Graduating lab member Ezra Markowitz successfully defended his dissertation, Affective and moral roots of environmental stewardship: The role of obligation gratitude and compassion, to a packed crowd on August 8th. Ezra is currently finishing as a Scholar-in-Residence at American University, and will be starting a post-doc at Princeton University this fall.

At this August’s annual APA convention in Orlando, Azim received the APA Division 36 (Psychology of Religion and Spirituality)’s Margaret Gorman Early Career Award. The slides for his award address, titled Religion Evolved, are available in here: (keynote (best)  powerpoint   pdf).

With over 17,000 views, Azim and Mijke’s recent paper on the Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates is currently the most read paper of the last 30 days on PLoS One’s open-access website.

There’s been a lot of (motivated?) misinterpretation of our new study on the different relationship that a nation’s level of belief in heaven and in hell have on its crime rates. These guys, on the other hand, nail it (kudos):

Our new paper with Mijke Rhemtulla on how nations’ rates of belief in Heaven and Hell oppositely predict crime rates has just been posted at PLoS One. Click here to see the paper (open-access to everyone), and here to see the University of Oregon press release. Abstract: Researchers have proposed that the emergence of religion was a cultural adaptation necessary for promoting self-control. Self-control, in turn, may serve as a...