.e., The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States), although we did observe a curvilinear effect in the United States. We further observed a strong influence of credibility enhancing displays on belief in supernatural agents. These findings highlight the importance of cultural learning for acquiring supernatural beliefs and ask for reconsiderations of the importance of mentalizing.

Jesus vs. the ancestors: how specific religious beliefs shape prosociality on Yasawa Island, Fiji

ABSTRACTWe investigate how religious beliefs in an omnipotent, omniscient God vs. locally concerned, more limited gods impact prosocial behavior at varying degrees of social distance. We recruit participants from traditional villages on Yasawa Island, Fiji. Yasawan religion includes belief in both universalistic Christian teachings and local deified ancestor spirits (Kalou-vu). Yasawans’ contrasting reliance on local, kin-based social networks and anonymous economic market exchange provides an interesting test case for how religious beliefs interact with wider social structures. We use an experimental priming procedure to test whether reminders of Christian vs. traditional imagery, as compared to neutral, influence local or self-favoritism in the random allocation game (RAG). We find that traditional imagery caused increased local – but not self – favoritism. Priming effects depended upon perceived resource uncertainty: participants primed with Christian imagery were most likely to allocate to distant co-religionists when they were least worried about resources. However, more uncertainty predicted higher local RAG allocations, further suggesting the importance of local social networks for managing such uncertainty. We further find additional support for previous findings that prosocial effects of punitive supernatural agent beliefs depend upon uncertainty. These findings further emphasize the interplay between contents of cultural forms like religious belief and socioecological context.

Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.

Recent studies of the evolution of religion have revealed the cognitive underpinnings of belief in supernatural agents, the role of ritual in promoting cooperation, and the contribution of morally punishing high gods to the growth and stabilization of human society. The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown. Here we reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early modern humans using a global sample of hunter-gatherers and seven traits describing hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs. We reconstruct ancestral character states using a time-calibrated supertree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification and then test for correlated evolution between the characters and for the direction of cultural change. Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait. Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship. Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies. There is a significant positive relationship between most characters investigated, but the trait “high gods” stands apart, suggesting that belief in a single creator deity can emerge in a society regardless of other aspects of its religion.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Religious actions speak louder than words: exposure to credibility-enhancing displays predicts theism

ABSTRACTOne of the central aims of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) is to explain why supernatural agent beliefs are so widespread. A related but distinct aim is to explain why some individuals hold supernatural agent beliefs but others do not. Here, we aim to provide an initial test of the power of exposure to what Henrich calls “credibility-enhancing displays” (or “CREDs”) in determining whether or not an individual holds explicit supernatural agent beliefs. We present evidence from two studies of Americans suggesting that exposure to CREDs, as measured by a scale we developed and validated, predicts current theism vs. non-theism, certainty of God's existence/non-existence, and religiosity while controlling for overall religious socialization. These results are among the first to empirically support the theorized significance of CREDs for the acquisition of supernatural agent beliefs.

Priming with Religion and Supernatural Agency Enhances the Perception of Intentionality in Natural Phenomena

Cognitive theories of religion suggest that belief in supernatural agents finds a basis in the human tendency to (over) detect agency in the environment. The present research investigated whether activation of religious concepts enhances the attribution of agency in natural phenomena. In two experiments we administered a religion prime (a religion questionnaire in Experiment 1; a subliminal God prime in Experiment 2) and measured the amount of intentionality and free will that participants ascribed to images of natural phenomena and agents. In both experiments participants ascribed more agency to natural phenomena if they had been presented with a religion prime. Item analyses for both experiments furthermore revealed that the effect of religious priming was most pronounced for items of natural phenomena that were perceived as beyond personal control. These findings provide empirical support for the hypothesized relation between religion and agency detection.

Priming of supernatural agent concepts and agency detection

In evolutionary approaches to religion it is argued that belief in supernatural agents is strongly related to a perceptual bias to over-detect the presence of agents in the environment. We report five experiments that investigate whether processing concepts about supernatural agents facilitates agency detection. Participants were presented with point-light stimuli representing unscrambled or scrambled biological motion, or with pictures of unscrambled or scrambled faces, embedded in a noise mask. Participants were required to indicate for each stimulus whether it represented a human agent or not. Each trial was preceded by a supernatural agent prime, a human agent prime, or an animal prime. Our results showed that primes referring to humans facilitated the detection of agency. More importantly, however, results did not reveal a general effect of supernatural priming on agency detection. In three experiments, a moderating effect of religiosity was observed: supernatural agent primes had a differential effect for religious compared to non-religious participants on agency detection biases and the speed of responding to agent-like stimuli. These findings qualify the relation between supernatural beliefs and agency detection and suggest that when supernatural agent concepts have been acquired through cultural learning, these concepts can modulate agency-detection biases.

Three cognitive routes to atheism: a dual-process account

According to recent cognitive explanations of religiosity, belief in supernatural agents is a result of species-universal cognitive modules operating in environments similar enough to those these modules evolved in. Less attention has been given to the cognitive basis of atheism. The author brings together three ways in which atheism could arise that are a priori compatible with recent cognitive explanations of religiosity. One way is reflective and involves the effortful overturning of unreflective modular cognition. The other two ways are unreflective and involve, firstly, the operation of modular cognition in evolutionarily novel environments, and secondly, developmental variation of modular cognition. The author argues that there is evidence for both a reflective route and at least one unreflective route to atheism, and that reflective and unreflective causes probably interact with each other. Consequently, he argues that the cognitive profiles of atheists are not necessarily more reflective than those of believers, nor any less ‘natural’.

What Causes the Rain? How the World Is Misleading

Should we account for belief in supernatural agents in terms of benefits it might provide to the human believers? Or is it just a by-product of the human cognitive architecture? Perhaps neither. A different perspective, no longer human-centric, shines through in an observation like “admittedly, the Argument from Design must have been quite convincing before Darwin”. We can go farther in this direction.