Afterlife Beliefs Mitch Hodge PDF

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PROPOSED COGNITIVE MECHANISMS AND REPRESENTATIONAL

STRUCTURES OF AFTERLIFE BELIEFS: A REVIEW
K. MITCH HODGE, PAULO SOUSA, AND CLAIRE WHITE
ABSTRACT
The authors present a comprehensive review of experimental and theoretical research into the
psychology of afterlife beliefs in the past decade and a half. Specifically highlighted in this
review are the cognitive mechanisms and representational structures that the researchers have
proposed to undergird the universal cognitive architecture of afterlife beliefs. After presenting
each proposal, the authors then present themes derived from comparing those proposals which
can be utilized in future research that would serve to narrow the field of proposed explanations.
KEYWORDS
Afterlife beliefs, intuitive folk dualism, ensoulment theory, contextual theories, cognitive
mechanisms, representational structures
INTRODUCTION
In the decade and more since Berings initial empirical investigations into humans implicit
reasoning about the possibility of others surviving death (Bering, 2002), a flurry of research
into the cognitive foundations of afterlife beliefs has been published. Where subsequent
research largely agrees is that humans have a cognitive predisposition to accept the belief that it
is possible for an individual to survive biological death in a manner that preserves thick
personal identity.1 Where the subsequent research disagrees pertains to the cognitive
mechanisms involved in predisposing humans to accept this belief, and the representational
structure of that belief. Here, we will attempt to correlate and elucidate the various cognitive
mechanisms and representational structures that have been proposed in the past decade of
publications.
The philosophical distinction between thick and thin preservation of identity is relevant here
(Kaufman, 2004; Perry, 1978). Thick identity preserves personal identity through the retention of
properties that make an individual a person (e.g., autobiographical memories, personality, and other
identifying personal features); whereas thin identity strips the individual of such identifying properties
and is described as a life-force, consciousness, or energy, which alone does not qualify for personhood.
1
Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 2

It is important to understand both the logical and causal relationships between
proposed cognitive mechanisms for afterlife beliefs and the proposed representational
structure of those beliefs. Certain cognitive mechanisms logically and causally mandate certain
representational structures, as we shall see. For instance, a causal cognitive mechanism that
processes both psychological and bodily representations of another individual will (and should)
produce a representationally structured belief that includes both psychological and bodily
conceptual intensions as a component of the endorsed proposition. Some researchers have first
proposed the cognitive mechanism based on empirical studies and then proposed the logically
derived representational structure. Other researchers have first attempted to demonstrate
empirically the representational structure, and follow the causal chain backward to what the
cognitive mechanism producing such a structure must be like. The result has been diverse
packages of proposed cognitive mechanisms and representational structures.
Currently, the majority trend in the literature has been to propose a cognitive
mechanism that produces a folk-dualist representational structure of the intensional content

that either denies any bodily representation to deceased individual being represented in the
afterlife (hereafter: afterliving deceased), or a marginal role to bodily representations. This is

in-step with the dominant, yet controversial, trend in the cognitive science of religion to
describe folk representations of all supernatural agents as disembodied minds (cf., Bering,
2010; Bloom, 2007; Hodge, 2012b; Nikkel, 2015; Pyysiinen, 2009). We will discuss this
majority trend in-depth as we analyze previous research. We will also discuss other scholarly
research that suggests that religious notions such as the soul or spirit play a substantial
intensional role in representations of the afterliving deceased. In addition, we will introduce

and discuss independent research conducted by the authors which present a substantial
challenge to this trend by suggesting that bodily representations play an important role in
maintaining the personal identity (in the minds of the living) of the afterliving deceased.
Following these discussions, we discuss emergent themes which allow us to propose
targeted methodologies that will aid in discerning which, if any, of the proposed cognitive
mechanisms and representational structures of afterlife beliefs bear empirical weight. Our
suggested paradigms should make it possible to determine whether proposed mechanisms
produce the delimited type of representational structures compatible with those mechanisms,
and whether empirically determined representational structures are consistent with types of
information processed by the cognitive mechanism such as to produce those structures.
Finally, to aid readers in keeping the researchers and their positions straight, we
provide a table which provides an overview of the positions held by all those discussed in this

article, and whether and how they address certain theoretical concerns (see Table 1:
Breakdown of Mechanisms and Structures by Authors).
INTUITIVE FOLK-DUALIST THEORIES
Intuitive folk dualism, as used in psychology, is the notion that humans are predisposed to
conceive themselves as composed of two substances: an immaterial mind and a physical body.
In the context of afterlife beliefs, numerous researchers have proposed that humans intuitively
believe the immaterial mind of an individual survives the biological death of her body, and that
the mind (alone) is capable of preserving her identity through the psychological continuity of
thoughts, emotions, desires and memories.2 Folk dualism is intended to provide detail into how
humans essentialize themselvesthat is, reduce themselves to identity preserving properties

in comparison to other types of entities, through a widely accepted folk process of psychological
essentialism (Gelman, 2004). Psychological essentialism, itself, is an underspecified and
underdetermined psychological process which suggests humans conceptually treat categories

as if they have an unobservable (and often immaterial) essence that provides an object its
identity and its category membership.3 Folk dualism, then, is offered as the essentializing
process and representational structure by which humans conceptualize themselves.
In the context of the cognitive science of religion, current folk dualist theories claim that
the folk conceptualize the mind (and its cognates) as intensionally identical to the soulthat is,
the mind is the soul (cf., Bering, 2010, 2006; Bloom, 2004, 2007; Fiala, Arico, & Nichols, 2011;
Pereira, Fasca, & S-Saraiva, 2012; Slingerland & Chudek, 2011).4 This claim about the folk
conception of the mind, as we shall see in a later section however, has a number of critics;
nevertheless, for our present purposes it is an important claim in folk dualist theories
pertaining to the representational structure of how the folk conceptualize the afterliving
deceased. By claiming that the mind is intensionally identical to the soul, these theories attempt
to provide explanation for how the folk are able to coherently believe that mental activities are
Psychological folk-dualism owes much to the philosophical ideas of John Locke (1975/16901694) and Ren Descartes (1637/2007, 1641/1993), specifically their ideas of psychological continuity
and (Cartesian) substance dualism, respectively. These philosophers would likely be surprised to learn,
however, that these ideas which were logical product of much philosophical deliberation are now
considered to be simple, intuitive, folk ideas.
3
The similarity of folk psychological essentialism and Platos (Cooper, 1997) description of the
forms cannot be overstated here. Here again, psychologists willingness to attribute educated and subtle
philosophical positions which arose from hard-fought philosophical argumentation to todays commonfolk would come as a shock to most educated individuals at the turn of the last century. What is even
more interesting is that philosophers Plato, Descartes, and Locke all offered their philosophical positions
in opposition to what they considered to the folk understandings of the topics which relied heavily on
sense data.
4
This claim too owes much to Descartes formulation of dualism.
2

capable of continuing for the afterliving deceased in the absence of a physical body, particularly
the brain.5
None of that is to claim that all folk dualist theories are identical themselves; there are
several varieties which will be detailed in what follows. The above simply providesin broad
strokesthe theoretical similarities between them. Due to differing theoretical commitments
and differing interpretations of empirical data, researchers have promoted a wide array of folk
dualist theories which produce specific representational structures from specific cognitive
mechanisms.
THE SIMULATION CONSTRAINT HYPOTHESIS AND COMMON-SENSE DUALISM
The first folk dualist theory pertaining to afterlife beliefs was offered by Bering himself (2002,
2006). In his initial experiments, Bering provided participants from a variety of religious
backgrounds with a vignette about an individual to whom numerous types of states were
attributed (i.e., biological, psychobiological, perceptual, desire, emotional, and epistemic), who
meets with an untimely death at the end of the story. Then Bering asked those participants
which, if any, of those states continued after death (affirmative answers to these questions
Bering refers to as continuity responses). The data revealed a strong trend: Desire, emotional,
and epistemic questions (which he places in the domain of the mental) received significantly
more continuity responses than did biological, psychobiological, and perceptual states (which
he places in the domain of the physical body). Moreover, these responses were in agreement
with Berings simulation constraint hypothesis born from simulation theory that it would be
easier to imagine the absence of our own physical, bodily, states (what Bering calls easy to
imagine absence states or EIA states) than to imagine the absence of our own mental states
(difficult to imagine absence states or DIA states).6 In other words, Bering hypothesized that
when participants attempted to simulate what it is like to be deadwhich he took to be an
attempt to simulate being devoid of all states7participants would find it very difficult to image
themselves or others as not having any mental states since those are with us all the time
Interestingly, this strong identity claim between the mind and the soul enables Swinburne (2001)
to argue for the Christian doctrine of spiritual re-embodiment in the afterlife (Heaven). This is because
Swinburne also accepts a modest version of the materialist claim that the mind (or mentalizing) is
dependent on a physical brain.
6
In a modified cross-cultural replication of Berings studies, Misailidi and Kornilaki (2015)
endorse the simulation constraint, but also propose (following Bek & Lock (2011) discussed below) that
there are some perceptual (seeing, hearing) and mental (addition, planning) activities that are
moderately-easy-to-imagine-the-absence-of, or MEIA states. They conjecture that this is because of these
states close tie to specific body parts of the body, such as the eyes and brain.
7
According to Hodge (2012a, 2016), Berings hypothesis here confuses the biological conception
of death with the secular conception of death. This conflation is widespread, as we shall see, and as such
it will be discussed more thoroughly at the end of this article.
5

(according to Bering), but would easily be able to imagine what it is like not to eat, be hungry, or
taste since humans frequently experience their absence. The fact that participants gave
significantly more continuity responses to the mental DIA states than the physical, bodily, EIA
states, permitted Bering to argue that humans were what he called common-sense dualists.
When confronted by death, Bering argued, humans are constrained in their simulations
of what it is like to be dead in that they are unable to represent themselves as being devoid of
mental states. Humans can, however, represent themselvesalthough this is not what was
experimentally testedas not having any physical, bodily states. From this, Bering argues that
we represent another individual as surviving death in purely mental terms.8 This allowed
Bering to further argue that afterliving deceased were represented by the folk as disembodied
minds. For Bering, therefore, the cognitive mechanism for afterlife beliefs was his novel
simulation constraint which produced common-sense dualist representations of individuals
that mandated when the physical body died, only mental state representations of the deceased
survived. These mental state representations of the afterliving deceased were conceptually
contained by the folk in an abstract notion of the mind which was now unhindered by any
physical, bodily representation.
FOLK PHYSICS, FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, AND CARTESIAN SUBSTANCE DUALISM
Using Berings experimental data concerning representations of the afterliving deceased (in
part), 9 Bloom (2004, 2007) has proposed a different theory concerning both the cognitive
mechanism(s) responsible for producing afterlife beliefs, and those beliefs representational
structure. According to Bloom, humans have two dominant cognitive mechanisms for
processing information about our environment(s): the folk physics module responsible for
processing information about physical objects, and the folk psychology module responsible for
processing information received from interaction with intentional agents. In the case of
processing information about humans themselves, these two modules interact because humans
are embodied intentional agents, meaning that they have both physical and intentional states
that our brain must process to understand, explain, and predict the actions of our conspecifics.
Under normal conditions, our conspecifics intentional (mental) states are a far more useful
heuristic in understanding, explaining, and predicting their behavior than is their physical,
bodily, states. Thus, when it comes to processing information regarding our conspecifics
behavior, the folk psychology module is strongly dominant. Our cognitive default, therefore, is
Here Bering moves from an egocentric theory to an allocentric representation which will be
addressed below.
9
Blooms theory was offered as an interpretation for other experimental findings not directly
related to afterlife beliefs (see, Bloom, 2004; Valerie A. Kuhlmeier, Bloom, & Wynn, 2004; Valerie A.
Kuhlmeier, Wynn, & Bloom, 2004).
8

to endow and to pay more attention to our conspecifics mental states than to their physical,
bodily states. This means when it comes to thinking about and identifying our conspecifics,
physical, bodily states play a negligible role in such processing. In the case of afterlife beliefs
specifically, Bloom argues that this cognitive default easily allows humans to separate the mind
(as the container of mental states) from the body. Thus, at the time of biological death of the
physical body of any of our conspecifics, the folk naturally and intuitively believe that the
deceased individual continues her mental life as a disembodied mind.
Afterlife beliefs, according to Bloom, are created by the interaction between the folk
physics and folk psychology modules. Since the folk psychology module, ceteris paribus, serves
a more important and dominant role in thinking about and identifying an individual, humans
can easily accommodate the belief that the individual survives the death of his physical body
since the body played only a negligible role in such processing during life. Moreover, because
the folk psychology module plays such a dominant role in processing information about
ourselves, Bloom proposes that this places a restriction on the way we would imagine ourselves
after death. According to Bloom, because the folk physics module plays such a negligible role in
processing who we are, we can easily imagine the complete destruction of our physical body;
what we find far more difficult (perhaps even impossible) to imagine, however, is that our mind
(soul) dies. In fact, Bloom goes farther: He argues that humans view themselves as minds, and
minds alone, which possess bodies; the body, therefore, plays no role in maintaining the identity
of a person.10 This dynamic allows Bloom to endorse a strong claim: He argues that humans are
intuitive Cartesian substance dualists. Even though Blooms dissection between the mind and
the body is not wholly instep with Descartes formulation,11 Bloom nonetheless accepts the
stronger claims of Cartesian substance dualism such that humans intuitively endorse the
following propositions: the mind is an immaterial substance; humans personal identity is
conferred by their minds, and minds alone; that the mind is intensionally identical with the soul;
and that when ones body dies, she continues existence as a disembodied, immaterial mind.
Therefore, according to Bloom, humans intuitively represent afterliving deceased as the same
individual even though that individual is now wholly a nonphysical disembodied soul who is
only endowed with mental states.
Bloom not only makes the descriptive claim that humans do, in fact, view themselves as
disembodied mind/souls after death, but also a normative claim that all (even young children) should
view the survival of death in this fashion.
11
In Meditation V of Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy (1641/1993) lists his catalogue of
things the mind contains and does. Where Blooms formulation differs with Descartes is that Bloom
(following Bering) includes perception with the bodily states, and includes emotions as mental states. For
Descartes, however, perception was thinking, and emotions were products of the body, not the mind.
10

The influence of Blooms account of the representational structure of the afterliving
deceasedand supernatural agents, in generalas disembodied minds cannot be overstated.

Several of the researchers discussed here have sought to align or compare their theory of
representational structure and content of the afterliving deceased to Blooms intuitive Cartesian
substance dualism, and for many of them, Blooms intuitive Cartesian substance dualism is
synonymous with folk dualism (cf., Bering, 2006b; Dennett, 2006; Fiala, et al., 2011; Huang,
Cheng, & Zhu, 2013; Nichols, 2008; Pereira, et al., 2012; Slingerland, 2012; Slingerland &
Chudek, 2011; Uhlmann, Poelhlman, & Bargh, 2008; Wellman & Johnson, 2007).
THE IMAGINATIVE OBSTACLE AND FOLK DUALISM
Nichols (2007) introduces another novel cognitive mechanism in an attempt to explain Berings
findings which he claims could be responsible for humans predisposition to accept afterlife
beliefs. Nichols proposed mechanism, the imaginative obstacle, has a similar structure to
Berings simulation constraint, but has a different imaginative scope. According to Nichols
study, in the same way that our mind has an obstacle to entertaining the belief that contains the
straightforward contradiction it is the present, and I do not exist, our mind encounters a
similar obstacle in the imagination in entertaining the proposition, there is a present in which I
do not exist. From this, Nichols manipulates the temporal scope of the imaginative enterprise
and argues that humans have an obstacle to imagining the proposition, it is the future, and I do
not exist. Thus, when we attempt to imagine a time after our biological death, our mind
encounters an obstacle to imagining that it is that future and we no longer exist. This
imaginative obstacle, Nichols argues, facilitates a belief in the afterlife, but does not mandate
one.
With this latter argument, Nichols attempts to tackle a problem that most other theories
regarding the cognitive mechanism for afterlife beliefs ignorenamely, while these theories
attempt to explain why beliefs concerning continued postmortem existence are pancultural,
they fail to explain why that same mechanism does not mandate pancultural pre-vital
existence.12 In other words, most of the cognitive mechanisms that researchers have suggested
are responsible for afterlife beliefs should also have mandated that humans have some sort of
pre-life belief which maintains their existence as well. Yet, while afterlife beliefs are
pancultural, pre-life beliefs are not. Nichols response here is two-fold: first, his suggested
mechanism, as stated, only facilitates afterlife beliefs, it does not mandate them; and second, he
While this is similar to the Epicurean asymmetry problem (discussed below) regarding fear of
death versus the lack of fear regarding the time before we were born, Nichols formulation has a different
scope in that it discusses the cognitive mechanisms involved in afterlife beliefs, and this is something not
considered in the standard formulation of the asymmetry problem (cf., Feldman, 2004; Kaufman, 2004;
Nagel, 1970; Rosenbaum, 2004; Suits, 2004)
12

holds with Nagel (1970) that afterlife beliefs are more prominent because humans are
evolutionarily designed to be future-looking creatures.
Although Nichols does not provide us with a detailed account of what he takes the
representational structure of afterlife beliefs to be, it is clear from later publications that Nichols
endorses Blooms intuitive Cartesian substance dualism model for afterlife beliefs (Fiala, et al.,
2011; Nichols, 2008). This presents a difficulty for Nichols that he fails to address and resolve:
intuitive Cartesian dualism takes the mind and the soul to be synonyms, yet Nichols also
advances the research by Richert and Harris (2006, 2008) that demonstrates that (Western)
humans do not believe the mind and the soul are intensionally identical: on the contrary, they
are conceptualized to be ontologically and functionally distinct. As we shall see below, Richert
and Harris research presents a strong challenge to the intuitive Cartesian substance dualist
representational structure championed by Bloom.
CONFLICTING COGNITIVE SYSTEMS THEORY AND FOLK DUALISM
In a replication of Berings 2002 study with slight variation, Bek and Lock (2011) attempt to
determine whether Berings simulation constraint is adequate for explaining afterlife beliefs. In
particular, they examined Berings delineation between DIA and EIA states.13 What Bek and
Lock found was that visual and auditory sub-types of perceptual activities were more closely
groups with the DIA states. On the other hand, taste, touch, and smell appeared to more closely
correlate with the EAI states. Furthermore, they argue from this, if one were to compare token
states to token states across the typesthat is, directly compared the token psychobiological
state is thirsty for water to a token epistemic state knows today is Monday, then it is less
clear that either of those token states would be more difficult to imagine the absence of. What
needs to be compared, they point out, is whether sub-type states such as proprioception
(psychobiological) and memory (epistemic) show any substantial differences in imaginability.

Though Bek and Locks results were far from conclusive, they do give pause for endorsing
Berings simulation constraint.14 Finally, in agreement with Antony (2006), they argue that
Berings simulation constraint cannot explain the emergence of afterlife beliefs because in order
to simulate what it is like to survive biological death, one must first have the accompanying
Bek and Lock also studied priming effects on discontinuity responses, but we will defer
discussion on this until the discussion of Harris and colleagues studies on context sensitivity.
14
They also suggest that their findings do not support a straightforward Cartesian interpretation
either. A study by Huang, et al. (2013) in China found similar discrepancies in category effects. They are
not fully included in this review since they did not explicitly propose any causal cognitive mechanisms or
representational structures for afterlife beliefs.
We should also mention that Bek and Locks, as well as Huang et al., further subcategorization of
states, particularly perceptual states was influenced by (Cohen, Burdett, Knight, & Barrett, 2011) studies
on person-body reasoning. Since these later studies did not directly address the causal mechanisms or
representational structures of afterlife beliefs specifically, they are not addressed here.
13

propositional belief that it is possible to survive deathotherwise, there is nothing for one to
simulate.15
To explain the genesis of afterlife beliefs and their representational structure, Bek and
Lock harken back to Boyers (2001) conflicting systems hypothesis and further subdivide
Berings bodily and psychological categories. They argue, in-step with Boyer, that afterlife
beliefs can be accounted for by a conflict that arises in the case of death between our everyday
reasoning processes. In particular, the conflict arises between processing animacy and intuitive
psychology and social cognition. Whereas the animacy system is susceptible to the
consequences of biological deaththat is, that the physical body is now both insensate and
inanimatethe particular person-file system constructed from the interaction between
intuitive psychology and social cognition continues to produce inferences about the deceased
individual. In other words, the animacy system stops processing overtly physical cues from the
decedents physical body, but the intuitive psychology and social cognition processing areas
continue to process the decedents (supposed) mental activity. But, this does not mean that the
representational structure of the afterliving deceased falls along the broad dual categories that
Bering initially proposed. Instead, Bek and Lock (2011, p. 15) propose a further subdivision of
categories in tripartite fashion between those states that are tied to the body (biological,
psychobiological and some perceptual states), those acquired via the body but that may be
considered to have non-physiological properties (epistemic states and particular perceptual

states) and those that might be treated as being independent of embodiment (emotions and
desires).16 While this representational structure is not straightforwardly dualistic, the rough
division is still between the body and the mind: the distinction here is that Bek and Lock allow
for a certain amount of overlap between the divisions which had not previously been
considered by Berings initial dualistic framework. This perhaps makes their divisions a bit
more common-sense than Berings more rigid folk dualism.
THE INTERACTION OF SELF-AWARENESS, THEORY OF MIND, AND CULTURAL

AFTERLIFE BELIEFS AND SELF-BODY DUALISM.
Pereira, et al. (2012) performed a much needed experiment to fill a lacuna in previous research
regarding afterlife beliefs; namely, do people reason about their own survival of biological death
differently than they do that of others? Previous research discussed above addressed afterlife
beliefs from the subjects perspective of how they viewed the survival of biological death by
Antony (2006) argues that this belief must at least be held implicitly. It is likely that this
objection, in part, rests on a conflation of the concepts of biological death and secular death.
16
Bek and Lock fail to consider, as do most other theorists, that there might be additional states
attributed to the deceased such as spiritual and moral states.
15

others (an allocentric view).17 The novel experiment of Pereira, et al. asked participants how
(and whether) they viewed the possibility of their own survival of biological death (an
egocentric view; the importance of this distinction will become clear in a later section). Their
questions were targeted to discover how the participants represented themselves after death
(hereafter, the dead-I). In the context of a semi-structured interview, participants were first
asked to imagine what it would be like for them to be dead. If the participants initial responses
did not relate to the dead-I (e.g., they might have replied simply, it is dark) the participants
were asked a follow-up question intended to extract any potential (and assumed implicit)
representation of the dead-I which asked questions of the sort, if you were to imagine yourself
in an afterlife, regardless of whether you believe in one or not, what would you be like there?18
Once the researcher was confident that the participant was representing the dead-I through
these follow-up questions, the participant was given a questionnaire to complete which detailed
various states that an individual might incur, and asked to weigh them on a four-point scale as
to their degree of body dependence (e.g., to what extent feeling hungry or being in love
required possessing a body).
A number of interesting results came from this study. First, from the semi-structured
interview, coders were asked to examine whether the participant described her future
afterliving self as the subject of experience and action, felt to be independent of the physical
body (the Subject-Self), or as an object, or embodied image of oneself (the Object-Self). In other
words, the researchers were interested in whether the participants continued to represent
themselves as physically embodied, perhaps continuing to exist within their now deceased
body, or did they view themselves as observers of their own bodily demise.19 Overwhelmingly,
This is not wholly true in the case of Nichols (2007): Nichols discussed Bering and colleagues (J.
Bering, 2002; J. Bering & Bjorklund, 2004; J. Bering, Blasi, & Bjorklund, 2005) experiments and
interpretations as well as Blooms interpretation of those at length. These experiments all focused on
how participants view the survival of death by another, rather than participants intuitive thoughts as to
their own survival. Nichols then discusses the role of the indexical I in cases of imagining ones self in
the distant future, presumably after one is dead. What Nichols fails to explain is how he moves from the
other of those experiments to the I in the imagination. This is especially important since Nichols agrees
that the previous experiments demonstrated that we intuitively believe that others survive death.
Nichols lacks an explanation for how we go from believing that we ourselves are immortal, which his
theory seeks to explain, to how we believe that others are immortal without inferential reasoning (see,
Hodge, 2011b for a full discussion of this explanatory gap).
18
Pereira, et al. (2012) as well as Bering (2002) queried participants about their explicit beliefs
concerning the afterlife. While there are important observations to be made regarding correlations
between the participants explicit beliefs and their implicit beliefs revealed through the experiments, such
observations are beyond our present purpose.
19
This distinction does not get at the heart of the matter as to whether participants imagined their
Subject-Self as embodied in any fashion. Pereira, et al. (2012) only probed the distinction between the
Subject-Self and the physical body and failed to probe whether the participants viewed themselves with
an imagined body. This is important because of the argument made by Tye (1983) which concluded that
imagining what it is like to have out-of-body experiences is not the same as imagining oneself (the
imagined you) as disembodied. Demonstrating the imaginability and conceivability of the former does
17

and more importantly significantly, participants represented themselves in accord with the
Subject-Self rather than the Object-Selfthat is, they represented themselves as now detached
from their physical body, yet still able to have thoughts, intentions and experiences in a
continuous cohesive fashion rather than representing themselves as ensnared in a now
insensate, inanimate corpse. Second, Pereira et al.s experiments produced results consistent
with the findings of Bek and Lock (2011) and Huang, et al. (2013) and inconsistent with Berings
simulation constraint hypothesis (2002); specifically that vision and audition continued for the
dead-I, and were scaled as being (more) body-independent experiences. Third, the study found
that mere conceived bodily independence was not enough to guarantee that a state was
imagined to be present for the dead-I. For instance, states such as decision-making did not
receive significant continuity responses. Anomalies such as this lead Pereira et al. to suggest
that explicit beliefs, or imaginative representations, adopted from cultural input concerning
what the afterlife is supposed to be like influence the participants responses. Nevertheless,
Pereira et al. maintain that the predisposition to accept afterlife beliefs via cultural transmission
relies on intuitive cognitive artifacts of the human mind that fails to see (or infer) that biological
death mandates the annihilation of oneself.
With these findings in hand, Pereira et al. suggest that the cognitive mechanisms which
predispose humans to accept cultural afterlife beliefs are self-awareness and theory of mind.
The interaction between these two psychological mechanisms prompt the intuitive acceptance
of cultural concepts such as the immortal soul20that is, self-awareness promotes the
conception of the self as continuous beyond biological death (the dead-I), and theory of mind
provides this dead-I with the needed mental states. How this dead-I is structurally represented
and what states from theory of mind are attributed to it can be heavily influenced by the culture
in which the subject lives, but the predisposition to accept that the self survives the biological
death of the body with certain mental states intact universally underlies cultural
representations of the of the dead-I and perhaps all other afterliving deceased.
ENSOULMENT THEORY
Ensoulment theory is hard to pin down precisely because to date it has been underspecified in
both cognitive mechanism and representational structure. For our purposes, we focus on how
ensoulment theory challenges intuitive folk dualism theory as described above. The starkest
contrast between ensoulment theory and intuitive folk dualism theory is that the former claims
not entail the latter. Moreover, whether the distinction between the Subject-Self and the Object-Self
addresses the concern raised by Hodge (2011b) as to whether the researchers are collapsing the
distinction between the I doing the imagining and the I that is imagined is unclear.
20
Although Pereira et al. do not discuss this explicitly, they do seem to implicitly assume
throughout their discussion that the immortal soul and the mind are intensionally identical.

that the mind and the soul are not intensionally identicalthat is, the soul (or something like it
cross-culturally) is a fundamentally different concept than is the mind. The soul is conceived as
having a different ontogenesis and functions than the mind has. Additionally, the soul is
conceived as the essence of the individual which survives death and preserves the decedents
thick identity. The most vocal proponents of this theory have been Richert and Harris (2006,
2008); however, their findings have been incorporated into research programs of others such as
Astuti and Harris (2008), Hodge (2011a) and M. Roazzi, Nyhof, and Johnson (2013).
PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM AND THE SOUL
One of the earliest challenges to the folk-dualist interpretations of afterlife beliefs was levied by
Richert and Harris (2006; 2008; see also Richert & Smith, 2012). Their experiments were
designed to demonstrate that, even in Western societies heavily influenced by the interaction of
Cartesian philosophy and Christianity, the folk do not intuitively represent the mind as
intensionally identical to the soul; thus, a straightforward dualist interpretation of folk afterlife
beliefs was unwarranted. Across their studies, both children and adult participants
demonstrated that they conceived of the soul as being different functionally and ontologically
than the mind. With regard to function, both children and adults reasoned that the mind
performed more cognitive functions (e.g., solving problems) whereas the soul performed more
spiritual functions (e.g., providing essential essence in the afterlife and providing a connection
with the divine).21 With regard to the ontological distinction between the mind and the soul,
participants were significantly more likely to express doubt about the existence of the soul over
the mind, to claim that the soul existed prior to conception whereas the mind did not, and most
importantly, to claim that the soul exists beyond death whereas the mind did not.22
Adding to these distinctions, M. M. Roazzi, Johnson, Nyhof, Koller, and Roazzi (2015)
contend that there is an additional disembodied/immaterial substance/energy which the folk
intuit to compose the afterliving deceasednamely, spirit: specifically vital energy. The authors
describe this vital energy in terms of vitalism (a life-force/energy animating all things) and
essentialism (a (individuating?) substance), and they argue that a domain general folk biological
intuition underlies this concept. Thus, a person is composed, in their view, of an
immaterial/disembodied mind, soul and spirit. It is not clear whether the authors intend
spirit/vital energy to be unique to each token, type or shared across living things (and even nonAnother interesting finding from these studies is that participants conceived of the mind as more
ontologically and functionally similar to the brain than to the soul.
22
One might be tempted to think that this implies that the folk do not think that the soul can have
mental states. This inference only works, however, if one makes the theoretically and conceptually rich
assumption that mentalizing can only occur in a mind. For a full critique of this assumption, see Hodge (in
revision)
21

living things). Regardless, the authors see the soul concept as provided by Richert and
colleagues above to be the component that conveys thick identity; thus, even if each spirit was
individuated, it would only convey a thin identity to the afterliving deceased. While there is
certainly some cross-cultural evidence that religions across time and space have committed to
similar tripartite compositions of humans, it is not at all clear that the spirit component is
univocal (enough) to be considered a singular concept as the authors suggest. Until that can be
demonstrated, advancing claims of vital energys intuitiveness is premature.
Nevertheless, these findings have strongly challenged the widely accepted intuitive folk-
dualist interpretation of afterlife beliefs. Not only do they demonstrate that the folk do not
conceive of the soul as intensionally identical to the mind, but they also demonstrated that the
mind is much more closely associated with its physical counterpart, the brain, than intuitive
folk-dualist interpretations would allow. Moreover, they add a spiritual and moral component
to the structural representation of the afterliving deceased which was not explored in previous
empirical designs.
Yet, even though these findings do present a serious challenge to intuitive folk-dualist
interpretations, Richert and colleagues leave us an ill-defined sketch of the both the structure of
the representation of the afterliving deceased and the cognitive mechanism which is
responsible. It leaves certain questions unanswered as to whether the soul is viewed as a
container for the individual, or whether it is the essential individual herself. Moreover, does
the soul have the capability (and if so, how?) to carry out mental operations such as thinking,
remembering and desiring? To what extent is this soul viewed as immaterial, or does it have
bodily properties intertwined in its representation? Part of the problem with narrowing this
down farther is Richert and colleagues invocation of an underspecified and underdetermined
cognitive mechanism, psychological essentialism. As mentioned previously, all of the theories
discussed in this article employ the overarching theory of psychological essentialism, but they
are more specific in terms of what the essence of whatever the object under consideration (in
this case, the afterliving deceased) would be. Psychological essentialism is a broad spectrum
theoretical mechanism that proposes merely that humans generalize from tokens to types by
considering one or more (usually shared) substances or properties to be essential to making the
token the type that it is. What it does not disclose is what those essential properties might be.
Addressing cognitive mechanisms of a more specific and determined scope would be of more
help in uncovering the representational structure of the afterliving deceased that humans hold.
This is not to say that providing empirical support for the claim that humans (at least in
the West) essentialize themselves and others as a soul is unimportant. On the contrary, it

provides a strong indication that intuitive folk-dualist theories which essentialize humans as
minds maybe on the wrong track. The afterliving deceased seem to be conceptualized as more
than disembodied minds.
CONTEXTUAL THEORIES
The core claim of contextual theories is that afterlife beliefs are significantly more likely to be
elicited (i.e., activated) in humans in certain contexts over others.23 For instance, an individual
would be more likely to state that another survives death in a religious context than a secular
one. In other words, when humans are primed within certain contexts, they are more likely to
assert the survivability of physical death than within other contexts. Researchers have thus far
proposed a few such contexts: secular versus religious (Astuti, 2011; Astuti & Harris, 2008;
Harris, 2011; Harris & Gimnez, 2005; Lane, Liqi, Evans, & Wellman, in press); mortality
salience (Goldenberg, 2005; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1997; Vail III, et al., 2010;
Vallacher, 1997); and social death versus biological death (Hodge, 2011a, 2012a, 2016).24
While some have suggested that contextual theories do away with the need to posit a
cognitive predispositional mechanism for afterlife beliefs, there is nothing in the contextual
theories themselves that oppose such a mechanism. Instead, it may be the case that certain
cultural contexts enhance ones natural predisposition (i.e., cognitive mechanism) to accept
afterlife beliefs.25 For instance, the experiments of Lane et al. (Lane, et al., in press), Harris and
Gimnez (2005) and Astuti and Harris (2008) were conducted (in part) on young children, and
following Evans (2001) and Sperber (1996), it seems reasonable to suggest that children would
not be able to avail themselves of public (cultural) representations if such representations did
not already possess an analogous intuitive belief system. The import of these debates centers on
whether humans have more than one representational structure of death which are opposed,
whether one representational structure is, or becomes, more dominant, and whether and how
The role of context in formation and expression of belief has long been investigated in psychology
(see, Gentner & Gentner, 1983).
24
It might be argued that folk-dualist theories are contextual theories as well in that they propose
that mental contexts prompt more continuity responses from participants than do physical (bodily)
contexts. Moreover, Bering (J. Bering, 2002; J. Bering, et al., 2005) has argued (in contradistinction to
Harris and Gimnez (2005)) that as humans approach adulthood they are more likely to endorse the
biological (more accurately, secular) conception of death which entails the annihilation of the individual
at the time of death. Since we have already discussed these theories at length, we wish only to make the
reader aware of this possibility.
25
The fact that young children across the various studies considered here have claimed that certain
states continue for the deceased has been taken as strong evidence by some that there is such a cognitive
predispotion (J. Bering, 2002, 2006; J. Bering, et al., 2005; Hodge, 2011a, 2016), Lane, et al. (in press) have
hinted, however, that there may be no cognitive predisposition present. Continuity responses for certain
states after death by the youngest children may simply be the result of not having a fully developed
concept of biological death, particularly an understanding of deaths finality. This claim also rests on a
conflation between the biological conception and the secular conception of death discussed below.
23

these opposing representational conceptual structures are reconciled in the human mind
(Hodge, 2012a, 2016; Lane, et al., in press). Another central question is the role that ones
culture plays in the formation and expression of afterlife beliefs.
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION AND CULTURAL LEARNING
Berings original hypothesis contended that as humans developed cognitively they would be
more likely to endorse a secular conception of death, which entailed the terminus of the
individual, rather than a religious conception of death, which entailed the continued existence of
a deceased individual in the afterlife. In contradistinction to this hypothesis, Harris and
Gimnez (2005) and Astuti and Harris (2008) conducted cross-cultural experiments which, in
part, demonstrated that as humans age the religious conception of death becomes more
prominent over the course of normal cognitive development.26 These experiments provided
children and adults one of two vignettes; one in which the participants were focused on the
physical reality of death, and the other which presented the death in a religious context. What
the researchers found was that the older the participant was, the more likely she was to provide
continuity responses and justification for those responses that were aligned with the religious
conception of death over the secular conception of death.27 Although they affirm that even the
youngest children demonstrate a propensity toward dualistic thinking in both contexts of death,
they suggest that exposure to cultural beliefs and rituals regarding the afterlife enhance and
supplement this cognitive disposition (Astuti, 2011; Harris, 2011) which in turn makes the
religious conception of death dominant among adults. Nevertheless, for both children and
adults, presenting the death of an individual in a secular context increased discontinuity
responses for both mental and physical process, albeit less so for adults than children.
Additionally, by incorporating elements not only from Harris and Gimnez (2005) but
also Richert and Harris (2006, 2008), Astuti and Harris (2008) investigated whether the Vezo of
Madagascar (from children to adults) reasoned differently about the continuity of the soul, mind
Because of the prevalence of religious ideas and rituals surrounding death, it may be that the
religious conception of death becomes chronically accessible (see, Lambert & Chasteen, 1999) due to
frequent activation through exposure to religious beliefs and rituals in most cultures. Astuti (2011)
argues something similar to this to explain how children come to adopt the religious conception in
Madagascar through religious rituals concerning ancestors. One significant problem for this transmission
hypothesis, however, is that a recent study (Misailidi & Kornilaki, 2015) found no significant correlation
between parents afterlife beliefs and their childrens continuity/discontinuity responses. This, in
combination with the similar findings across studies and cultures about how children reason about
deceased individuals, does seem to suggest that there is, at least, a cognitive predisposition toward
children representing the deceased as surviving death with certain abilities intact.
27
It is important to note here that, although Harris and Gimnez (2005) are careful to distinguish
between the biological and secular conception of death, Astuti and Harris (Astuti, 2011; Astuti & Harris,
2008; Harris, 2011) later collapse this distinction and treat the two concepts as synonymous, which we
argue below is not the case.
26

and body after death.28 Their results showed that indeed the participants thought that the soul
was more likely to continue than the mind, and that the mind was more likely to continue than
the physical body. Moreover, in support of their enculturation hypothesis, adults gave
significantly fewer discontinuity responses than children for both the soul and the mind. These
findings seem to indicate (in contrast to Astuti (2011) and Harris (2011)) that humans have
propensity toward tripartite thinking when it comes to human individuals which is further
supplemented by enculturation, but the authors do not follow this line of inquiry.
With these considerations, it is hard to pin down what Harris, Astuti and Gimnez hold
to be responsible for afterlife beliefs, and what the cognitive mechanism, if any, might be. While
they seem to tentatively accept folk dualism as the cognitive mechanism, Astuti and Harris
(2008) experiment seems to favor more an ensoulment hypothesis. Nevertheless, the thrust of
their research was centered more on the representational structure of afterlife beliefs which
they take to strongly influenced by cultural transmission in the contexts of religious testimony
(Harris & Gimnez, 2005) and ritual (Astuti, 2011). This hypothesis, in contrast to assertions of
strong cognitive predispositions which exert strong constraints on how the afterliving deceased
is conceived, allows for far greater religious diversity in afterlife representational structures
while still allowing for universal trends.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF DEATH AND CULTURAL
TRANSMISSION
Lane, et al. (in press) suggest that the spike across experiments, including their own, of
continuity responses among the youngest children (3 to 5 year-olds) might not be due to a
cognitive predisposition toward afterlife beliefs, but rather because the young do not have a
fully developed biological conception of death. Thus, the youngest children fail to understand
the finality of death with which a physical and mental processes cease. This is the reason, they
suggest, that the youngest children across studies have given responses that contrast with older
participants, specifically that the youngest children provide more continuity responses for
biological, particularly psychobiological (e.g., hungry), states. As the children grow older, they
begin to grasp the finality of biological death. Whether, and to what extent, the children will
continue to provide continuity responses for individuals after they die is largely dependent on
the culture in which the children are raised. For instance, Lane et al,, (in press) found that older
children (7 to 8 year-olds) in the United States, where religion is openly practiced were more
likely to continue the pattern of continuity responses for deceased individuals than were
Astuti and Harris (2008) use the word spirit in the text, and it is meant to by synonymous with
soul. Given our previous discussion regarding Roazzi et al. (2015), we have used the word soul to
avoid any confusion between spirit as soul versus spirit as vital energy.
28

children of the same age in China where religious expression has been, and still is, suppressed.
Thus, once the biological conception of death is developmentally attained, unless a cultural
device for believing that humans can survive death is provided, children will believe that all
activity, both biological and psychological, will cease at death.
There are two things for which this study does not account: (1) the distinction between
the biological conception of death and the secular conception of death as we will discuss below;
and (2) why their findings about which states received continuity responses were stable across
the wide variety of experiments.29 While (1) may confuse a contextual element that is central to
the ubiquity of afterlife beliefs, (2) suggests that secular and religious contextual manipulations
in narratives cannot alone account for the significant trend across experiments to continue to
attribute certain states (e.g., desirous, emotional, etc.) than others (e.g., biological, and certain
perceptual abilities).
TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY
Terror management theory (TMT) predates the cognitive theories that we have discussed thus
far (beginning with Becker, 1973), and in a strict sense, is not a cognitive theory, but a
psychological one inasmuch as TMT does not specifically concern itself with cognitive
mechanisms and processing tasks (but see, Jong, Halberstadt, & Bluemke, 2012; Pyszczynski,
Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999 in which both groups of authors advocate a dual-process model of
dealing with mortality salience and death anxiety, but are silent with regard to cognitive
mechanisms and processing of afterlife beliefs themselves). TMTs central claim is that because
humans are self-aware, we know, both consciously and unconsciously, that we will inevitably
die and face absolute annihilation.30 This knowledge creates such psychological trauma within
us that unless there were ways to ameliorate the existential fear arising from this terrifying
piece of knowledge we would succumb to debilitating fearful anxiety and fail to do what is
necessary to live. To assuage this debilitating terror, humans are predisposed to accept and
believe culturally transmitted worldviews which promise literal and symbolic immortality.
From whence those cultural worldviews first arise is not addressed by TMT theorists. All that is
There is another interesting finding that the authors do not address: why do childrens continuity
responses seem to follow a clear pattern of endorsing not only psychological states by also
psychobiological states while maintaining that biological functions simpliciter cease? Lane et al.s
findings stand in sharp contrast to Misailidi and Kornilaki (2015) who, as we saw above, found that
children raised by Greek Orthodox parents not only displayed the similar reasoning patterns as has been
found in many of the other studies discussed here, but also that the childrens responses had no
significant correlation to parental testimony.
30
Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (1991, p. 96 n. 4, emphasis original) clearly state,
Whenever we refer to the terror of death, we do not mean the immense fear of death per se, but rather of
death as an absolute annihilation. As will be addressed in full below, this rests on a conflation between
the biological conception of death and the secular conception of death.
29

important for TMTs purposes is that these cultural worldviews are palliative toward the
potentially debilitating death-anxiety of the knowledge of our inevitable annihilation at death.

Religious afterlife beliefs which promise literal immortality are the most effective of these
defenses because they are easily created and transmitted given humans natural cognitive
proclivities, provide for social solidarity, and, most importantly, providing necessary emotional
security to overcome the fear of death as absolute annihilation. To the extent that TMT
theorists suggest any universal representational structure to afterlife beliefs, they propose
mind-body dualism, such that an individual survives death as a disembodied mind, and her
physical body is abandoned given its close cognitive association with death (Goldenberg, 2005;
Goldenberg, Cox, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Sheldon, 2002; Solomon, et al., 1991, 1997; Vail III,
et al., 2010; Vallacher, 1997).
TMT is a contextual theory insomuch as it proposes that afterlife beliefs, whether literal
or symbolic, are presented, defended and reinforced whenever humans are reminded of their
own mortality (called mortality salience). TMT theorists have demonstrated across a wide
variety of experiments that when mortality is made salient through either explicit or implicit
means that humans seek to bolster their self-esteem through reinforcing their cultural in-group
alliances, particularly those through which the participants are offered immortality. Even
though TMT states that our potentially debilitating fear of death is with us all the time, it is
contexts in which that fear of inevitable annihilation begins to rise to the level of conscious
awareness that humans worldview defense mechanisms rise in a stalwart and bulwark fashion
to mitigate the overwhelming fear that would immobilize us. Without this psychological
defense mechanism in such contexts, we would be so petrified we would fail to do what is

necessary to preserve our life.
OFFLINE SOCIAL REASONING, THE INTENTIONAL STANCE AND SOCIAL EMBODIMENT
Hodge (2008, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2016) has offered an alternative theoretical interpretation
of the evidence gathered across the numerous experimental studies investigating folk afterlife
beliefs. According to Hodge, the continuity responses witnessed by experimenters were the
product of two mundane psychological processes offline social reasoning and the intentional
stance. Offline social reasoning is the process by which we think about absent conspecifics. It is
an imaginative process in which think about the absent individual as somewhere doing
something of social significance.31 These imaginings depend upon us taking the intentional
stance toward the absent individual, meaning that we attribute certain beliefs, desires, goals and
Offline social reasoning plays an important role in our ability to plan and facilitate future
interactions between ourselves and our conspecifics based on certain desires and goals.
31

some degree of rationality to her. Hodge has argued that when experimenters asked questions
that included social elements (e.g., loves her mother) and intentional states (e.g., is hungry) they
activated the respondents offline social reasoning, thus they intuitively imagined the decedent
as somewhere doing something in the same way that they would imagine a living absent
individual. This, according to Hodge, is why the afterlife is believed to be a socially active
place.32 Further, to imagine these individuals as socially active requires that body parts
necessary to engage in (whatever) social activity are represented by the imaginer. This
representation is what Hodge calls social embodiment. This social embodiment plays two
important roles: it allows the imagined individual to socially interact and it enables the imaginer
to recognize the individualthus, the imagined individual will maintain distinguishing
characteristics, both mental and physical.33
Hodge has argued that not only is this interpretation faithful to the empirical evidence,
but also to the wide array of cross-cultural anthropological evidence on how people represent
the deceased. Across the religious spectrum, afterliving deceased are represented as embodied
beings who continue to interact with the living and their fellow afterliving deceased in a variety
of waysfrom eating ritual meals, to appearing in recognized form, to embracing their
afterliving deceased fellows upon their arrival to the afterlife. The afterliving deceased are
represented as socially active embodied beings. They keep the body parts required to
perform such interactions. Thus, according to Hodge, if the activity imaged being performed by
the afterliving deceased has social significance, people are likely to imaginatively accommodate
it.
As mentioned, Hodges theory has been reverse-engineered from the existing evidence
as an alternative explanation for the experimental findings. To date, no direct experimental

evidence has been offered on Hodges theory. Indirect evidence, however, has been slowly
gathering in support. For instance, Bek and Lock (2011) and Huang, et al. (2013) found that
continuity responses for auditory and visual perception increased when a social element was
added (e.g., the afterliving deceased watched over his loved ones). Lane, et al. (in press) found
that removing social elements from all the questions significantly lowered the participants
continuity responses across the board. Questions regarding intentional states, however, were
still significantly more likely to garner continuity responses than nonintentional states. Finally,
although not specifically related to afterlife beliefs, De Cruz (2013) found that participants were
Hodge also argues that this is also why humans cross-culturally describe death as a change in
location, from this life to the afterlife.
33
This coincides with Whites (2015b)findings, discussed below, concerning peoples intuitions in
establishing the identity of a reincarnated individual as well. The top distinguishing characteristics were
autobiographical memories (mental) and unique physical marks such as birthmarks.
32

significantly more likely to represent supernatural agents as socially embodied in Hodges
sense, than as disembodied minds (Bloom, 2004) or fully anthropomorphized agents (Guthrie,
1993).
REINCARNATION
All of the research so far discussed has only dealt with the context of how an afterliving person
would be represented in an ethereal afterlife shortly after death by the living. While there is
strong cross-cultural evidence this sort of initial representational displacement of the deceased
is universal, it is certainly does not account for the entire wide spectrum of afterlife beliefs.
Another widespread afterlife representation is reincarnation where, after the deceased is
initially displaced to some ethereal realm, she returns to Earth in a new embodied state.
Conceivably, this new body the individual is to inhabit could be any physical object, from an
inanimate object, an artifact, a single-celled organism, a plant, a wild animal, to another human
being. Moreover, it is conceivable that the deceased, if reincarnated in human form, could be
(re)born on the opposite side of the globe, to a different race and to the opposite sex.
Reincarnation afterlife beliefs, therefore, could stand in sharp contrast to the studies we have
discussed so far inasmuch as researchers have assumed, to the extent such transformations are
conceivable after death, that there would be a great deal of representational continuitythat is,
the afterliving deceased would enjoy a great deal of stability in such representations of their
personal identityto the extent that any of these characteristics would be represented at all.
Thus, the context of reincarnation afterlife beliefs can reveal important clues for how the living
represent and establish the continued identity of the afterliving deceased.
White (2015a, 2015b; Forthcoming, 2009; C. White, Kelly, & Nichols, 2016) has
conducted a number of studies which reveal several cross-cultural intuitive biases with regard
to maintaining personal identity of the afterliving deceased in the context of reincarnation.
First, among those who claim to remember previous lives, White and colleagues (2016) found
that their believed episodic autobiographical memories from those previous lives were
instrumental in their conviction. They argued that the way by which one is convinced that her
personal identity is maintained across previous lives to this one is the same (mundane) process
by which one perceives personal identity continuity across the years of dramatic physical and
psychological changes in a single life span. Episodic autobiographical memories provide an
indexical referent by which one feels, believes and claims that a remembered event has
happened to one-in-the-same individual. But, when it comes to identifying others who have
reincarnated, episodic autobiographical memory is not the only important feature for
identifying another as the same again.

When it comes to identifying reincarnated others, White (2015a, 2015b) collected cross-
cultural experimental evidence that distinctive physical characteristics played an equally
important role in identifying the reincarnated person.34 Birthmarks, scars, or other distinctive
bodily cues that might be (intuitively) used in our everyday experience to recognize a person as
the same again, are just as important in identifying a reincarnated individual. This finding is
especially startling given that having a different body is central to reincarnation beliefs. From
this, White argues that both episodic memory and distinctive physical characteristics play a key
role in the identity and identification of individuals across the supernatural event of
reincarnation. These are, of course, the same mundane social cognitive processes that humans
use every day to recognize their conspecifics as the same again. Thus, the body is not so easily
dispensed with in this system of afterlife belief as folk-dualist theorists would have it. The body
still plays a substantial intuitive role in identity and identification of a reincarnated deceased
loved one, even though of all the contexts of afterlife beliefs, bodily characteristics should play
no such role in reincarnation beliefs.
THEMES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

INCOMPATIBILITY ACROSS COGNITIVE MECHANISMS AND REPRESENTATIONAL
STRUCTURES
We have provided the reader with the table below which we intend to help further clarify the
differences and similarities across authors and their proposed cognitive mechanisms and
representational structures. Additionally, those authors views regarding many of the themes
discussed here are presented.
[INSERT TABLE HERE]
As we are sure the reader has gleaned, proposed cognitive mechanisms claimed to be
responsible for intuitive afterlife beliefs are as plentiful as the researchers. Although certain
trends in representational structure (e.g., intuitive folk dualism) seem somewhat stable across
experimental findings,35 each group of researchers provide a different explanation for why
humans represent the afterliving deceased as they do. We recommend that some future
research seek to whittle down the number of cognitive mechanisms rather than continuing to
propose new ones. In many cases, this could be easily done in that several of the proposed
The evidence was gathered from experiments conducted with both Jains living in India, and
undergraduate students in Northern Ireland.
35
This may be due to the fact that none of the methodologies employed thus far have strayed much
from Berings original formulation. What alternative methodologies might expose is unknown. We take
this up below.
34

mechanisms are incompatible with one another. For instance, Berings simulation constraint is
incompatible with the cultural learning hypothesis and TMT. Additionally, certain proposed
cognitive mechanisms are incompatible with certain proposed representational structures. For
instance, several proposed mechanisms mandate the afterliving deceased be represented as
disembodied minds, and thus they would be incompatible with ensoulment and socially
embodied representations. Thus, if new experimental findings are produced that support
ensoulment or social embodiment for the afterliving deceased, cognitive mechanisms that
require intuitive folk dualist interpretations can be eliminated. Likewise, researchers can
continue to manipulate the experimental questions posed to participants to determine the
extent to which and whether intuitive folk dualism is the default representational structure for
the afterliving deceased.36
THE ROLE OF THE MIND, BODY AND SOUL
Although ample research has now demonstrated that humans differentiate between the
ontology and function of the mind, body and the soul, little work has yet been done to answer
some fundamental questions. For instance, are souls essences or containers? Do souls think?
How do we reconcile the vast archeological records of embodied representations of the
afterliving deceased with present experimental findings that suggest dualism? If the afterliving
deceased are represented as embodied, how do the folk reconcile that with the physical dead
body with which they have disposed? Another interesting experimental question is whether
negative mental states (e.g., anger and emotional anguish) would be considered as likely to
continue for the afterliving deceased as positive mental states (e.g., love and positive desires).
This question is particularly interesting inasmuch as the dead are treated with dread and fear in
many cultures. In what contexts would this arise? Would the prior relationship between the
now deceased and the living affect emotional response?37 Finally, are there any additional
essential components, such as vital energy, that the afterliving deceased are represented to
have? To date, none of these important questions have been addressed in full.
EGOCENTRIC VERSUS ALLOCENTRIC
Some of the cognitive mechanisms proposed rely on how I would imagine my own death first,
and then projected that representational structure onto another. This is problematic for two
reasons: (1) to date, only one experiment has tested how participants would imagine their own
Another issue that should be addressed is whether the novel mechanisms suggested (e.g., the
simulation constraint and the imaginative obstacle) serve any purpose other than producing afterlife
beliefs. If not, what environmental pressures (e.g., terror management) would give rise to such an
isolated mechanism to solve such a specific problem?
37
A related question here is how differently are ghosts and ancestors represented versus a now
deceased individual with whom one was close.
36

death (Pereira, et al., 2012);38 and (2) it needs to be explained how afterlife beliefs can be
considered intuitive if they require an inference from my own imagined state of affairs to
others. Most of the experimental findings across the gathered research demonstrates that we
intuitively believe that others survive death. Thus, the question is whether afterlife beliefs arise
from cognitive mechanisms to create a representation of ones deceased self from which one
then projects onto others (egocentric mechanisms), or whether one intuitively create
representations of deceased others directly (allocentric mechanism). Inasmuch as the research

agrees that humans intuitively believe that others survive death, egocentric mechanisms
proposed by Bering, Bloom, Nichols and TMT leave an explanatory gapthat is, how does one
get from the representation of oneself surviving death to representing deceased others without
an inferential step.39 Intuitive beliefs debar inferential reasoning. Bek and Lock, Hodge and
White all propose allocentric mechanisms, thus eliminating the need for any inferential step
from oneself to others and supporting the findings that we intuitively believe that others
survive death. It may be the case that that there are egocentric mechanisms at play when one
thinks about ones own death and allocentric mechanisms in play when one imagines deceased
others, but if the resulting belief representation requires an inferential step, it cannot be
considered intuitive.
THE ASYMMETRY PROBLEM
This problem, initially raised by the classical Roman Epicurean school rhetorically asks why
should we fear our future nonexistence after death when we have no fear regarding our prevital
nonexistence (Kaufman, 2004; Nagel, 1970)? In other words, why do we seem to be concerned
(or terrified!) with our (probable) nonexistence after death when we care so little about our
nonexistence before our conception? Despite new research which shows that young children
attribute some mental states to themselves prior to their conception (Emmons & Kelemen,
2014), and beliefs in living previous lives through reincarnation, prelife beliefs are not cross-
culturally ubiquitous but afterlife beliefs are. The asymmetry problem is particularly acute for
egocentric mechanics. Only two of the present afterlife theories address this issue: Nichols
egocentric imaginative obstacle (2007) and Hodges allocentric offline social reasoning (2011b,
2016). Nichols argues that his imaginative obstacle only facilitates, and does not necessitate,
afterlife beliefs since it would likewise mandate prelife beliefs. Nichols offers that the former
are more prolific than the latter because humans are largely forward looking creatures. Hodge,
however, argues that since afterlife beliefs arise from an allocentric mechanism the asymmetry
This experiment was a guided, reflective imaginative task undertaken by participants, therefore
the findings cannot be taken as intuitive.
39
Albeit that TMT has both an egocentric mechanism and belief, it cannot explain the mounting
evidence that humans intuitively believe that others survive death.
38

problem never arises for oneself. Another individual can only be entertained in offline social
reasoning after she is introduced, and offline social reasoning is geared toward negotiating
future social interactions with that individual, so we rarely concern ourselves with anothers
pre-introduction existence, let alone their prevital existence, and when we do, it is not an
intuitive exercise. The other proposed mechanisms here have no answer for this psychological
phenomenon.
BIOLOGICAL VERSUS SECULAR CONCEPTIONS OF DEATH
As noted in regard to several of the researchers above, it is commonly assumed that humans
come to understand death as the annihilation of the individual. Contrariwise, Hodge (2012a,
2016) has argued this assumption is based on a conflation between the concepts of biological
death and secular death. The biological conception of death allows humans to distinguish
between living bodies and dead ones and only pertains to what happens to the physical body at
the time of death, and makes no mention of the fate of the individual at that time (H. C. Barrett &
Behne, 2005; Cox, Garrett, & Graham, 2005; Speece & Sandor, 1984). The secular conception of
death, however, contains an additional scientific (materialist) assumption that the mental
activities are dependent on the brain, and thus when the brain ceases to function so does the
mind; therefore, this latter conception of death entails that the individual is annihilated at the
time of bodily death. The psychological and anthropological literature to date, however, does
not support the claim that the folk endorse the secular conception of death, but rather they
endorse the individual as capable of surviving biological death, albeit in a different location. It
has never been demonstrated that the secular conception of death is widely believed intuitively
or otherwise, and given the immense anthropological evidence of the proliferation of afterlife
beliefs among all human cultures, it is more likely that secular conception of death is never
developed in the vast majority of humans.
Teasing apart these conceptions and empirically testing the assumption of whether
humans conceive of death as the annihilation of the individual is crucial for many of the theories
discussed here. It is perhaps most dire for TMT. If conceiving of death as the annihilation of the
individual is not a cross-cultural phenomenon, then the very core processextreme terror of
our own deaththat TMT suggests cultural beliefs in an afterlife serve to mitigate is dismissed.
Yet, given that all the experiments across numerous cultures have shown that humansfrom
the youngest to the oldestintuitively believe that others survive death, it is highly improbable
that this assumption bears weight.40 In this same vein, TMT theorists need to explain how it is
As stated in note 29, there is considerable anthropological evidence that death is viewed, crossculturally, as a change in the deceased individuals location rather than his annihilation. This too,
however, needs to be empirically tested.
40

that the youngest children who do not yet know they are going to die (biological deaths
inevitability and universality) intuitively endorse afterlife beliefs.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CORPSE41
Another (implicit) assumption made by many researchers into afterlife beliefs is that the
afterliving deceased must be represented as disembodied because the living are most often
confronted with the reality of the dead physical body. How can the living attribute a body to the
decedent if he is presented the decedents inanimate, insensate corpse? This line of reasoning,
however, overlooks two important aspects of afterlife beliefs. First, cross-cultural expressions
and beliefs about what happens to the individual at death suggest that death is viewed as a
change in location of that individual. The decedent is stated (believed) to have departed, gone,
and passed-on to the realm of the afterlife. Second, denying the deceased a body overlooks the
power of human imagination to provide the deceased with a body in the same manner as has
been previously done by the living during his absence.42 Given these two considerations, it is
important to discern whether the problem of the corpse does arise for participants intuitively,
or only when either pointed out by a skeptic or during their more reflective moments, if at all.
Even if looked at from the egocentric perspective, it is still not necessary that the person
imagining himself leaving his dead body imagine himself disembodied. There is an imaginative
and conceptual difference between imagining oneself having left their body, as if he is floating
above his body witnessing events happening after his death, and imagining oneself as
disembodied (Sorabji, 2006; Tye, 1983). The former is imagined from ones own point-of-view,
whereas the latter is attempting to imagine oneself devoid of any bodily properties. While the
former is acknowledged as conceivable, the latter is not. For if one tries to imagine oneself as
wholly disembodied, what is, and could be, one imagining? This question, while rhetorical,
demonstrates the immense difficulty in trying to imagine oneself without any bodily form.
Again, imagining oneself as floating above ones body is not the same as imagining oneself as
disembodied. Instead, one could supply himself with an imagined body in the same way that he
does with others. This too needs to addressed with further research.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMAGINATION
What I am describing as the problem of the corpse should be understood as a qualitatively

different problematic than what should ritualistically be done with a dead body as in Boyer (2001).
42
It is not necessary that the individual be absent or deceased for us to imagine that individual as
embodied someplace else. In cases such as these, there is no conflict between the body we see before us
and the one that we are imagining, nor does it occur to us to think that the individual suddenly has two
bodies.
41

Although it is clear that many of the researchers recognize the important role that imagination
plays in afterlife representations, few have attempted to engage with the vast philosophical and
psychological literature on the subject.43 After all, none of the researchers are claiming that
their participants have psychic access to the great beyond. The afterlife, for the majority of
humans, is a place populated by the imagination.44 Certainly there is a great deal of imaginative
license across cultures as to the nature of the afterlife, but those imaginings are also developed
and constrained by the cognitive processes shared by all neurotypical humans. Since at least
the cognitive revolution in philosophy and psychology, researchers have devoted a great deal of
ink to understanding the nature of human imagination, and its processes and roles in cognition,
from the simplest, workaday, implicit metaphor to the grandest novel. It would behoove those
of us who wish to push research into the cognitive underpinnings of afterlife further to
reacquaint ourselves with the current relevant literature on human imagination. It is likely that
afterlife beliefs are even grander than cognitive researchers presently imagine.
INCORPORATE THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORD
One of the growing complaints about the cognitive science of religion is that the religious
representations researchers uncover in their labs bear little similarity to actual religious
representations found in cultures (Hodge, 2008, 2012b; Nikkel, 2015). Even if it is the case that
the representations discovered in the lab are qualitatively different than those found in cultures,
cognitive scientists of religion needs to do more to explain why this may be the case. Currently,
much of these discrepancies are dealt with by appealing to the theologically correct/incorrect
distinction (J. L. Barrett, 1999), but more time and effort should be put into explaining the
relationship between the laboratory and cultural representations. For instance, if humans
intuitively fail to believe that the afterliving deceased need to eat, why are they ritually feed in
so many cultures? And, if the afterliving deceased are disembodied minds, how do we account
for the vast anthropological evidence which represents the deceased as embodied to varying
degrees? Just as important, as we will discuss now, is to find out if the difference between
laboratory and cultural representations is a simply a product of the present experimental
paradigm investigating afterlife beliefs.
DEVELOP NEW EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGMS
While there is certainly nothing wrong with experimental replication, particularly
developmental and cross-cultural, the experimental paradigm developed by Bering (2002) has
now produced similar experimental findings across age groups, cultures and slight
43
44
abilities.
Nichols and Hodge being exceptions that we have discussed here.

Putting aside those who have had near-death experiences and those who do claim psychic

methodological variations. Most of the experiments discussed here supply the participants with
similar questions, break down the mental and physical state categories in the same fashion, and
interpret the findings according to a folk-dualist paradigm.45 While it is well established that
the afterliving deceased may be hungry, they dont eat. But, to what extent and how are the
afterliving deceased thought to interact with the living and their fellows in the afterlife? Can
humans intuitively represent the afterliving deceased holding hands, feeling the warm glow of
sunshine on their face, or embracing one another? Do we intuitively imagine our deceased
loved ones watching over us in all circumstances (such when we might be performing an
immoral act, showering, or celebrating a success)? Where is the intuitive/deliberative line in
afterlife representations? Do participants represent themselves in the afterlife differently than

they do others? Finally, what new paradigms can be created to begin to test and eliminate the
number of the proposed cognitive mechanisms and representational structures?
EVOLUTIONARY STATUS OF AFTERLIFE BELIEFS
One argument of which we have steered clear is the debate about whether afterlife beliefs are
adaptive (or exapted, J. M. Bering, 2006a; J. M. Bering, McLeod, & Shackelford, 2005), a by-
product (Boyer, 2003; Hodge, 2011a, 2016), maladaptive (Dawkins, 2006) or culturally evolved
(Astuti & Harris, 2008; Landau, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2007; Lane, et al., in press;
Vail III, et al., 2010).46 To our minds, until the field of possible cognitive mechanisms and
representational structures can be whittled down, such a debate is grossly premature. Having a
clearer picture of what cognitive mechanisms and representational structures are involved in
afterlife beliefs will reduce the cacophony in this debate. It is simply not possible to determine
the evolutionary role of afterlife beliefs until we have a better understanding of their genesis
and cross-cultural structure. Each of the proposed mechanisms and structures proposed here
might mandate different answers. For instance, Berings simulation constraint would
necessitate a different answer to this question than Harris and colleagues cultural testimony
hypothesis. Thus, we suggest that this debate be differed until the field of possible explanations
is substantially narrowed.
CONCLUSION
The past decade and a half has seen a flurry of research into how and why humans hold afterlife
beliefs. Even though there has been a great diversity in cognitive mechanisms and
representational structures proposed by researchers, certain trends have been definitively

Exceptions here being Richert and Pereria.
As mentioned previously, there is nothing inherent in the positions of Harris and colleagues or in
TMT that outright deny a role for a cognitive mechanism (no matter its evolutionary role). Lane and
colleagues position, however, does seem to rely heavily on a cultural evolutionary model.
45
46

established. First, from an early age, children have no problem intuitively representing an
individual continuing to exist after physical death. Second, regardless of age, humans are
significantly more likely to represent intuitively what are generally considered to be
psychological processes and states continuing after death than they are mundane biological
processes and states. Third, whether and which states are represented to continue appear to be
sensitive to context(s). Fourth, these findings have so far held across cultures with diverse
afterlife beliefs. Thus, these findings have all but obliterated the long-standing explanation that
afterlife beliefs are solely cultural creations which are acquired by cultural transmission. On the
contrary, humans appear to be cognitively predisposed to generate and accept afterlife beliefs.
As we have seen, however, even though there has been relative stability in the findings
of why and how the living intuitively represent the afterliving deceased, there are about as
many theories to explain these findings as there are researchers; each researcher endorsing a
different (often novel) cognitive mechanism or structural distinction to the representation of
the afterliving deceased. While it may be the case that none of the theories presented thus far
are correct, it would still behoove researchers to begin to whittle down the contenders. After
all, they cannot all be right. This can be achieved through new experimental paradigms which
juxtapose different cognitive mechanisms and representational structures. Analytic approaches

can be utilized as well to determine the extent to which a theory explains the findings (i.e., is the
theory coherent and consistent with the findings? Or is there an explanatory gap?).
Additionally, more cross-cultural experiments, whether novel or replication, could serve to

establish more robustly whether humans intuitive cognitive default is to believe that we
survive death, as the current trends suggest.
Since 2002, a great deal of interesting and exciting research has investigated the
cognitive aspects of afterlife beliefs. Now that the groundwork has been firmly established, we
look forward to even more interesting research that aids us in understanding how and why the
belief that we humans can survive our own death is the ubiquitous phenomenon that it is.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Table 1: Breakdown of Mechanisms and Structures by Authors

Author
Cognitive Mechanism(s)
Intuitive Folk Dualist Theories
Bering
Simulation Constraint
Bloom
Folk Physics and Folk Psychology
Nichols
Imaginative Obstacle
Animacy, Intuitive Psychology, & Social

Cognition
(Interaction of)
Self-awareness
Peieria et al.
Theory of Mind
Cultural Explicit Beliefs
Ensoulment Theories
Richert et al.
Psychological Essentialism
Psychological Essentialism
Roazzi et al.
Vitalism
Contextual Theories
Astuti, Harris
Cultural Testimony/Transmission49
& Gimenez
Bek & Lock
Lane et al.
TMT
Hodge
White
47
48
prior.
Development of Biological Concept of

Death & Cultural Transmission
Fear of Death
Cultural Transmission
Offline Social Reasoning & The Intentional
Stance
Mundane Social Cognition
(Used in Identification)
Representational
Structure(s)
Common-Sense Dualism
Disembodied Mind
Cartesian Substance Dualism
Disembodied Mind
Common-Sense Dualism
Disembodied Mind
Physiological & Body
Independent Properties
Body-Independent
(Disembodied) Minds
Subject-Self (Soul?)
Cultural Representation
Soul
Soul & Vital Energy

Mind & Soul & Cultural
Representation
(Common-Sense Dualism
Disembodied Mind?)
Disembodied Mind
Socially Embodied Cultural
Representation
Reincarnated Individual
Episodic Memory
Distinctive Physical Marks
Mind & Soul

Identical?
Egocentric (E) or
Allocentric (A)
Belief
Mechanism
Role for
Body
Allow for
Cultural
Variation
Address
Asymmetry
Problem
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
No47
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
N/A
N/A
Unclear
Unclear
N/A48
No50
Unclear
No
Yes
No
Yes
Unclear
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unclear
Both
Both
Yes
N/A
N/A
No
N/A
N/A
Unclear
Unclear
N/A
Nichols does briefly discuss reincarnation in relation to the asymmetry problem.

While the authors do not specifically address the asymmetry problem, they do discuss that participants believe the soul to be ontologically prior to the mind, but not how
None of the authors seem opposed to an underlying cognitive mechanism/predisposition for afterlife beliefs to be at work as well.
Astuti and Harris waiver on this issue. In their joint 2008 study, they acknowledge the role of the soul (spirit) as opposed to the mind, but then collapse the distinction in
their separate 2011 articles and discuss mind-body dualism
49
50

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PROPOSED COGNITIVE MECHANISMS AND REPRESENTATIONAL

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 2

mechanism that produces a folk-dualist representational structure of the intensional content

afterlife (hereafter: afterliving deceased), or a marginal role to bodily representations. This is

intensional role in representations of the afterliving deceased. In addition, we will introduce

Following these discussions, we discuss emergent themes which allow us to propose

suggested paradigms should make it possible to determine whether proposed mechanisms

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 3

INTUITIVE FOLK-DUALIST THEORIES

humans essentialize themselvesthat is, reduce themselves to identity preserving properties

underdetermined psychological process which suggests humans conceptually treat categories

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 4

THE SIMULATION CONSTRAINT HYPOTHESIS AND COMMON-SENSE DUALISM

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 5

simulation constraint which produced common-sense dualist representations of individuals

FOLK PHYSICS, FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, AND CARTESIAN SUBSTANCE DUALISM

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 6

following propositions: the mind is an immaterial substance; humans personal identity is

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 7

deceasedand supernatural agents, in generalas disembodied minds cannot be overstated.

THE IMAGINATIVE OBSTACLE AND FOLK DUALISM

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 8

CONFLICTING COGNITIVE SYSTEMS THEORY AND FOLK DUALISM

(psychobiological) and memory (epistemic) show any substantial differences in imaginability.

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 9

considered to have non-physiological properties (epistemic states and particular perceptual

THE INTERACTION OF SELF-AWARENESS, THEORY OF MIND, AND CULTURAL

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 10

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 11

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 12

PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM AND THE SOUL

contend that there is an additional disembodied/immaterial substance/energy which the folk

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 13

responsible. It leaves certain questions unanswered as to whether the soul is viewed as a

down farther is Richert and colleagues invocation of an underspecified and underdetermined

cognitive mechanism, psychological essentialism. As mentioned previously, all of the theories

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 14

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 15

CULTURAL TRANSMISSION AND CULTURAL LEARNING

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 16

DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF DEATH AND CULTURAL

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 17

TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 18

potentially debilitating death-anxiety of the knowledge of our inevitable annihilation at death.

defense mechanism in such contexts, we would be so petrified we would fail to do what is

OFFLINE SOCIAL REASONING, THE INTENTIONAL STANCE AND SOCIAL EMBODIMENT

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 19

as an alternative explanation for the experimental findings. To date, no direct experimental

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 20

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 21

cultural experimental evidence that distinctive physical characteristics played an equally

THEMES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 22

continue to manipulate the experimental questions posed to participants to determine the

THE ROLE OF THE MIND, BODY AND SOUL

EGOCENTRIC VERSUS ALLOCENTRIC

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 23

representations of deceased others directly (allocentric mechanism). Inasmuch as the research

THE ASYMMETRY PROBLEM

Running Head: Mechanisms and Structures of Afterlife Beliefs | 24

BIOLOGICAL VERSUS SECULAR CONCEPTIONS OF DEATH