Causes of cultural disparity: Switches, tuners, and the cognitive science of religion

References

• Alesina, A., Devleeschauwer, A., Easterly, W., Kurlat, S., & Wacziarg, R. (2003). Fractionalisation. Journal of Economic Growth, 8, 155–194.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Atran, S. (1989). Basic conceptual domains. Mind & Language, 4(1–2), 7–16.
   Google Scholar
• Atran, S. (2002). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Atran, S., & Henrich, J. (2010). The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory, 5(1), 18–30.
   Google Scholar
• Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713–770.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Barrett, J. L. (1999). Theological correctness: Cognitive constraint and the study of religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 11, 325–339.
   Google Scholar
• Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 29–34.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God?. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
   Google Scholar
• Barrett, J. L., & Nyhof, M. A. (2001). Spreading non-natural concepts: The role of intuitive conceptual structures in memory and transmission of cultural materials. Journal of Cognition & Culture, 1(1), 69–100.
   Google Scholar
• Beatty, J. (2006). Replaying life’s tape. The Journal of Philosophy, 103(7), 336–362.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Benhabib, S. (2002). The claims of culture: Equality and diversity in the global era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Ben-Menahem, Y. (1997). Historical contingency. Ratio, 10(2), 99–107.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Blackmore, S. (1999). The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Bowden, R., MacFie, T. S., Myers, S., Hellenthal, G., Nerrienet, E., Bontrop, R. E., & Mundy, N. I. (2012). Genomic tools for evolution and conservation in the chimpanzee: Pan troglodytes ellioti is a genetically distinct population. PLoS Genetics, 8(3), e1002504–e1002511.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Bowen, J. R. (1998). Religions in practice: An approach to the anthropology of religion. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
   Google Scholar
• Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Boyer, P. (1992). Explaining religious ideas: Elements of a cognitive approach. Numen, 39(1), 27–57.
   Google Scholar
• Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
   Google Scholar
• Boyer, P., & Ramble, C. (2001). Cognitive templates for religious concepts: Cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations. Cognitive Science, 25, 535–564.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Bulbia, J. (2008). Meme infection or religious niche construction? An adaptationist alternative to the cultural maladaptationist hypothesis. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 20, 67–107.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Buskell, A. (2017a). What are cultural attractors?. Biology and Philosophy, 32(3), 377–394.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Buskell, A. (2017b). Cultural attractor theory and explanation. Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology, 9, 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ptb.6959004.0009.013
   Google Scholar
• Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
   Google Scholar
• Craver, C. F. (2007). Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
   Google Scholar
• Cronk, L. (1991). Human behavioral ecology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 20(1), 25–53.
   Google Scholar
• Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Deen, B., Richardson, H., Dilks, D. D., Takahasi, A., Keil, B., Wald, L. L., Kanwisher, N., & Saxe, R. (2017). Organization of high-level visual cortex in human infants. Nature Communications, 8, 13995. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13995.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Dretske, F. I. (1972). Contrastive statements. The Philosophical Review, 81(4), 411–437.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Durham, W. H. (1991). Coevolution: Genes, culture, and human diversity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Durkheim, E. (1912/1955). The elementary forms of religious life. New York: The Free Press.
   Google Scholar
• Elster, J. (1982). The case for methodological individualism. Theory and Society, 11(4), 453–482.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Fearon, J. D. (2003). Ethnic and cultural diversity by country. Journal of Economic Growth, 8(2), 195–222.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Foley, R. A. (2004). Hominid behavioral evolution: Missing links in comparative primate socioecology. In P. C. Lee (Ed.), Comparative primate socioecology (pp. 363–386). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Fortunato, L., Holden, C., & Mace, R. (2006). From bridewealth to dowry?. Human Nature, 17(4), 355–376.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: The Burgess shale and the nature of history. New York: Norton.
   Google Scholar
• Gould, S. J. (2002). The structure of evolutionary theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Hartung, J., Dickemann, M., Melotti, U., Pospisil, L., Scott, E. C., Smith, J. M., & Wilder, W. D. (1982). Polygyny and Inheritance of Wealth [and Comments and Replies]. Current Anthropology, 23(1), 1–12.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Haslanger, S. (2016). What is a (social) structural explanation?. Philosophical Studies, 173, 113–130.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Henrich, J. (2001). Cultural transmission and the diffusion of innovations: Adoption dynamics indicate that biased cultural transmission is the predominate force in behavioral change. American Anthropologist, 103(4), 992–1013.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Henrich, J. (2004). Demography and cultural evolution: How adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses: The Tasmanian case. American Antiquity, 69(2), 197–214.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Henrich, J., & Boyd, R. (2002). On Modeling Cognition and Culture: Why cultural evolution does not require replication of representations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2(2), 87–112.
   Google Scholar
• Heyes, C. (2012a). Grist and mills: On the cultural origins of cultural learning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2181–2191.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Heyes, C. (2012b). New thinking: The evolution of human cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2091–2096.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Heyes, C., & Frith, C. D. (2014). The cultural evolution of mind reading. Science, 344, 1243091.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Hitchcock, C. (1996). The role of contrast in causal and explanatory claims. Synthese, 107, 395–419.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Holden, C., & Mace, R. (2005). ‘The cow is the enemy of matriliny’: Using phylogenetic methods to investigate cultural evolution in Africa. In R. Mace, C. Holden, & S. Shennan (Eds.), The evolution of cultural diversity: A phylogenetic approach (pp. 217–234). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
   Google Scholar
• Holden, C., & Mace, R. (1997). Phylogenetic analysis of the evolution of lactose digestion in adults. Human Biology, 69(5), 605–628.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Holden, C., & Mace, R. (2003). Spread of cattle led to the loss of matrilineal descent in Africa: A coevolutionary analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 270( 1532), 2425–2433.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Inkpen, R., & Turner, D. (2012). The topography of historical contingency. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 6, 1–19.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Irons, W. G. (2001). Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment. In R. M. Nesse (Ed.), Evolution and the capacity for commitment (pp. 292–309). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
   Google Scholar
• Kaessmann, H., & Pääbo, S. (2002). The genetical history of humans and the great apes. Journal of Internal Medicine, 251, 1–18.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Kaessmann, H., Wiebe, V., & Pääbo, S. (1999). Extensive nuclear DNA sequence diversity among chimpanzees. Science, 288(5442), 1159–1162.
   Google Scholar
• Kandler, A., Wilder, B., & Fortunato, L. (2017). Inferring individual-level processes from population-level patterns in cultural evolution. Royal Society Open Science, 4(9), 170949. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170949
   Google Scholar
• Kolodny, O., Creanza, N., & Feldman, M. W. (2015). Evolution in leaps: The punctuated accumulation and loss of cultural innovations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(49), E6762–E6769.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Laland, K. N., Kumm, J., & Feldman, M. W. (1995). Gene-culture co-evolutionary theory. Current Anthropology, 36, 131–156.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lansing, S. J. (1987). Balinese ‘water temples’ and the management of irrigation. American Anthropologist, 89(2), 326–341.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lansing, S. J. (1991). Priests and programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscapes of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Lansing, S. J., & Kremer, J. N. (1993). Emergent properties of Balinese water temple networks: Coadaptation on a rugged fitness landscape. American Anthropologist, 95(1), 97–114.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Lewens, T. (2009). Seven types of adaptationism. Biology & Philosophy, 24(2), 161–182.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Loh, J., & Harmon, D. (2005). A global index of biocultural diversity. Ecological Indicators, 5(3), 231–241.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Mace, R. (2000). Evolutionary ecology of human life history. Animal Behavior, 59, 1–10.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Maclaurin, J., & Sterelny, K. (2008). What is biodiversity?. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Martin, L. H. (2014). Great expectations for Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods. Religion, 44(4), 628–637.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Morin, O. (2015). How traditions live and die. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Nettle, D. (2009). Ecological influences on human behavioral diversity: A review of recent findings. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(11), 618–624.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Norenzayan, A., Atran, S., Faulkner, J., & Schaller, M. (2006). Memory and mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives. Cognitive Science, 30, 531–553.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322(58), 58–62.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Peterson, C. C., & Siegal, M. (1999). Representing inner worlds: Theory of mind in autistic, deaf and normal hearing children. Psychological Science, 10, 126–129.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Peterson, C. C., Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2005). Steps in theory-of-mind development for children with deafness or autism. Child Development, 76(2), 502–517.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Pettazzoni, R. (1955). On the attributes of God. Numen, 2(1/2), 1–27.
   Google Scholar
• Polich, L. (2005). The emergence of the deaf community in Nicaragua: With sign language you can learn so much. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Powell, A., Shennan, S., & Thomas, M. G. (2009). Late Pleistocene demography and the appearance of modern human behavior. Science, 324, 1298–1301.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Purzycki, B. G. (2013). Toward a cognitive ecology of religious concepts: Evidence from the Tyva republic. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 1(1), 99–120.
   Google Scholar
• Purzycki, B. G., Haque, O. S., & Sosis, R. (2014). Extending evolutionary accounts of religion beyond the mind: Religion as adaptive systems. In F. Watts & L. Turner (Eds.), Evolution, religion & cognitive science (pp. 74–91). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Purzycki, B. G., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q. D., Cohen, E., McNamara, R. A., Willard, A. K., … Henrich, J. (2016). Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality. Nature, 530(7590), 327–330.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Purzycki, B. G., & Arakchaa, T. (2013). Ritual behavior and trust in the Tyva Republic. Current Anthropology, 54(3), 381–388.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Purzycki, B. G., & Willard, A. K. (2015). MCI theory: A critical discussion. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 6(3), 207–248.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Pyers, J. E., & Senghas, A. (2009). Language promotes false-belief understanding. Psychological Science, 20(7), 805–812.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Pyysiäinen, I. (2010). Servants of two masters: Religion, economy, and cooperation. In I. Pyysiäinen (Ed.), Religion, economy, and cooperation (pp. 1–34). Berlin: De Gruyter.
   Google Scholar
• Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for the ancestors: Ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea people. New Haven: Yale University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Rappaport, R. A. (1979). Ecology, meaning and religion. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
   Google Scholar
• Reid, V. M., Dunn, K., Young, R. J., Amu, J., Donovan, T., & Reissland, N. (2017). The Human Fetus Preferentially Engages with Face- like Visual Stimuli. Current Biology, 27(12), 1825–1828.e3.
   Google Scholar
• Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
   Google Scholar
• Scheffler, S. (2007). Immigration and the significance of culture. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35(2), 93–125.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Schilbrack, K. (2010). Religions: Are there any?. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 78(4), 1112–1138.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Schlieter, J. (2014). ‘ … for they know not what they do’? Religion, religions and ethics as conceptualized in Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (2013). Religion, 44(4), 649–657.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Shariff, A. F., Purzycki, B. G., & Sosis, R. (2014). Religions as cultural solutions to social living. In A. B. Cohen (Ed.), Culture reexamined: Broadening our undertsanding of social and evolutionary influences (pp. 217–238). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
   Google Scholar
• Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803–809.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Slaughter, V., & Peterson, C. C. (2012). How conversational input shapes theory of mind development in infancy and early childhood. In M. Siegal & L. Surian (Eds.), Access to language and cognitive development (pp. 3–22). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Sober, E. (1991). Reconstructing the past: Parsimony, evolution, and inference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
   Google Scholar
• Sosis, R. (2005). Does religion promote trust? The role of signaling, reputation, and punishment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 1. Retrieved from http://www.religjournal.com
   Google Scholar
• Sosis, R. (2009). The adaptationist-byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 9, 315–332.
   Google Scholar
• Sperber, D., & Hirschfeld, L. A. (2004). The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(1), 40–46.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Sperber, D. (1985). On anthropological knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
   Google Scholar
• Sterelny, K. (2003). Thought in a hostile world: The evolution of human cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
   Google Scholar
• Sterelny, K. (2017). Religion re-explained. Religion, Brain & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2017.1323779
   Google Scholar
• Taumoepeau, M., & Ruffman, T. (2006). Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding. Child Development, 77(2), 465–481.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Taumoepeau, M., & Ruffman, T. (2008). Stepping stones to others’ minds: Maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months. Child Development, 79(2), 284–302.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Thomassen, E. (2014). Are gods really moral monitors? Some comments on Ara Norenzayan’s Big Gods by a historian of religions. Religion, 44(4), 667–673.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Tong, F., Nakayama, K., Moscovitch, M., Weinrib, O., & Kanwisher, N. (2000). Response properties of the human fusiform face area. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 17(1–3), 257–280.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Van Fraassen, B. C. (1977). The pragmatics of explanation. American Philosophical Quarterly, 14(2), 143–150.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Watt, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J., & Gray, R. D. (2015). Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1804), 20142556.
   PubMed Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Winch, P. (1990). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. London: Routledge.
   Google Scholar
• Woodward, J. (2003). Making things happen: A theory of causal explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Woodward, J. (2010). Causation in biology: Stability, specificity, and the choice of levels of explanation. Biology & Philosophy, 25, 287–318.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar