Is Fear of Supernatural Punishment the Foundation of Religion? An Examination of Bering’s Theory of Dead Agents
top of page
Asian Institute of Research, Journal Publication, Journal Academics, Education Journal, Asian Institute
Asian Institute of Research, Journal Publication, Journal Academics, Education Journal, Asian Institute

Journal of Social and Political

Sciences

ISSN 2615-3718 (Online)

ISSN 2621-5675 (Print)

asia insitute of research, journal of social and political sciences, jsp, aior, journal publication, humanities journal, social journa
asia insitute of research, journal of social and political sciences, jsp, aior, journal publication, humanities journal, social journa
asia insitute of research, journal of social and political sciences, jsp, aior, journal publication, humanities journal, social journa
asia insitute of research, journal of social and political sciences, jsp, aior, journal publication, humanities journal, social journa
crossref
doi
open access

Published: 28 June 2023

Is Fear of Supernatural Punishment the Foundation of Religion? An Examination of Bering’s Theory of Dead Agents

Chong Ho Yu, Juanita Cole, William Whitney

Azusa Pacific University (USA), California State University (USA)

journal of social and political sciences
pdf download

Download Full-Text Pdf

doi

10.31014/aior.1991.06.02.422

Pages: 230-246

Keywords: Cognition, Evolution, Death, Fear, Religion, Moral Foundation

Abstract

Cognitive psychologist Bering attempted to explain away religion by suggesting that the evolutionary process pre-disposed the human mind to assume a spiritual realm in which dead people continue to keep their consciousness. In Bering’s study participants were asked to rate the characteristics of persons in given photos in two sittings. When the experimenter told the participants that one of the persons in the photo passed away in the second round, the average ratings for that person significantly went up. Bering concluded that higher ratings were a result of participants’ fear of being punished by the dead agent. By replicating this experiment, the authors found that initially the non-religious group gave higher ratings to the dead person than the religious group in the pretest, but the order switched in the posttest. Our study suggests that there might be alternate sources of our belief system, and also there might be alternate explanations for the same phenomenon revealed by the data.

References

  1. Alcorta, C. & Sosis, R. (2005). Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols: the evolution of religion as an adaptive complex. Human Nature, 16, 323-359.

  2. Alcorta, C. & Sosis, R. (2006). Why ritual works: A rejection of the by-product hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 613-614.

  3. Aten, J. D., & Leach, M.M. (Eds.). (2009). Spirituality and the therapeutic process: A comprehensive resource from intake to termination. American Psychological Association.

  4. Atran, S. (2002). In Gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford University Press.

  5. Avis, J., & Harris, P. L. (1991). Belief-desire reasoning among Baka children: Evidence for a universal conception of mind. Child Development, 62, 460–467.

  6. Baldwin, S. A., & Fellingham, G. W. (2013). Bayesian methods for the analysis of small sample multilevel data with a complex variance structure. Psychological Methods, 18(2), 151–164. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030642.supp (Supplemental).

  7. Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? AltaMira Press.

  8. Barrett, J. L. (2011a). Cognitive science, religion, and theology: From human minds to divine minds. Templeton Press.

  9. Barrett, J. L. (2011b). From theory of mind to divine minds. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(6), 244-245.

  10. Bering, J. M. & Bjorklund, D. F. (2004). The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity. Developmental Psychology, 40(2), 217-233. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.40.2.217.

  11. Bering, J. M, Blasi, C. H., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). The development of ‘afterlife’ beliefs in religiously and secularly schooled children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 587–607.

  12. Bering, J. M. (2002). Intuitive conceptions of dead agents’ minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2,263-308.

  13. Bering, J. M. (2002). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6, 3-24.

  14. Bering, J. M. (2003). Religious concepts are probably epiphenomena: A reply to Pyysiäinen, Boyer, and Barrett. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3, 244-254.

  15. Bering, J. M. (2006a). The cognitive psychology of belief in the supernatural: Belief in a deity or an afterlife could be an evolutionarily advantageous by-product of people's ability to reason about the minds of others. American Scientist, 94(2), 142-149.

  16. Bering, J. M. (2006b). The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 453-498.

  17. Bering, J. M. (2009). Is religion adaptive? It’s complicated. Scientific American. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/is-religion-adaptive-it-8217-s-complicated/

  18. Bering, J. M. (2012). The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life. W. W. Norton.

  19. Bering, J. M., & Johnson, D. (2005). “O Lord…you perceive my thoughts from afar”: Recursiveness and the evolution of supernatural agency. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5, 118-142.

  20. Bering, J. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (2004). The Causal role of consciousness: A conceptual addendum to human evolutionary psychology. Review of General Psychology, 8, 227-248.

  21. Bering, J. M., McLeod, K., & Shackelford, T. K (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.

  22. Bloom, P. (2004). Descartes’ baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human. Basic Books.

  23. Bowland, S., Edmond, T., & Fallot, R. D. (2012). Evaluation of a spiritually focused intervention with older trauma survivors. Social Work, 57(1), 73–82. doi:10.1093/sw/swr001

  24. Boyer, P. (1994). The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. University of California Press.

  25. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic Books.

  26. Bulbulia, J. (2004). Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention. Evolution and Cognition, 10, 19-38.

  27. Cotton, S., McGrady, M., & Rosenthal, S. L. (2011). Measurement of religiosity/spirituality in adolescent health outcomes research: Trends and recommendations. Journal of Religion and Health, 49, 414-444. doi: 10.1007/s10943-010-9324-0

  28. Dunbar, R. I. M. (1998). The social brain hypothesis. Evolutionary Anthropology, 6, 178-190.

  29. Dow, J. (2008). Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation? Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 11, 2. http://jass.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/2/2.html.

  30. Feuerbach, L. (1873/2004). The Essence of Religion, trans. Alexander Loos. Prometheus Books.

  31. Flavell, J. H., Flavell, E. R., & Green, F. L. (1983). Development of the appearance-reality distinction. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 95–120.

  32. Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. Harper & Brothers

  33. Greenway, T., & Barrett, J. (2021). Evolutionary developmental psychology of children's religious beliefs. Oxford Handbook

  34. Gopnik, A., & Astington, J. W. (1988). Children’s understanding of representational change, and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction. Child Development, 59, 26–37.

  35. Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Religious conversion and perceived childhood attachment: A meta-analysis. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 223-250. doi:10.1207/s15327582ijpr1404_1.

  36. Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press.

  37. Heesen, R., Bright, L.K., & Zucker, A. (2016). Vindicating methodological triangulation. Synthese, 196, 3067-3081. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1294-7

  38. Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (2010). G*Power [Computer Software].

  39. Hernandez, B. C. (2011). The religiosity and spirituality scale for youths: Initial development and validation. Unpublished Dissertation. Louisiana State University.

  40. Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2008). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, S(1), 3–17. doi:10.1037/1941-1022.S.1.3.

  41. Hoijtink, H., Mulder, J., van Lissa, C., & Gu, X. (2019.). A tutorial on testing hypotheses using the Bayes Factor. Psychological Methods, 24, 539–556. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000201.

  42. JASP team. (2023). JASP Version 0.17 [Computer Software].

  43. Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of probability. Clarendon Press.

  44. Johnson, D., & Bering, J. (2006). Hand of god, mind of man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary Psychology, 4, 219–233.

  45. Kelemen, K., Rosset, E. (2009). The human function compunction: Teleological explanation in adults. Cognition, 111, 138-143.

  46. Lai, S. S. (2010). Zhōngguó zōngjiào shìsú huà de wénhuà jīchǔ [The cultural foundation of Chinese religious secularization]. Xuéshù tàntǎo [Academic Discussion], 4, 95.

  47. Lavazza, A. (2016). Free will and neuroscience: From explaining freedom away to new ways of operationalizing and measuring it. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, Article 262. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00262

  48. Lindley, D.V. (1956). On a measure of the information provided by an experiment. Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 27, 986–1005.

  49. Littell, R. C., Milliken, G. A., Stroup, W. W., Wolfinger, R. D., & Schabenberger, O. (2006). SAS for mixed models. SAS Institute.

  50. Luhrman, T. M. (2012). When God talks back: Understanding the American Evangelical relationship with God. Vintage.

  51. Luhrman, T. M. (2016, February 17-19). Kindling with God. Symposium at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA.

  52. McCauley, R. N. & Lawson, E. T. (2002). Bringing ritual to mind: Psychological foundations of cultural forms. Cambridge University Press.

  53. Milacci, F. (2006). Moving towards faith: An inquiry into spirituality in adult education. Christian Higher Education, 5, 211–233. doi:10.1080/15363750500408157.

  54. Mulvey, S. (2012, August). Jesse Bering interview. Ask an atheist. http://askanatheist.tv/2012/08/18/jessie-bering-interview/

  55. Piazza, J., Bering, J. M., & Ingram, G. (2013). “Princess Alice is watching you”: Children’s belief in an invisible person inhibits cheating. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(3), 311-320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.02.003

  56. Powell, R., & Clarke, S. (2012). Religion as an evolutionary byproduct: A critique of the standard model. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 63, 457–486.

  57. Richerson, P. & Newson L. (2008). Is Religion adaptive? Yes, no, neutral, but mostly, we Don’t Know. In Bulbulia, R. Sosis, E. Harris, C. Genet, R. Genet, K. & Wyman, J. (Eds.) The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques (pp. 73-77). Collins Foundation Press.

  58. Richert, R. A., & Barrett, J. L. (2005). Do you see what I see? Young children’s assumptions about God’s perceptual abilities. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 283–295.

  59. Sanderson, S. K. (2008). Adaptation, evolution, and religion. Religion, 38, 141-156.

  60. SAS Institute. (2022). JMP Version 17[Computer Software].

  61. Schönbrodt, F. D., & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2018). Bayes factor design analysis: Planning for compelling evidence. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 25(1), 128-142. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1230-y.

  62. Shapiro, J. (1988). Relationships between dimension of depression experience and evaluation beliefs about people in general. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14, 388-400.

  63. Sosis, R. (2009). The Adaptationist-Byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 9, 315-322. DOI: 10.1163/156770909X12518536414411.

  64. Van de Schoot, R., Broere, J. J., Perryck, K. H., Zondervan-Zwijnenburg, M., & van Loey, N. E. (2015). Analyzing small data sets using Bayesian estimation: the case of posttraumatic stress symptoms following mechanical ventilation in burn survivors. European journal of psychotraumatology, 6, 25216. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v6.25216.

  65. Van Slyke, J. A. (2013). The cognitive science of religion. Ashgate Publishing Co.

  66. Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. Alta Mira Press.

  67. Whiten A. (1998). Evolutionary and developmental origins of the mindreading system. In Langer J. & Killen M., Piaget, evolution, and development (pp. 73–99). Erlbaum.

  68. Wigger, J. (2011). See-through knowing: Learning from Children and their invisible friends. Journal of Childhood and Religion, 2(3). http://childhoodandreligion.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Wigger-May-2011.pdf

  69. Wigger, J., Paxson, K., & Ryan, L. (2012). What do invisible friends know? Imaginary companions, God, and theory of mind. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 23(1), 2-14. DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2013.739059.

  70. Yu, C. H. (2015). Are positive trait attributions for the deceased caused by fear of supernatural punishments?: A triangulated study by content analysis and text mining. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 34, 3-18.

bottom of page