The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions
The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions
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DOI：
10.1162/biot_a_00018
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发表时间：
2010-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Henrich, Joseph
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Atran, Scott;Henrich, Joseph
理解宗教需要解释为什么超自然的信仰、虔诚和仪式在不同的文化中是普遍的和可变的，以及为什么宗教经常与大规模合作和持久的群体冲突联系在一起。新出现的研究表明，这些对立是三个过程汇合的结果。首先，某些可靠发展的认知过程的相互作用，例如我们推断意向代理人的存在的能力，作为进化的副产品，有利于某些类型的反直觉概念的传播。其次，参与涉及昂贵表演的仪式和虔诚仪式，利用我们进化的心理学的各个方面，加深人们对超自然代理人和宗教社区的承诺。第三，具有不同信仰信仰和实践的社会和组织之间的竞争日益将宗教与群体内的亲社会性和群体间的敌意联系在一起。作为复杂社会演变的一部分，这种联系在最近数千年里得到了极大的加强，对于理解当今世界的合作和冲突非常重要。
Understanding religion requires explaining why supernatural beliefs, devotions, and rituals are both universal and variable across cultures, and why religion is so often associated with both large-scale cooperation and enduring group conflict. Emerging lines of research suggest that these oppositions result from the convergence of three processes. First, the interaction of certain reliably developing cognitive processes, such as our ability to infer the presence of intentional agents, favors-as an evolutionary by-product-the spread of certain kinds of counterintuitive concepts. Second, participation in rituals and devotions involving costly displays exploits various aspects of our evolved psychology to deepen people's commitment to both supernatural agents and religious communities. Third, competition among societies and organizations with different faith-based beliefs and practices has increasingly connected religion with both within-group prosociality and between-group enmity. This connection has strengthened dramatically in recent millennia, as part of the evolution of complex societies, and is important to understanding cooperation and conflict in today's world.