Item Details

Cognitive Science of Religion: State-of-the-Art

Issue: Vol 1 No. 1 (2013)

Journal: Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion

Subject Areas: Religious Studies Cognitive Studies Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/jcsr.v1i1.5

Abstract:

This article presents an introduction to the cognitive science of religion. It shows that CSR began with original theoretical approaches within the human sciences and has subsequently developed into a more empirical, interdisciplinary field of study. The field is growing rapidly with the appearance of several centers and projects. The most important theories, findings, and criticisms are presented. Also the various cenyers of study and recent projects are described.

Author: Ilkka Pyysiäinen

View Original Web Page

References :

Alexander, R.D. 1979. Darwinism and Human Affairs. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Anderson, J.R. 1983. The Architecture of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Anttonen, V. 2002. “Identifying the generative mechanisms of religion: The issue of origin revisited.” In Current approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion, edited by I. Pyysiäinen and V. Anttonen, 14–37. London: Continuum.
Atkinson, Q.D., and H. Whitehouse. 2011. “The cultural morphospace of ritual form: Examining modes of religiosity cross-culturally.” Evolution and Human Behavior 32: 50–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.09.002
Atran, S. 1987. “Ordinary constraints on the semantics of living kinds.” Mind and Language 2: 271–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1987.tb00107.x
Atran, S. 1990. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
Atran, S. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Atran, S. 2010. Talking to the Enemy: Faith, brotherhood and the unmaking of terrorists. New York: Harper Collins.
Atran, S. 2012. “Psychological origins and cultural evolution of religion.” In Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences, edited by R. Sun, 209–238. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Atran, S., and D. Medin. 2008. The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Atran, S. and J. Henrich. 2010. “The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions.” Biological Theory 5(1): 18–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/BIOT_a_00018
Barrett, J.L. 2000. “Exploring the natural foundations of religion.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4: 29–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01419-9
Barrett, J.L. 2004. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Barrett, J.L. 2007. “Cognitive science of religion: What is it and why is it?” Religion Compass 2
Barrett, J.L. 2008a. “Coding and quantifying counterintuitiveness: Theoretical and methodological reflections.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20(4): 308–338. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006808X371806
Barrett, J.L. 2008b. “Keeping ‘science’ in the cognitive science of religion.” In The evolution of Religion: Studies, theories, and critiques, edited by Joseph Bulbulia et al., 295–301. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Family Foundation.
Barrett, J.L. 2011a. “Cognitive science of religion: Looking back, looking forward.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(2): 229–239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01564.x
Barrett, J.L. 2011b. Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From human minds to divine minds. Templeton Science and Religion Series. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press.
Barrett, J.L., R. A. Richert, and A. Driesenga. 2001. “God’s beliefs versus mothers: The development of nonhuman agent concepts.” Child Development 72(1): 50–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00265
Barrett, J.L., E.R. Burdett, and T.J. Porter. 2009. “Counterintuitiveness in folktales: Finding the cognitive optimum.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 9(3–4): 271–287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156770909X12489459066345
Bechtel, W. 2008. Mental mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge.
Beck, R. 2006. The Religion of the Mithras Cult in Roman Empire: Mysteries of the unconquered Sun. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bell, A.V., P.J. Richerson, and R. McElreath. 2009. “Culture rather than genes provides greater scope for the evolution of large-scale human prosociality.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(42): 17671–17674. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903232106
Bering, J.M. 2006. “The folk psychology of souls.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(5): 453–462. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06009101
Bering, J.M. 2011. The Belief Instinct. New York: Norton.
Bering, J.M. and D.F. Bjorklund. 2004. “The natural emergence of ‘afterlife’ reasoning as a developmental regularity.” Developmental Psychology 40(2): 217–233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.40.2.217
Bering, J.M. and B.D. Parker. 2006. “Children’s attribution of intentions to an invisible agent.” Developmental Psychology 42(2): 253–262. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.2.253
Boyer, P., ed. 1993. Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boyer, P., ed. 1994. The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Boyer, P., ed. 2001. Religion Explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
Boyer, P., ed. 2003. “Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(3): 119–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00031-7
Boyer, P., ed. 2005a. “Ten problems for integrated behavioural science: How to make the social sciences relevant.” Global Fellows Seminars, University of California, Los Angeles; paper #7. URL: http://repositories.cdlib.org/globalfellows/2005/7 [accessed in February 1 2005].
Boyer, P., ed. 2005b. “A reductionistic model of distinct modes of religious transmission.” In Mind and religion: Psychological and cognitive foundations of religiosity, edited by H. Whitehouse and R.N. McCauley, 3–29. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Boyer, P., ed. 2006. “Prosocial aspects of afterlife beliefs: Maybe another byproduct. A commentary on Bering.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29: 466. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06269103
Boyer, P., ed. 2010. The Fracture of an Illusion: Science and the dissolution of religion. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Boyer, P., ed. and B. Bergstrom. 2008. “Evolutionary perspectives on religion.” Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 111–130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085201
Boyer, P., ed. and B. Bergstrom. 2011. “Threat-detection in child development: An evolutionary perspective.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 35(4): 1034–1041. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.08.010
Boyer, P., ed. and P. Liénard. 2006. “Why ritualized behavior? Precaution systems and action-parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(6): 595–650. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06009332
Boyer, P., ed. and P. Liénard. 2008. “Ritual behavior in obsessive and normal individuals: Moderating anxiety and reorganizing the flow of action.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 17(4): 291–294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00592.x
Bulbulia, J. 2004a. “The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion.” Biology and Philosophy 19: 655–686. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-005-5568-6
Bulbulia, J. 2004b. “Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention.” Evolution and Cognition 10(1): 19–42.
Bulbulia, J. and M. Frean. 2010. “The evolution of charismatic cultures.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 22: 254–271. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006810X531049
Bulbulia, J. and U. Schjoedt. 2010. “Religious culture and cooperative prediction under risk: Perspectives from social neuroscience.” In Religion, Economy, and
Cooperation, edited by I. Pyysiäinen, 35–59. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110246339.35
Craver, C. 2007. Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Czachesz, I. 2007. “The transmission of early Christian thought: Toward a cognitive psychological model.” Studies in Religion 36: 65–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000842980703600104
Claidière, N., and D. Sperber. 2007. “The role of attraction in cultural evolution: Reply to J. Henrich and R. Boyd, ‘On modelling cognition and culture’.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 7(1–2): 89–111.
Claidière, N.and D. Sperber. 2010. “Imitation explains the propagation, not the stability of animal culture.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277 1681: 651–659.
Cohen, E. 2007. The Mind Possessed: The cognition of spirit possession in an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Comstock, W.R. 1981. “A behavioral approach to the sacred: Category formation in religious studies.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49: 625–643. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/XLIX.4.625
Comstock, W.R. 1984. “Toward open definitions of religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52: 499–517. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/52.3.499
D’Andrade, R. 2000. “The sad story of anthropology 1950–1999.” Cross-Cultural Research 34(3): 219–232.
Day, M. 2007. “Let’s be realistic: Evolutionary complexity, epistemic probabilism, and the cognitive science of religion.” Harvard Theological Review 100(1): 47–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0017816007001423
Evans, J. St. B.T. 2008. “Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition.” Annual Review of Psychology 59: 255–278. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093629
Franks, B. 2003. “The nature of unnaturalness in religious representations: Negation and concept combination.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 31: 41–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853703321598572
Frejka, T., and C.F. Westhoff. 2008. “Religion, religiousness and fertility in the US and Europe.” European Journal of Population 24: 5–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10680-007-9121-y
Geertz, A.W. 2004. “Cognitive approaches to the study of religion.” In New approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 2: Textual, comparative, sociological, and cognitive approaches, edited by P. Antes, A.W. Geertz and R. Warne, 347–399. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Geertz, A.W. 2010. “Brain, body and culture: A biocultural theory of religion.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 224: 304–321. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006810X531094
Geertz, A.W. and J.S. Jensen, eds. 2011. Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture: Image and word in the mind of narrative. Sheffield and Oakville: Equinox.
Gervais, W.M., A.F. Shariff, and A. Norenzayan. 2011. “Do you believe in atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(6): 1189–1206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0025882
Guthrie, S. 1980. “A cognitive theory of religion.” Current Anthropology 21: 181–203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/202429
Guthrie, S. 1993. Faces in the clouds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hedström, P., and P. Ylikoski. 2010. “Causal mechanisms in the social sciences.”
Annual Review of Sociology 36: 49–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102632
Heider, F., and M.-A. Simmel. 1944. “An experimental study of apparent behavior.” American Journal of Psychology 57 243–249. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1416950
Henrich, J., and R. Boyd. 2002. “On modeling cognition and culture: Why cultural evolution does not require replication of representations.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 22: 87–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853702320281836
Henrich, J.and J. Henrich. 2007. Why Humans Cooperate: A cultural and evolutionary explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Henrich, J., R. Boyd, S. Bowles, H. Gintis, E. Fehr, C. Camerer, et al. 2005. “‘Economic man’ in cross-cultural perspective: Ethnography and experiments from 15 small-scale societies.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28: 795–855. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X05000142
Henrich, J., et al. 2006. “Costly punishment across human societies.” Science 312: 1767–1770. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1127333
Howard-Jones, P.A., R. Bogacz, J.H. Yoo, U. Leonards, S. Demetriou. 2010. “The neural mechanisms of learning from competitors.” Neuroimage 53(2): 790–799. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.06.027
Irons, W. 2001. “Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment.” In Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment, edited by R.M. Nesse, 292–309. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Jensen, J.S. 2011. “A review of Pascal Boyer, The fracture of an illusion.” Religion 41(4): 685–688. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2011.592096
Keil, F.C. 1979. Semantic and Conceptual Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Keil, F.C. 1996/1989. Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kelemen, D. 1999a. “Functions, goals, and intentions: Children’s teleological reasoning about objects.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12: 461–468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01402-3
Kelemen, D. 1999b. “Why are rocks pointy? Children’s preference for teleological explanations of the natural world.” Developmental Psychology 35: 1440–1453. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.35.6.1440
Kelemen, D. 2004. “Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature.” Psychological Science 15(5): 295–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00672.x
Kelemen, D., and C. DiYanni. 2005. “Intuitions about origins: Purpose and intelligent design in children’s reasoning about nature.” Journal of Cognition and Development 6(1): 3–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327647jcd0601_2
Kelemen, D., and E. Rosset. 2009. “The human function compunction: Teleological explanation in adults.” Cognition 111: 138–143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.001
Konvalinka, I., D. Xygalatas, J. Bulbulia, U. Schjødt, E-M. Jegindø, S. Wallot, G. Van Orden and A. Roepstorff. 2011. “Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(20): 8514–8519. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1016955108
Lawson, E.T., and R.N. McCauley. 1990. Rethinking Religion: Connecting cognition and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Liénard, P., and P. Boyer. 2006. “Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior.” American Anthropologist 108(4): 814–827. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.4.814
Luomanen, P., I. Pyysiäinen, and R. Uro, eds. 2007. Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from cognitive and social science. Biblical Interpretation Series 89. Leiden: Brill.
McCauley, R.N. 1986. “Intertheoretic relations and the future of psychology.” Philosophy of Science 53: 179–199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/289306
McCauley, R.N. 1996. “Explanatory pluralism and the co-evolution of theories in science.” In The Churchlands and Their Critics, edited by R.N. McCauley, 17–47. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
McCauley, R.N. 2011. Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCauley, R.N. and E.T. Lawson. 2002. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological foundations of cultural forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606410
McCauley, R.N. and W. Bechtel. 2001. “Explanatory pluralism and heuristic identity theory.” Theory and Psychology 11(6): 736–760. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959354301116002
Marlowe, F.W., J.C. Berbesque, A. Barr, C. Barrett, A. Bolyanatz, J.C. Cardenas, et al. 2008. “More ‘altruistic’ punishment in larger societies.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275: 587–590. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2007.1517
Martin, L.H. 2003. “Cognition, society and religion: A new approach to the study of culture.” Culture and Religion 4(2): 207–231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01438830032000135683
Martin, L.H. 2004. “Towards a cognitive history of religions.” In Unterwegs. Neue Pfade in der Religionswissenschaft / New paths in the study of religions:Festschrift for Michael Pye, edited by C. Kleine, M. Schrimpf and K. Triplett, 75–82. München: Biblion.
Martin, L.H. and J. Sørensen, eds. 2011. Past Minds: Studies in cognitive historiography. London and Oakville: Equinox.
Nielbo, K.L., and J. Sørensen. 2011. ”Spontaneous processing of functional and non-functional action sequences.” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1(1): 18–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2010.550722
Pihlström, S. 2002. “Pragmatic and transcendental arguments for theism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 51: 195–210. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015503614393
Pihlström, S. 2005. “A pragmatic critique of three kinds of religious naturalism.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 17(3): 177–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1570068054922830
Pyysiäinen, I. 2001. How Religion Works: Towards a new cognitive science of religion. Leiden: Brill.
Pyysiäinen, I. 2004a. Intuitive and explicit in religious thought. Journal of Cognition and Culture 4(1): 123–150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853704323074787
Pyysiäinen, I. 2004b. Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A scientist’s perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Pyysiäinen, I. 2004c. “Corrupt doctrine and doctrinal revival: On the nature and limits of the modes theory.” In Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, history, and cognition, edited by H. Whitehouse and L.H. Martin, 173–194. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Pyysiäinen, I. 2008. “Introduction: Religion, cognition, and culture.” Religion 38(2): 101–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.006
Pyysiäinen, I. 2009. Supernatural agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pyysiäinen, I., ed. 2010. Religion, Economy, and Cooperation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pyysiäinen, I. 2012. “Religion: From mind to society and back.” In Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences, edited by R. Sun, 239–264. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pyysiäinen, I. and V. Anttonen, eds. 2002.Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion. London: Continuum.
Pyysiäinen, I. and M. Hauser. 2010. “The origins of religion: Evolved adaptation or by-product?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(3): 104–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.007
Richerson, P., and R. Boyd. 2005. Not by Genes Alone:How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Saler, B. 2000/1993. Conceptualizing religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbound Categories. With a new preface. New York: Berghahn Books.
Sanderson, S.K., and W.W. Roberts. 2008. “The evolutionary forms of religious life: A cross-cultural, quantitative analysis.” American Anthropologist 110: 454–466. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00078.x
Schjoedt, U. 2009. “The religious brain: A general introduction to the experimental neuroscience of religion.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 21: 310–339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006809X460347
Schjoedt, U., H. Stødkilde-Jørgensen, A.W. Geertz, and A. Roepstorff. 2008. “Rewarding prayers.” Neuroscience Letters 443: 165–168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2008.07.068
Schjoedt, U., H. Stødkilde-Jørgensen, A.W. Geertz, and A. Roepstorff. 2009. “Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4: 199–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsn050
Schloss, J.P, and M. Murray. 2011. “Evolutionary accounts of beliefs in supernatural punishment: A critical review.” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1(1): 46–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2011.558707
Shariff, A. 2011. “Big gods were made for big groups.” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1(1): 89–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2011.558717
Shtulman, A. 2008. “Variation in the anthropomophization of supernatural beings and its implications for cognitive theories of religion.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 34(5): 1123–1138.
van Slyke, J.A. 2011. The Cognitive Science of Religion. Farnham: Ashgate.
Sosis, R. 2000. “Religion and intragroup cooperation: Preliminary results of a comparative analysis of utopian communities.” Cross-Cultural Research 34(1): 77–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/106939710003400105
Sosis, R. and C. Alcorta. 2003. “Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior.” Evolutionary Anthropology 12: 264–274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evan.10120
Sørensen, J. 2007. “Acts that work: A cognitive approach to ritual agency.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 19: 281–300.
Sperber, D. 1975. Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, D. 1985. “Anthropology and psychology: Towards an epidemiology of representations.” Man N.S. 20: 73–89.
Sperber, D. 1996. Explaining Culture: A naturalistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, D. 1997. “Intuitive and reflective beliefs.” Mind and Language 12(1): 67–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0017.00036
Sperber, D. 2006. “Conceptual tools for a naturalistic approach to cultural evolution.” In Evolution of culture: A Fyssen Foundation Symposium, edited by S.C. Levinson and P. Jaisson, 147–165. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stausberg, M., ed. 2009. Contemporary Theories of Religion. London: Routledge.
Sun, R., ed. 2012. Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Thagard, P. 2012. “Mapping minds across cultures.” In Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences, edited by R. Sun, 35–62. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tremlin, T. 2006. Minds and Gods: The cognitive foundations of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tuomela, R. 1995. The Importance of Us: A philosophical study of basic social notions. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Visala. A. 2011. Naturalism, Theism and the Cognitive Study of Religion: Religion explained? Farnham: Ashgate.
Whitehouse, H. 1995. Inside the Cult: Religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Whitehouse, H. 2000. Arguments and Icons: Divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whitehouse, H. 2004. Modes of Religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Whitehouse, H. and J. Laidlaw, eds. 2004. Ritual and Memory: Toward a comparative anthropology of religion. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Whitehouse, H. and L.H. Martin, eds. 2004. Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History, and Cognition. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Whitehouse, H. and R.N. McCauley, eds. 2005. Mind and Religion: Psychological and cognitive foundations of religion. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Wiessner, P. 2009. “Experimental games and games of life among the Ju/’hoan Bushmen.” Current Anthropology 501: 133–138. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/595622
Wilson, D.S. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, religion and the nature of society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, D.S. 2008. “Evolution and religion: The transformation of the obvious.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, theories, and critiques, edited by J. Bulbulia et al., 23–29. Santa Margarita: Collins Foundation Press.
Woodward, J. 2003. Making Things Happen: A theory of causal explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Xygalatas, D. 2008. “Firewalking and the brain: The physiology of high-arousal rituals.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, theories, and critiques, ed. by J. Bulbulia et al., 189–195. Santa Margarita: Collins Foundation Press.
Xygalatas, D., I. Konvalinka, A. Roepstorff, and J. Bulbulia. 2011. ”Quantifying collective effervescence: Heart-rate dynamics at a fire-walking ritual.” Communicative and Integrative Biology 4(6): 735–738.