Doctoral Dissertation Research: Disentangling causes and consequences of religious conversion

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。为什么人们会接受一套新的宗教信仰和习俗，尤其是如果它是少数人的，而且这样做可能会付出高昂的代价？这个博士论文研究项目探讨了使人们更有可能改信新宗教的条件，并衡量了改信对跨宗教和种族边界合作的影响。研究结果可以帮助我们理解最近宗教信仰大规模转变的潜在驱动因素，以及它们对群体间合作和市场整合的潜在影响。此外，该项目将为研究生和本科生提供研究机会，为贫困的学术界提供方法培训，并向英语和西班牙语受众传播结果。通过在经历从天主教到各种形式新教的高皈依率的民族志背景下使用混合方法，本研究可以帮助判断物质动机、共同价值观分类和社会学习启发式在驱动皈依决策中的相对贡献。这将包括进行回顾性半结构化访谈、小插曲实验、经济游戏和纵向普查数据分析。皈依的经济方法强调了宗教信仰转变后的经济结果，这表明物质动机推动了皈依。然而，转变并不总是带来经济成果的改善，即使有改善，也可能不是由物质问题驱动的。这个项目可以通过引入一种文化进化方法来阐明转化过程中涉及的机制，该方法侧重于这些思想传播的传播途径，以及它们与人类动机和文化规范的相互作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Why do people adopt a novel set of religious beliefs and practices, especially if it is a minority one and doing so is potentially costly? This doctoral dissertation research project explores the conditions that make it more likely for someone to convert to a new religion and measures the consequences of conversions for cooperation across religious and ethnic boundaries. Results can help us understand the underlying drivers of recent large-scale shifts in religious affiliation, and their potential consequences for inter-group cooperation and market integration. Additionally, this project will provide research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, offer methods training to underprivileged academic communities, and disseminate results to both English and Spanish-speaking audiences. By using mixed methods in an ethnographic context experiencing high rates of conversion from Catholicism to various forms of Protestantism, this study can help adjudicate between the relative contributions of material motivations, assortment along shared values, and social learning heuristics in driving conversion decisions. This will include conducting retrospective semi-structured interviews, vignette experiments, economic games, and analysis of longitudinal census data. Economic approaches to conversion highlight the economic outcomes that often follow shifts in religious affiliation, suggesting that material motivations drive conversions. However, conversions are not always followed by improved economic outcomes, and even when they are, they may not be driven by material concerns. This project could shed light on the mechanisms involved in conversion processes by introducing a cultural evolutionary approach which focuses on the transmission pathways through which these ideas spread, and their interaction with human motivations and cultural norms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.