20 found
Order:
  1.  51
    Why aren’t we all hutterites?Richard Sosis - 2003 - Human Nature 14 (2):91-127.
    In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues in William Irons’s theory of religion as a “hard-to-fake” sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals serve as costly signals of an individual’s commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose a proximate explanation for (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  2. What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents' Access to Socially Strategic and Non-Strategic Information.Benjamin G. Purzycki, Daniel N. Finkel, John Shaver, Nathan Wales, Adam B. Cohen & Richard Sosis - 2012 - Cognitive Science 36 (5):846-869.
    Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents’ socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents’ knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  3.  23
    Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols.Candace S. Alcorta & Richard Sosis - 2005 - Human Nature 16 (4):323-359.
    This paper considers religion in relation to four recurrent traits: belief systems incorporating supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, communal ritual, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as a preferred developmental period for religious transmission. These co-occurring traits are viewed as an adaptive complex that offers clues to the evolution of religion from its nonhuman ritual roots. We consider the critical element differentiating religious from non-human ritual to be the conditioned association of emotion and abstract symbols. We propose (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  4.  27
    Bargaining theory and cooperative fishing participation on ifaluk atoll.Richard Sosis, Sharon Feldstein & Kim Hill - 1998 - Human Nature 9 (2):163-203.
    In this paper we examine the merit of bargaining theory, in its economic and ecological forms, as a model for understanding variation in the frequency of participation in cooperative fishing among men of Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia. Two determinants of bargaining power are considered: resource control and a bargainer’s utility gain for his expected share of the negotiated resource. Several hypotheses which relte cultural and life-course parameters to bargaining power are tested against data on the frequency of cooperative sail-fishing participation. (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  5.  16
    Moral Intuitions and the Religious System: An Adaptationist Account.Jordan Kiper & Richard Sosis - 2014 - Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1 (2):172.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  6.  29
    How Does Male Ritual Behavior Vary Across the Lifespan?John H. Shaver & Richard Sosis - 2014 - Human Nature 25 (1):136-160.
    Ritual behaviors of some form exist in every society known to anthropologists. Despite this universality, we have little understanding of how ritual behavior varies within populations or across the lifespan, nor the determinants of this variation. Here we test hypotheses derived from life history theory by using behavioral observations and oral interview data concerning participant variation in Fijian kava-drinking ceremonies. We predicted that substantial variation in the frequency and duration of participation would result from (1) trade-offs with reproduction and (2) (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  7.  93
    Is religion adaptive?Richard Sosis & Candace Alcorta - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6):749-750.
    We argue that religious ritual's ability to facilitate communication and the pervasiveness of its basic characteristics across societies, as well as its precedence in other social species, suggests that religious behavior is more than a mere by-product. Religious constructs constitute associationally conditioned mnemonics that trigger neuroendocrine responses which motivate religious behaviors. The adaptive value of these constructs resides in their utility as memorable and emotionally evocative primes.
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  8. The Socio-religious Brain: A Developmental Model.Daniel N. Finkel, Paul Swartwout & Richard Sosis - 2010 - In Finkel Daniel N., Swartwout Paul & Sosis Richard (eds.), Social Brain, Distributed Mind. pp. 283.
  9.  7
    The role of religion in the evolution of peace.Jordan Kiper & Richard Sosis - 2024 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 47:e15.
    Glowacki's account overlooks the role of religion in the regulation of cooperation, tolerance, and peace values. We interrogate three premises of Glowacki's argument and suggest that approaching religion as an adaptive system reveals how religious commitments and practices likely had a more substantial impact on the evolution of peace and conflict than currently presumed.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10.  21
    Why religion is better conceived as a complex system than a norm-enforcing institution.Richard Sosis & Jordan Kiper - 2014 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (3):275-276.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11.  15
    Willpower through cultural tools: An example from alcoholics anonymous.Pamela Acquaro & Richard Sosis - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44.
    We argue that a closer look at the practices and tools that humans use to support willpower, and the cultural contexts in which they are employed, can broaden the applicability of Ainslie's theory and facilitate the development of more effective self-control techniques. To support our argument, we examine Alcoholics Anonymous's method of temptation resistance known as “playing the tape through”.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12.  54
    Ritual harmony: Toward an evolutionary theory of music.Candace S. Alcorta, Richard Sosis & Daniel Finkel - 2008 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):576-577.
    Juslin & Vll (J&V) advance our understanding of the proximate mechanisms underlying emotional responses to music, but fail to integrate their findings into a comprehensive evolutionary model that addresses the adaptive functions of these responses. Here we offer such a model by examining the ontogenetic relationship between music, ritual, and symbolic abstraction and their role in facilitating social coordination and cooperation.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13.  25
    (1 other version)Examining the influence of life expectancy on reproductive timing, total fertility, and educational attainment.Nicola L. Bulled & Richard Sosis - 2010 - Human Nature 21 (3):269-289.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  14.  30
    Ideology as cooperative affordance.Joseph Bulbulia & Richard Sosis - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):515-516.
    McKay & Dennett (M&D) observe that beliefs need not be true in order to evolve. We connect this insight with Schelling's work on cooperative commitment to suggest that some beliefs are best approached as social goals. We explain why a social-interactive perspective is important to explaining the dynamics of belief formation and revision among situated partners.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  15.  12
    Toward a more comprehensive theory of self-sacrificial violence.Jordan Kiper & Richard Sosis - 2018 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41:e206.
    We argue that limiting the theory of extreme self-sacrifice to two determinants, namely, identity fusion and group threats, results in logical and conceptual difficulties. To strengthen Whitehouse's theory, we encourage a more holistic approach. In particular, we suggest that the theory include exogenous sociopolitical factors and constituents of the religious system as additional predictors of extreme self-sacrifice.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Breaking the wrong spell.Richard Sosis - forthcoming - Free Inquiry.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17.  20
    Four advantages of a systemic approach to the study of religion.Richard Sosis - 2020 - Archive for the Psychology of Religion 42 (1):142-157.
    There has been increasing interest in the evolutionary study of religion, but perfunctory fractionalization has limited our ability to explain how and why religion evolved, evaluate religion’s current adaptive value, and assess its role in contemporary decision-making. To move beyond piecemeal analyses of religion, I have recently offered an integrative evolutionary framework that approaches religions as adaptive systems. I argue that religions are an adaptive complex of traits consisting of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioral, and developmental features that are organized into (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18.  43
    Insights from ifaluk: Food sharing among cooperative fishers.Richard Sosis - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (4):568-569.
    The fish-sharing patterns on Ifaluk Atoll underscore several limitations of the explanations of food sharing offered by Gurven and suggest that non-foraging labor activities may provide insights into reciprocity and punishment relevant for understanding food-sharing patterns. I also argue that future food-sharing studies should focus on signaling rather than resource holding potential (RHP).
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19.  26
    Sharing, consumption, and patch choice on Ifaluk atoll.Richard Sosis - 2001 - Human Nature 12 (3):221-245.
    Anthropological tests of patch choice models from optimal foraging theory have primarily employed acquisition rates as the currency of the model. Where foragers share their returns, acquisition rates may not be similar to consumption rates and thus may not be an appropriate currency to use when modeling foraging decisions. Indeed, on Ifaluk Atoll the distribution patterns of fish vary by fishing method and location. Previous analyses of Ifaluk patch choice decisions suggested that if Ifaluk fishers are trying to maximize their (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20.  36
    Form and function in religious signaling under pathogen stress.Paul Swartwout, Benjamin Grant Purzycki & Richard Sosis - 2012 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (2):92-93.
    The evolution of religious traditions may be partially explained by out-group avoidance due to pathogen stress. However, many religious rituals may increase rather than decrease performers' susceptibility to infection. Moreover, religions often spread through proselytizing, which requires out-group interaction; and in other cases, the benefits of economic exchange increase religious pluralism and social interactions with out-groups.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark