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):
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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...
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Our new paper with Kristin Laurin, Joe Henrich and Aaron Kay, Outsourcing punishment to god: Beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment, is now published online at the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B (Biological Sciences). You can download a pdf here.
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Our new paper with Jessica Tracy and Jeff Markusoff, which shows the power of the pride expression in swaying people’s judgments of status, is now available on Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin’s website and here.
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Check out Jonah Lehrer’s Wall Street Journal writeup of Kevin Rounding, Albert Lee and others’ awesome new paper in Psychological Science on how priming religion increases self-regulation and enables people to cope with temptation. Here’s the abstract of the paper: 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...
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Check out collaborators Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan’s great new paper in Science on how priming ‘analytical’ modes of thinking undermines religious belief. You can download the full paper here, but here’s the abstract: Scientific interest in the cognitive underpinnings of religious belief has grown in recent years. However, to date, little experimental research has focused on the cognitive processes that may promote...
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