ANT1004 29APR2016

Epidemiological Approaches to Religious Belief

General Intro:
● Evolutionary Psychology - the modularity of the mind
○ Human mind has evolved psychological mechanisms
● Input → processing rules → output
● Domain specificity
● Rule specificity
● Intuitive beliefs are present in infants - difficult to argue that these beliefs in
infants are products of culture
● See PPT slide ‘ Naive physics; Naive psychology, naive morality’
● Our intuitive beliefs are pre wired (by evolution)
● Adaptations - functional traits - evolved to facilitate reproduction
● By-products - functionless traits (incidental by-product of adaptation)
●

Epidemiological Approach

● Religion is not an adaptation (it is a by-product, it is not a functional trait)

● Religious beliefs became widespread because
○ They are easy to represent and remember
○ They fit our intuitive beliefs about thinking about the world (fit the
architecture of the human mind)
○ E.g. intuitive dualist belief - mind vs body - belief in spirits/gods seems
to fit our basic understanding our mind/body dualism (this is why
religious beliefs are widespread)

Representability: (see PPT slide for full details/quotes)

● Supernatural concepts are minimally counterintuitive

○ I.e. beliefs that only depart slightly from our intuitive beliefs about the
world
● Religious beliefs are not difficult to understand because they are similar to our
understanding of the world
● Ghosts can be seen as minimally counter-intuitive because our intuitive
beliefs of mind/body dualism we understand that the mind or soul is separate
from the body (therefore the idea that a spirit survives as ghost can seem
plausible)
● However, there is a possible objection to this view:
○ In many religions god is all knowing , can be everywhere at once (this
is not minimally counterintuitive … this is maximally counter-intuitive)

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○ But a response to this objection/criticism is :

■ We need to distinguish between theoretical concepts from
minimally intuitive religious concepts. When people think of god
they do not draw from religious theory, they draw from their own
intuitive beliefs

● See example on PPT slide ‘Task’

○ Example of boy praying to god (Barrett & Keil)
○ Do people think god can answer more than prayer at the same time?
○ Majority of participants in study thought that god was limited and did
not know everything; could not be in more than one place at same time
etc (these beliefs fitted intuitive beliefs)
○ However, in follow up questionnaire they revert back to the theoretical
concept of god i.e. in questionnaire they suggested that ‘he is infallible,
he can be everywhere at once (the theological view)

Memorability:

● See article by Barret (p 30)

○ Concepts that are counterintuitive are more memorable than mundane
concepts that do not challenge our basic beliefs
○ ‘Conceptual optimum’
○ This can help to explain why religious beliefs are widespread (they are
memorable because they are counterintuitive)

Relevance:

● Intentional agency:
○ A being that deliberately and purposefully initiates action (it is more
relevant to think about ‘agents’)
○ The most relevant concepts match our beliefs about agency
○ We can pray to statues because we believe they can listen (i.e they
have agency)
● See PPT slide ‘Intentional Agency with strategic information’
○ If we think gods/ supernatural agents are watching us, this makes us
monitor our behaviour
● See PPT slide ‘Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, Zeus’
○ Table 1 - Problems with epidemiological approach
● Why do people believe in one religion but not another if both have minimally
counterintuitive beliefs
○ (see Barret & Nyhoff, Heinrich)
○ content based mechanisms,

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○ content biases (more next week)

○

Cross-culturally people believe in religions/gods/spirits, the epidemiological

approach seeks to explain why