The Attraction of Religion

A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

D. Jason Slone, James A. Van Slyke

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781350005280
• eBook ISBN: 9781472529688
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Psychology of Religion

Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion? In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion.

1

Why Don’t Abstinence Education Programs Work? (And Other Puzzles): Exploring Causal Variables in Sexual Selectionist Theories of Religion

James A. Van Slyke

Religion presents unique challenges as a causal variable for a variety of different forms of social behavior, especially as studied in the psychology and sociology of religion. One of the primary challenges is philosophical. What is the direction of causality? Is religiosity an evolved trait that influences and constrains social behavior or is religious behavior a cultural invention and by-product of other evolutionary adaptations? A second, empirical question is how does religion influence behavior? That is, what mechanism in religion causes changes in behaviors and thoughts in the minds of religious people—including sexual behavior?

Historically, many religions contain different laws and norms that purportedly influence sexual choices and relationships. Yet, the empirical data leave many questions unanswered. Do faith-based abstinence programs change adolescent behaviors regarding sexual activity? Do persons make decisions regarding sexual choice and preference independent of any influence from a particular religion? How could such influences be measured? Sexual selection theory and related hypotheses from evolutionary psychology may offer new explanations for the relationship—perhaps causal—between religion and sexuality.

Furthermore, the cognitive science of religion, a sub-field of the evolutionary psychology of religion, explores the relationship between different features of human cognition and the formation and function of religion. Much of this research has centered on the cognitive content of religious beliefs such as supernatural agents or the different cognitive mechanisms involved in ritual participation. Sexual selection theory offers the cognitive science of religion a new avenue to explore evolved cognitive tendencies involving mating preferences and strategies and their relationship to religious cognition. Religion escalates particular functions of mating cognition, in that certain features of religion overlap with different functional aspects or goals that support and facilitate long-term mating strategies.

CSR and the Swiss army knife mind

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has eschewed the traditional connection between religious beliefs and behaviors by arguing that evolved cognitive mechanisms play an important role in the formation of religious beliefs, especially at the macro level, not (just) the other way around. In the past 20 years, much of the CSR has been preoccupied with the mental processes involved in the formation of the content of religious beliefs such as gods, ghosts, deceased ancestors, and other types of supernatural agents. The counterintuitive agents hypothesis argues that the types of religious beliefs that get culturally selected for conform to an evolved intuitive ontology that represents and classifies different objects according to specific categories such as person, animal, or artifact (Boyer, 2001). Religious concepts are counterintuitive in that they violate various intuitive expectations of concepts in these categories in particular ways, while maintaining other parts of the basic categorical assumptions. Thus, a ghost is a cognitive representation based on the category template for “person,” but violates the category’s expectations about “person” by being able to move through walls.

According to many cognitive scientists of religion, the prevalence of such supernatural agents in religions is thought to be a by-product of the human tendency towards agency-based explanations of the world and its working (Barrett, 2004; Boyer, 2001; Guthrie, 1993). Children intuitively prefer explanations of happenings based on agents at work in the world, and traces of this cognitive tendency continue through to adulthood (Barrett & Keil, 1996; Kelemen, 2004). Religious rituals have also been explored in terms of their exploitation of action representation systems that process ritual behaviors in terms of agents, the ritual action performed, and the objects used during the ritual (Lawson & McCauley, 1990). Others have explored religious rituals based on different memory systems that favor either a “doctrinal mode” of encoding experiences in memory, based on repetition during rituals, or an “imagistic mode” of encoding experiences in memory, based on high emotional arousal during rituals such as in stressful initiation rites (Whitehouse, 2004).

Sexual selection theory offers a new set of hypotheses to help analyze religion by investigating the role of evolved mating strategies. Sexual selection theory provides an extension of the CSR’s roots in evolutionary psychology, in that mating preference is another type of cognitive adaptation that works alongside cognitive biases regarding agency, intuitive ontology, and action representation. Presumably, sexual selection has played such a ubiquitous and important role in human evolution that it must have some relationship to religious cognition as well. Tooby and Cosmides originally suggested the Swiss army knife view of human cognition, which argued that much of human behavior and thought is highly unconscious and processed according to different cognitive tools that were advantageous for our evolutionary ancestors (Cosmides & Tooby, 1995). Thus, part of human social cognition consists of adaptations for mate attraction and selection, which suggests possible interactions between mating cognition and the functions of religion.

McCauley’s distinction between the cognitive processing of information that is natural or unnatural provides a helpful way of conceptualizing the role of human evolution in human cognitive processing (McCauley, 2011). McCauley argues that some types of information are easier to process and cause the deployment of several different types of intuitions about particular domains. For example, social situations trigger numerous intuitions about what other people may be thinking or intending based on our capacity for a theory of mind and other cognitive programs associated with social cognition. In contrast, as McCauley notes, much of advanced scientific explanations are based on processing information in ways very alien to natural features of human cognition. That is, science often produces results that are highly counterintuitive to our default cognitive expectations about the world.

A helpful example is the difference between teaching about mate preferences in evolutionary psychology and z scores in introductory statistics. Ask a classroom of men and women to form groups and discuss what they find attractive in a potential mate and they will quickly generate lists of different features often with reoccurring themes and values. In contrast, the very same first-year students exposed to a basic statistical concept such as a z score are often dumbfounded and have difficulty understanding the concept except through repeated instruction and rote memorization (Garfield & Ahlgren, 1988). Thus, evolution has formed human cognition to recognize, process, and understand certain types of information quicker, easier, and more efficiently than other types of information and supplies more intuitions and hunches about possible descriptions in particular domains in contrast to others, especially domains that were relevant to evolution in terms of adaptive fitness.

Mating behavior is one of those domains in which people have a relatively easy time processing and producing intuitions, perceptions, and observations (e.g. about different preferences in potential mates). This does not suggest that these preferences are determinative of mating behaviors or choices, nor does it suggest that these perceptions are accurate. In fact, most persons who have fallen in love in their lifetime recognize the amount of misperception and irrationality that often persists in various forms of human mating (Fisher, 1994). Thus, human cognition related to mating is relatively easy, quick, and often unconscious, and thus can be said to be “natural.” The evolution of human cognition involved different cognitive programs that assess mate value and generate mating strategies based on a variety of features that lead to successful mate attraction and copulation in our collective evolutionary past.

Religion as a variable

Identifying how religion influences behavior, let alone defining religion, spirituality, or other contested terms, continues to present several challenges in the psychology of religion and related fields. One possibility is that religious cognition has a direct influence on behavior. That is, as people learn particular religious beliefs and values, their behavior becomes more consistent with their internalized beliefs. This certainly is the case in some contexts, but other research has demonstrated a disconnection between assumed religious beliefs and corresponding actions.

Probably the most famous study that questioned this relationship was the Princeton study where a young priest was crossing the campus to deliver a sermon on the Good Samaritan (Darley & Batson, 1973). The parable of the Good Samaritan is a biblical story about a man who helps another man injured and stranded on the roadside whom everyone else ignores and does not stop to help (Lk. 10.29–37). The researchers placed a struggling man on the sidewalk in the path of the priest as he was walking to deliver this sermon, which seemed to present a situation that simulated the moral dilemma of the story.

Going to deliver a story on the Good Samaritan would presumably activate the religious cognition associated with helping behaviors towards others, but the primary causal variable that influenced the helping behavior was how rushed the priest was to get to the location of his sermon. Of all the participants in the study only 40 percent actually helped the stranded man, and their behavior varied according to time constraints, with 63 percent helping when not hurried but only 10 percent helping in the high-hurried condition. Thus, the study seems to demonstrate that situational and contextual variables have a stronger influence on helping behavior in contrast to internalized religious beliefs. Although summing up the priest’s moral character based on one individual instance is problematic, it still demonstrates that there is not a simple causal relationship from religious belief to behavior.

This creates a problem for assessing the relative role of religion on behavior in general. Some have suggested that religious beliefs are primarily a by-product of cognitive adaptations, thus religious beliefs arise in human culture as a secondary effect of cognitive adaptations designed for other evolutionary benefits, while others argue that religion serves an adaptive function in terms of costly signaling and social cohesion—or perhaps it is a bit of both (Atran & Henrich, 2010; Boyer, 2005; Sosis, 2009). My suggestion here is that mating strategies can produce certain biases that promote attachment to particular religious beliefs, values, and social arrangements based on their relationship to the strategy currently being pursued. Religious beliefs have an influence on human sexuality by activating mating cognition and the corresponding behaviors associated with a particular strategy. This doesn’t necessitate the reduction of religious cognition to mating cognition, but demonstrates the complex relationship between multiple causal variables involved in human cognition and religion (Van Slyke, 2011).

Mating strategies

One way to distinguish mating strategies is to classify them as either short-term or long-term. According to the General Social Survey (GSS), most Americans are split in terms of these two types of strategies. In 2006, of the Americans surveyed in their 40s and 50s, a third had only one or two sexual partners since age 18, while another third had 10 or more; 37 percent were in a first marriage and 46 percent had been through a divorce; 21 percent had no children while 31 percent had three or more (Smith et al., 2013; Weeden et al., 2008). This is not a hard-and-fast distinction in that many tactics, or individual mating behaviors, may fall in between these two categories and persons may adopt different strategies based on a variety of factors (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Basic sexual anatomical differences suggest that males should engage more frequently in short-term strategies in comparison to females simply based on parental investment (Trivers, 1972). However, recent theories also suggest that females may engage in dual mating strategies and the simple dichotomy between short-term and long-term mating strategies, as applied to males vs. females, may be misguided (Pillsworth & Haselton, 2006b). Engaging in short-term vs. long-term strategies provides different types of benefits as well as drawbacks. The primary benefit for males in pursuing a short-term strategy is an increase in the number of potential successful copulations; males have a relatively low investment in the copulation act, thus, this allows for a higher frequency of potential mating with other females (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Additionally, short-term strategies primarily favor indicators of good genes in the opposite sex to maximize the individual fitness of potential offspring. Evolved indicators of good genes based in short-term strategies are based primarily on physical cues in potential partners. Numerous studies indicate a variety of features males typically prefer in females such as full lips, clear skin, long hair, muscle tone, facial symmetry, body symmetry, low waist-to-hip ratio, and feminine voice (Buss, 2006). Many of these cues perform a double duty as both an indicator of good genes as well as indicators of youth, which increases the likelihood that potential female partners are currently within their reproductive window.

For females, short-term strategies may often take the form of extra-pair copulations (EPC), where the female is currently engaged in a long-term strategy with one partner, but may seek other short-term partners based on a variety of factors. Female mating preferences change throughout their menstrual cycle based on their current level of fertility (Pillsworth & Haselton, 2006a). During the high-fertility phase of the menstrual cycle (late follicular and ovulatory) females show a preference for several different types of attributes in males including more masculine faces, more masculine voices, the scent associated with men with more symmetrical faces, and displays of dominance and competition (Gangestad et al., 2004; Gangestad & Thornhill, 1998; Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2000; Puts, 2005).

These traits would primarily be indicators of genetic fitness, thus females are willing to risk long-term strategies based on an unconscious assessment of potential gains in the genetic race. Several mate-guarding tactics have evolved in males to counter these strategies, such as being more attentive, spoiling, and monopolizing, as well as displaying increased levels of jealously and being more possessive (Gangestad et al., 2002; Haselton & Gangestad, 2006). One of the interesting empirical questions is whether males can actually detect ovulation, since it has been commonly assumed that estrus is concealed in the human species (Burt, 1992). Recent evidence suggests that males may be able to detect when females are in the high-fertility phase of their cycles. Males rated a woman’s body scent as most attractive during the timeframe closest to ovulation, increased their mate retention tactics closer to the time of ovulation for their current partners, and male levels of testosterone increase when exposed to the scent of an ovulating female (Gangestad et al., 2002; Haselton & Gangestad, 2006; Kuukasjarvi et al., 2004; Miller & Maner, 2010).

Long-term strategies typically focus on rearing children and are usually favored by females because of the considerable parental investment necessary for females to even carry a child to term (Trivers, 1972). For females, the primary objectives are securing resources for themselves and their offspring as well as seeking a mate interested in partnering regarding parental duties. Females tend to favor potential long-term partners who: (1) have the ability and willingness to offer resources to her and her children; (2) have the ability to physically protect her and her children; (3) show promise as a good parent; and (4) show compatibility regarding goals and values and investment in a long-term strategy (Buss, 2003). A cross-cultural study of over 10,000 participants showed that females desired male partners who were “good financial prospects” and sought qualities associated with resource acquisition such as ambition, industriousness, and social status (Buss, 1989).

Males enter into long-term strategies for different reasons. Long-term pair-bonding increases within-pair fertility as well as paternity certainty by allowing males better opportunities to monitor and possibility restrict the actions of their partners. Females have direct access to and can easily assess the genetic relatedness of their progeny, while males do not have any straightforward means for knowing whether the female’s progeny is actually his own. This increases male sensitivity to paternity cues and may also increase mate-guarding and jealousy. Male jealousy is much stronger in the context of potential extra-pair copulations in comparison to females, who show a much stronger reaction to potential emotional commitments to other females (Buss, et al., 1992). Males tend to be better at inferring possible EPCs in their partners in contrast to females and were more likely to make false positive errors about their partners (Andrews et al., 2008).

Significant research has outlined the parameters of long- vs. short-term mating strategies. The relationship between these strategies and religion is less clear and, in fact, the relationship between religion and sexual behavior in general is highly complicated. The next section will discuss the relationship between religion and sexual behaviors by exploring empirical data that often demonstrates mixed results regarding the role of religion in constraining or modifying sexual behavior. Several studies demonstrate the difficulties in assigning a causal role for religion in sexual behavior, especially in regard to abstinence-based programs. However, other avenues of research show that religion does seem to have some kind of effect on certain kinds of sexual behavior. The thesis of this chapter is that religion acts as a causal variable when it activates mating cognition associated with a particular mating strategy.

Religion and mating behavior

One of the important questions regarding the role of religion and mating cognition is whether religion is primarily related to short-term or long-term strategies. Weeden, Cohen, and Kenrick make a strong case that one of the primary functions of religion in the United States is to support persons pursing long-term mating strategies (Weeden et al., 2008). Males pursuing long-term strategies forgo the short-term strategy of multiple partners in favor of higher fertility based on increased copulations with a single female as well as increased paternity certainty and fidelity based on a single monogamous relationship. Females forgo “better genes” from possible short-term partners in favor of a long-term strategy with potential gains in commitment of economic resources and parental investment as well as pledges of sexual fidelity.

In a survey of over 21,000 United States residents (average age 44.6) from the GSS survey, endorsement of sexual behaviors consistent with a long-term strategy were the strongest correlates with church attendance (Weeden et al., 2008...

Table of contents

• Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents 
• List of Contributors
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Connecting Religion, Sex, and Evolution Jason Slone and James A. Van Slyke
• 1 Why Don’t Abstinence Education Programs Work? (And Other Puzzles): Exploring Causal Variables in Sexual Selectionist Theories of Religion James A. Van Slyke
• 2 Religion and Parental Cooperation: An Empirical Test of Slone’s Sexual Signaling Model Joseph Bulbulia, John Shaver, Lara Greaves, Richard Sosis and Chris G. Sibley
• 3 How Is’t With Thy Religion, Pray? Selection of Religiosity Among Individuals and Groups Michael Blume
• 4 Losing My Religion: An Analysis of the Decline in Religious Attendance from Childhood to Adulthood Jason Weeden
• 5 Costly Signaling Theory, Sexual Selection, and the Influence of Ancestors on Religious Behavior Craig T. Palmer and Ryan O. Begley
• 6 When Religion Makes It Worse: Religiously Motivated Violence as a Sexual Selection Weapon Yael Sela, Todd K. Shackelford, and James R. Liddle
• 7 The Dividends of Discounting Pain: Self-Inflicted Pain as a Reputational Commodity Matthew Martinez and Pierre Lienard
• 8 False Advertising: The Attractiveness of Religion as a Moral Brand Panagiotis Mitkidis and Gabriel Levy
• 9 Fathering, Rituals, and Mating: Exploring Paternal Stability and Sexual Strategies in Early Religious Practices David Bell
• 10 The Evolutionary Psychology of Theology Andrew Mahoney
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright