Evolution and

the psychology
of religion
Theory of
evolution by
natural selection
• Process by which organisms
change over time
• Changes are biological and
behavioural
• Reproduction drives shifts:
organisms which are better
adapted to survive are more
likely to reproduce
 • The application of principles of evolution to religious
Evolution and belief and behaviour
• This approach to the psychology of religion is distinct
the psychology from psychoanalytical approaches
of religion • Concerned largely with the function of aspects of
religious psychology and behaviour.
 Evolution and religion
• The approach of scholars has NOT been to deal with religion in general, or to
find a single theory that explains all aspects of religion
• Rather, scholars split religious experience into distinct aspects
• These include: belief in supernatural agents (belief in god); social cooperation
(forming communities); morality; and belief in metaphysical causality (ritual and
magic)
• The field takes up Richard Dawkins’s notion of memes, that units of culture
(memes) are transmitted in the same way as biological and physiological traits
• Thus, aspects of religion self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective
pressures and competition.
 Selection
• Religious ideas are inherited from person to person
and across generations
• Religion is subject to competition: the ideas and
behaviours that are most beneficial to the thriving
of societies will survive
• The ideas and behaviours that foster thriving vary
across societies and historical contexts
• For example, one religious tradition may celebrate
human sacrifice, while another holds to the
sanctity of human life. One may advocate human
equality, while another asserts social hierarchy.
• Religious ideas and behaviours are more likely to
survive if they have a function
• For example, Hindus hold that cows are sacred and
should not be killed. This moral ideal has beneficial
long-term effects, as cows will give milk over their
lifetime
 • Adaptations: aspects of human physiology and
behaviour have developed because they provide
Key debate: some beneficial function
• Argument for adaptation: all societies, everywhere in
is religion an the world, have had some sort of religion
• By-products: these serve no function, but develop as
adaptation or a sort of residue of adaptations
• Argument for by-product: we can dispense of religion
a by-product? and still act morally.
•Another way of putting the
argument: can we dispose of
religion, or will something like
religion always take its place?
•That is, there might be secular
rituals, devotional attitudes,
experiences of transcendence,
etc.
•Or, it might be that some
aspects of religion are by-
products and other aspects
adaptations
 • Virus: there may be features of human
Other ideas in behaviour that are not beneficial to
humans but which are parasitical
the • Spandrel: the idea that some things can
evolutionary emerge as by-products but then can be
exploited by populations to serve some
psychology of function
religion
Methodology and psychology
• When your lecturers talk about methodology, we refer to the ways
that scholars go about their work
• Methodology includes the collection and analysis of data/evidence
• Freud/Jung methodology: talking to patients
• Scholars collect data, for example for dream databases or for the NZ
Attitudes and Values Survey
 Experimental methodology in evolutionary
psychology: scholars make their data
• Take, for example, an experiment that tests the “intuitive belief
hypothesis,” a hypothesis that there is a correlation between intuition and
belief in god(s), and an absence of analytical thinking.
• Believers and non-believers were tested for analytical vs. intuitive thinking
• Presented with 2 bowls, one small, one big, full of beads of various
colours. The probability of selecting the bead of choice from the small
bowl was always 10%, and from the large bowl 6-9%
• The analytical decision is to always chose from the small bowl, but
participants often switched between bowls.
• The study found no correlation between analytical thinking, intuitive
thinking, and belief in god(s).
• Farias, M., van Mulukom, V., Kahane, G. et al. Supernatural Belief Is Not
Modulated by Intuitive Thinking Style or Cognitive Inhibition. Sci Rep 7,
15100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14090-9